The Last Ride Together Summary & Analysis
by Robert Browning

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The Full Text of “The Last Ride Together”

1I said—Then, dearest, since 'tis so,

2Since now at length my fate I know,

3Since nothing all my love avails,

4Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,

5    Since this was written and needs must be—

6My whole heart rises up to bless

7Your name in pride and thankfulness!

8Take back the hope you gave—I claim

9Only a memory of the same,

10—And this beside, if you will not blame,

11    Your leave for one last ride with me.

12My mistress bent that brow of hers;

13Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs

14When pity would be softening through,

15Fixed me a breathing-while or two

16    With life or death in the balance: right!

17The blood replenished me again;

18My last thought was at least not vain:

19I and my mistress, side by side

20Shall be together, breathe and ride,

21So, one day more am I deified.

22    Who knows but the world may end tonight?

23Hush! if you saw some western cloud

24All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed

25By many benedictions—sun's

26And moon's and evening star's at once—

27    And so, you, looking and loving best,

28Conscious grew, your passion drew

29Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,

30Down on you, near and yet more near,

31Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—

32Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fear!

33    Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

34Then we began to ride. My soul

35Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll

36Freshening and fluttering in the wind.

37Past hopes already lay behind.

38    What need to strive with a life awry?

39Had I said that, had I done this,

40So might I gain, so might I miss.

41Might she have loved me? just as well

42She might have hated, who can tell!

43Where had I been now if the worst befell?

44    And here we are riding, she and I.

45Fail I alone, in words and deeds?

46Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

47We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,

48Saw other regions, cities new,

49    As the world rushed by on either side.

50I thought—All labor, yet no less

51Bear up beneath their unsuccess.

52Look at the end of work, contrast

53The petty done, the undone vast,

54This present of theirs with the hopeful past!

55    I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

56What hand and brain went ever paired?

57What heart alike conceived and dared?

58What act proved all its thought had been?

59What will but felt the fleshly screen?

60    We ride and I see her bosom heave.

61There's many a crown for who can reach.

62Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!

63The flag stuck on a heap of bones,

64A soldier's doing! what atones?

65They scratch his name on the Abbey stones.

66    My riding is better, by their leave.

67What does it all mean, poet? Well,

68Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell

69What we felt only; you expressed

70You hold things beautiful the best,

71    And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.

72'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,

73Have you yourself what's best for men?

74Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—

75Nearer one whit your own sublime

76Than we who have never turned a rhyme?

77    Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

78And you, great sculptor—so, you gave

79A score of years to Art, her slave,

80And that's your Venus, whence we turn

81To yonder girl that fords the burn!

82    You acquiesce, and shall I repine?

83What, man of music, you grown gray

84With notes and nothing else to say,

85Is this your sole praise from a friend,

86"Greatly his opera's strains intend,

87But in music we know how fashions end!"

88    I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

89Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate

90Proposed bliss here should sublimate

91My being—had I signed the bond—

92Still one must lead some life beyond,

93    Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.

94This foot once planted on the goal,

95This glory-garland round my soul,

96Could I descry such? Try and test!

97I sink back shuddering from the quest.

98Earth being so good, would Heaven seem best?

99    Now, Heaven and she are beyond this ride.

100And yet—she has not spoke so long!

101What if heaven be that, fair and strong

102At life's best, with our eyes upturned

103Whither life's flower is first discerned

104    We, fixed so, ever should so abide?

105What if we still ride on, we two

106With life forever old yet new,

107Changed not in kind but in degree,

108The instant made eternity—

109And heaven just prove that I and she

110    Ride, ride together, forever ride?

The Full Text of “The Last Ride Together”

1I said—Then, dearest, since 'tis so,

2Since now at length my fate I know,

3Since nothing all my love avails,

4Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,

5    Since this was written and needs must be—

6My whole heart rises up to bless

7Your name in pride and thankfulness!

