Featured Poem: Meeting at Night/Parting at Morning by Robert Browning

This Monday is a special one indeed - not only is it the May Day bank holiday in the UK and Ireland, but also the bicentenary birthday of one of the foremost poets of the Victorian era, Robert Browning. With this in mind, we think there's no better way to celebrate the double occasions with a  double Featured Poem (it would be unfair to separate this pair) by the man in question. What else is there to do on this marvellous Monday but sit back and read...?

Meeting at Night

I

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

II

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Parting at Morning

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim -
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world for me.

Robert Browning

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These poems can be found - along with many, many more - in The Reader Organisation's poetry anthology Poems To Take Home; full of favourite poems chosen especially by Get Into Reading group members, volunteers and staff. You can buy a copy from our website now or at any time; all proceeds go to supporting our outreach work across the UK.