8Take back the hope you gave—I claim

9Only a memory of the same,

10—And this beside, if you will not blame,

11    Your leave for one last ride with me.

12My mistress bent that brow of hers;

13Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs

14When pity would be softening through,

15Fixed me a breathing-while or two

16    With life or death in the balance: right!

17The blood replenished me again;

18My last thought was at least not vain:

19I and my mistress, side by side

20Shall be together, breathe and ride,

21So, one day more am I deified.

22    Who knows but the world may end tonight?

23Hush! if you saw some western cloud

24All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed

25By many benedictions—sun's

26And moon's and evening star's at once—

27    And so, you, looking and loving best,

28Conscious grew, your passion drew

29Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,

30Down on you, near and yet more near,

31Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—

32Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fear!

33    Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

34Then we began to ride. My soul

35Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll

36Freshening and fluttering in the wind.

37Past hopes already lay behind.

38    What need to strive with a life awry?

39Had I said that, had I done this,

40So might I gain, so might I miss.

41Might she have loved me? just as well

42She might have hated, who can tell!

43Where had I been now if the worst befell?

44    And here we are riding, she and I.

45Fail I alone, in words and deeds?

46Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

47We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,

48Saw other regions, cities new,

49    As the world rushed by on either side.

50I thought—All labor, yet no less

51Bear up beneath their unsuccess.

52Look at the end of work, contrast

53The petty done, the undone vast,

54This present of theirs with the hopeful past!

55    I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

56What hand and brain went ever paired?

57What heart alike conceived and dared?

58What act proved all its thought had been?

59What will but felt the fleshly screen?

60    We ride and I see her bosom heave.

61There's many a crown for who can reach.

62Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!

63The flag stuck on a heap of bones,

64A soldier's doing! what atones?

65They scratch his name on the Abbey stones.

66    My riding is better, by their leave.

67What does it all mean, poet? Well,

68Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell

69What we felt only; you expressed

70You hold things beautiful the best,

71    And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.

72'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,

73Have you yourself what's best for men?

74Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—

75Nearer one whit your own sublime

76Than we who have never turned a rhyme?

77    Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

78And you, great sculptor—so, you gave

79A score of years to Art, her slave,

80And that's your Venus, whence we turn

81To yonder girl that fords the burn!

82    You acquiesce, and shall I repine?

83What, man of music, you grown gray

84With notes and nothing else to say,

85Is this your sole praise from a friend,

86"Greatly his opera's strains intend,

87But in music we know how fashions end!"

88    I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

89Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate

90Proposed bliss here should sublimate

91My being—had I signed the bond—

92Still one must lead some life beyond,

93    Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.

94This foot once planted on the goal,

95This glory-garland round my soul,

96Could I descry such? Try and test!

97I sink back shuddering from the quest.

98Earth being so good, would Heaven seem best?

99    Now, Heaven and she are beyond this ride.

100And yet—she has not spoke so long!

101What if heaven be that, fair and strong

102At life's best, with our eyes upturned

103Whither life's flower is first discerned

104    We, fixed so, ever should so abide?

105What if we still ride on, we two

106With life forever old yet new,

107Changed not in kind but in degree,

108The instant made eternity—

109And heaven just prove that I and she

110    Ride, ride together, forever ride?

  • “The Last Ride Together” Introduction

    • "The Last Ride Together" is Robert Browning's tale of heartbreak, imperfection, and hope. Disappointed in love, this dramatic monologue's speaker asks his beloved to go on one final ride with him (perhaps on horseback, perhaps in a carriage). Along the way, he reflects that life rarely lives up to one's dreams—but that life's failings might, at least, leave people something to hope for from heaven. Browning first published this poem in his major 1855 collection Men and Women.

  • “The Last Ride Together” Summary

    • I said: "Well, my darling, if that's the way things are—since now, at last, I know what's going to happen to me; since my love has had no effect; since I've failed in my life's very purpose; since this is my inescapable fate—I bless you wholeheartedly, proud and grateful to have loved you. I return to you all the hopes you gave me and ask only that I will be allowed to remember those hopes. But I'd also like to ask one more thing: please go for one final horseback ride with me."

      My beloved tilted her lovely head, and her big dark eyes—full of the pride that made her turn me down, when they could have been soft with pity for me—looked directly at me for a few moments. I felt that my very life was at stake until she nodded: yes! Then, I felt my frozen blood moving in my veins again; at least I'd get this one last wish fulfilled. My beloved and I will be together, alive and breathing, for one more horseback ride—and so, for one more day, I feel like a god. And who knows? Maybe the world will end this very evening and our ride together will be my last experience on earth.

      Listen quietly: imagine that you saw a cloud floating in the western sky, curvy as a woman's breast, illuminated and blessed by the lovely lights of the sun, the moon, and Venus all at once. And imagine that you, watching this cloud in adoration, realized that your love for it was pulling it (and all the beautiful lights captured in it) down toward you, nearer and nearer, until you felt you might leave your body behind and enter heaven itself, dying of bliss. That's just how she leaned toward me, filling me with delight and terror at once; that's just how she embraced me for one short moment.

      So we set out for our ride. I felt my soul, which had been packed tightly away for so long, uncrumpling itself and flying like a flag behind me in the breeze. My earlier hopes were lost now. So what good would it do for me to struggle against my unfortunate fate? If I'd done this or that, things might have been better, or they might have been worse. Would she have loved me if I'd done something differently? She might just as easily have hated me—who knows! And how much worse would my situation have been if she refused even to go on this ride with me? For look: here we are, riding together.

      Am I the only person whose efforts fail? Certainly not: do anyone's efforts completely succeed? As my beloved and I rode on, I felt as if my soul were flying over far-off lands, while the world rushed past around us. I thought: everyone works hard at something, and everyone is forced to reckon with failure. Compare results with intentions; contrast the little things people manage to accomplish with all the greatness they hoped to achieve, or their present reality with what they once dreamed might happen! Me, I hoped my beloved would love me back; and here we are, instead, on this final ride.

      When was a person ever able to do just what they dreamed of? Who ever both conjured up a brilliant plan and completed it perfectly? What action ever lived up to hopes? Whose willpower was never thwarted by the imperfect reality of mortal life? (My beloved and I keep riding, and I see her breast rise and fall.) Oh, sure, there are plenty of triumphs and rewards in the world for the people who pursue them. But a great leader's glory amounts to nothing more than ten short lines in an old history book. And all that remains of heroic soldiers is a pile of bones with a flag stuck into them. And what makes up for such a fate? The soldier just gets his name written on the walls of Westminster Abbey. No offense to them, but I think my ride is a better reward.

      Well, you poet: what do you have to say about these questions? Your mind taps out a beat, you record the things that most people only feel—and you've said that you think beauty is the best thing in the world. You line beauties up in rhymed lines, one after the other. Such an achievement isn't nothing, it's a lot more than nothing: but do you, poet, actually lead the best possible life? Or are you—impoverished, ill, and old before your time—any closer to the beauties you celebrate than those of us who never wrote a single poem? You can go ahead and write poems that say, "Riding is a delight!" Me, I just ride.

      And what about you, oh great sculptor? You sacrificed 20 years of your life to the goddess Art, making yourself her servant. The result is a lovely statue of Venus—which we all turn away from as soon as an ordinary pretty girl crossing a stream catches our eye. You willingly make your sacrifice—and would I wish you to do otherwise? And you, you musician, prematurely gray-haired, with nothing to say for yourself but a few songs: the only thing your friends have to say about you is, "Well, he's an ambitious composer, but we all know how musical tastes change...." I, like you artists, sacrificed my best years to a thankless cause: but, after it all, at least my beloved and I are riding together.

      Who can say what's best? If Fate had decreed that I should get what I wanted, and requited love should make my very soul overflow with bliss—if I had been able to marry her—well, everyone needs to have something left to aspire to in heaven. We all need an idea of perfection that we can only barely imagine; if I'd achieved my idea of perfection on earth, and found my soul wrapped in the celebratory wreaths of fulfilled love, would I have any dream left over to hope for? There would be only one way to find out! But the thought makes me fall back in fear. If I achieved the absolute height of joy on earth, would I even care about heaven any more? Now, at least, both my beloved and heaven itself are alluringly out of my grasp, somewhere beyond this ride.

      But—my beloved has been quiet for so long! What if heaven itself only meant that the very best and most beautiful moment of our life (the moment when we look up into the heavens and feel as if we're seeing the whole point of life blossoming like a flower) would last forever? What if the two of us were to ride on forever, always doing the same thing and always feeling it to be fresh and new? What if we never did anything but ride—except that we got to do it eternally, one second stretching out into infinity? What if heaven was just the two of us riding on forever?

  • “The Last Ride Together” Themes

    • Theme The Pains and Consolations of Love

      The Pains and Consolations of Love

      “The Last Ride Together” suggests that intense love can inspire bliss even in the middle of heartbreak. The speaker, a man whose proposal has just been declined by his beloved, makes a final request: that she go for one last horseback ride with him. Even if his love for her is unrequited, it’s still so strong that this devastating final outing with her feels to him like heaven itself. Love, in this poem, doesn’t need to be reciprocated to be meaningful; on the contrary, the speaker suggests that thwarted love can be beautiful, worthwhile, and even sacred.

      The speaker’s love for the woman he wanted to marry is so huge and so fundamental to him that, without it, he feels he doesn’t have much left to live for. The speaker’s adoration of his beloved has made her the center of his life—and when she doesn’t love him back, he feels as if “all [his] life seemed meant for” has “fail[ed].” In other words, he feels that winning his beloved’s affection was his only purpose in life. And now that she’s turned him down, his life itself seems like a failure.

      But even unrequited love, the poem says, can feel almost divine. When the speaker goes on his “last ride” with his beloved, the simple joy of being in her company is so huge that he can think of no greater pleasure, even though he knows that pleasure must come to an end. He even speculates that heaven might be nothing more than an eternal version of this ride: perhaps paradise itself could offer no deeper joy than this “instant” of his beloved’s company becoming “eternity.” Beside her, he himself even feels “deified,” almost made into a god himself. He wouldn’t trade this single moment for any other triumph the world could offer him.

      The poem thus suggests that love can crush people’s hearts and offer a glimpse of paradise at the same time. The speaker’s loss and disappointment might be devastating, but he’s still had the profound experience of adoring someone so much that even an hour or two in her company gives him the greatest imaginable pleasure. Love, the poem says, is deeply worthwhile, life-giving, and spiritually meaningful even when one’s love isn’t returned.

    • Theme Hope and Expectations vs. Reality

      Hope and Expectations vs. Reality

      Life, the poem’s speaker reflects, never lives up to dreams. From disappointed love to disappointed ambitions, life doesn’t ever seem to reach the glory that people can conjure up in their imaginations: “all men strive” for something perfect, the speaker says, but no one “succeed[s].” That doesn’t mean that ambitious hopes and dreams have no place in life, however: earthly failures and disappointments can help people to imagine (and strive to reach) a perfect afterlife. If people never get what they want on earth, in other words, then they always have a heavenly ideal to quest for.

      Mourning an unrequited love, the speaker philosophically reflects that he’s far from alone in his suffering: people’s hopes are never completely fulfilled by what actually happens. “What act,” the speaker asks, ever “proved all the thought had been?”—in other words, when did anything ever come out exactly the way a person meant it to? Even the greatest “poet” or “sculptor,” for instance, might celebrate ideal beauties in their work, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll get anywhere near the perfection they imagine in either their flawed art or their flawed lives. Reality just isn’t perfect, plain and simple.

      And when people do achieve something great, the speaker mourns, their triumph is short-lived. Even grand victories are marred by death: the noblest “statesman” or “soldier” ends up nothing more than a “ten line[]” entry in the history books and a “heap of bones.” The speaker himself feels this sorrow acutely. On a final horseback ride with his beloved, he speculates that heaven, for him, might be an eternal version of these few moments with her—all the while knowing that, here on earth, this ride has to end sometime. Perhaps the world’s greatest imperfection, in other words, is that even its highest delights don’t last.

      But perhaps, the speaker reflects, life’s imperfection can also inspire people’s hopes for “a life beyond”: all the disappointments of reality might help people to dream of a heavenly afterlife. Not getting exactly what you want in exactly the way you want it means that there’s always something more to hope for: if “Earth” offered perfection, he asks, “would heaven seem best?” The world’s flaws, in other words, leave room for the imagination, and keep people questing for ideals that they can reach only in a heavenly eternity.

    • Theme Art vs. Experience

      Art vs. Experience

      In this dramatic monologue, the speaker gets in a few jabs at the people who devote their lives to capturing the ideal in art—like the guy writing this poem, just for instance! Because art can never perfectly capture life, the speaker suggests, it’s ridiculous to waste the best years of one’s life on trying: the only thing to do is to live life rather than describe it.

      Attempting to capture life’s deepest moments of feeling in art, the poem suggests, distracts artists from living. While poetry, for instance, might be meaningful and consoling, it also doesn’t bring the poet “nearer one whit” to their “own sublime”: since poetry can never fully capture experience, writing about “things beautiful” is a far cry from experiencing beauty in the moment.

      The speaker himself has no time for living life at a remove this way: he tells poets, “Sing, riding’s a joy! For me, I ride.” In other words, the poets can go ahead and write about how wonderful it is to go riding with one’s beloved, but he himself would much rather be actually riding, thank you very much.

      The big irony here, of course, is that the speaker is saying so in a poem. That irony invites readers to reflect that art and life might have a more complicated relationship than the speaker claims. All through the poem, the speaker regrets that life itself always falls a little short of dreams; his own heartbreak is the proof. If that’s the case, then art and life might actually have a lot in common: both are full of failed grasps at perfection. Imperfect art is thus a fitting tribute to imperfect life.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Last Ride Together”

    • Lines 1-5

      I said—Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
      Since now at length my fate I know,
      Since nothing all my love avails,
      Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
          Since this was written and needs must be—

      "The Last Ride Together" begins in media res—that is, right in the middle of the action. Remembering the life-changing day that he proposed to his beloved, this dramatic monologue's speaker describes, not the proposal itself, but what happened afterward. To put it mildly: things didn't go as he'd hoped.

      Listen to the speaker's anaphora as he recalls what he said to the woman who turned him down:

      I said—Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
      Since now at length my fate I know,
      Since nothing all my love avails,
      Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
      Since this was written and needs must be—

      Those repeated "since"s make all the ideas here seem related:

      • The speaker is heartbroken, feeling that "all [his] life seemed meant for" has been an utter failure; his love for his "dearest" has been at the very center of his life.
      • But he's also telling himself that this loss "needs must be": it's part of his "fate," something "written" in the stars that he could never have avoided.
      • In other words: the speaker feels doomed to have loved intensely and unrequitedly. He's finally confronting this unchangeable truth.

      All those "since"s also imply that the speaker is about to make some new decision based on this crushing realization. Readers who are familiar with some of Browning's other dramatic monologues might feel a little bit nervous here: many of Browning's lovers, disappointed or otherwise, end up getting a touch murderous.

      But this won't be a poem about a jealous rage, or even just about devastation and heartbreak. Instead, this poem's passionate, philosophical speaker will find meaning in his grief.

    • Lines 6-11

      My whole heart rises up to bless
      Your name in pride and thankfulness!
      Take back the hope you gave—I claim
      Only a memory of the same,
      —And this beside, if you will not blame,
          Your leave for one last ride with me.

    • Lines 12-16

      My mistress bent that brow of hers;
      Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
      When pity would be softening through,
      Fixed me a breathing-while or two
          With life or death in the balance: right!

    • Lines 17-22

      The blood replenished me again;
      My last thought was at least not vain:
      I and my mistress, side by side
      Shall be together, breathe and ride,
      So, one day more am I deified.
          Who knows but the world may end tonight?

    • Lines 23-26

      Hush! if you saw some western cloud
      All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
      By many benedictions—sun's
      And moon's and evening star's at once—

    • Lines 27-31

          And so, you, looking and loving best,
      Conscious grew, your passion drew
      Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
      Down on you, near and yet more near,
      Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—

    • Lines 32-33

      Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fear!
          Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

    • Lines 34-36

      Then we began to ride. My soul
      Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
      Freshening and fluttering in the wind.

    • Lines 37-42

      Past hopes already lay behind.
          What need to strive with a life awry?
      Had I said that, had I done this,
      So might I gain, so might I miss.
      Might she have loved me? just as well
      She might have hated, who can tell!

    • Lines 43-44

      Where had I been now if the worst befell?
          And here we are riding, she and I.

    • Lines 45-49

      Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
      Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
      We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
      Saw other regions, cities new,
          As the world rushed by on either side.

    • Lines 50-55

      I thought—All labor, yet no less
      Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
      Look at the end of work, contrast
      The petty done, the undone vast,
      This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
          I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

    • Lines 56-60

      What hand and brain went ever paired?
      What heart alike conceived and dared?
      What act proved all its thought had been?
      What will but felt the fleshly screen?
          We ride and I see her bosom heave.

    • Lines 61-66

      There's many a crown for who can reach.
      Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
      The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
      A soldier's doing! what atones?
      They scratch his name on the Abbey stones.
          My riding is better, by their leave.

    • Lines 67-71

      What does it all mean, poet? Well,
      Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
      What we felt only; you expressed
      You hold things beautiful the best,
          And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.

    • Lines 72-77

      'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
      Have you yourself what's best for men?
      Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—
      Nearer one whit your own sublime
      Than we who have never turned a rhyme?
          Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

    • Lines 78-82

      And you, great sculptor—so, you gave
      A score of years to Art, her slave,
      And that's your Venus, whence we turn
      To yonder girl that fords the burn!
          You acquiesce, and shall I repine?

    • Lines 83-88

      What, man of music, you grown gray
      With notes and nothing else to say,
      Is this your sole praise from a friend,
      "Greatly his opera's strains intend,
      But in music we know how fashions end!"
          I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

    • Lines 89-93

      Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
      Proposed bliss here should sublimate
      My being—had I signed the bond—
      Still one must lead some life beyond,
          Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.

    • Lines 94-99

      This foot once planted on the goal,
      This glory-garland round my soul,
      Could I descry such? Try and test!
      I sink back shuddering from the quest.
      Earth being so good, would Heaven seem best?
          Now, Heaven and she are beyond this ride.

    • Lines 100-104

      And yet—she has not spoke so long!
      What if heaven be that, fair and strong
      At life's best, with our eyes upturned
      Whither life's flower is first discerned
          We, fixed so, ever should so abide?

    • Lines 105-110

      What if we still ride on, we two
      With life forever old yet new,
      Changed not in kind but in degree,
      The instant made eternity—
      And heaven just prove that I and she
          Ride, ride together, forever ride?

  • “The Last Ride Together” Symbols

    • Symbol The Last Ride

      The Last Ride

      The final ride that the speaker and his beloved share might subtly symbolize sex.

      When the speaker and his beloved go out for their final jaunt together (perhaps on horseback, perhaps in a horse-drawn carriage), the poem's language evokes not just chaste galloping, but sexual passion. Besides the ways in which the rhythms of riding might evoke sex, the speaker pays a lot of physical attention to his riding partner—for instance, noting that her "bosom heave[s]" as they go.

      The poem thus becomes both the story of a disappointed love, and—understatedly—a vision of a last passionate embrace.

  • “The Last Ride Together” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Metaphor

      The poem's metaphors bring the speaker's reflections on art, love, and disappointment to life, making abstract ideas tangible.

      For a guy who has some serious doubts about the uses and effects of poetry, this speaker sure likes using writing as a metaphor for truth and revelation. For instance:

      • In the first stanza, the speaker describes his unrequited love as something that was "written and needs must be." In other words, it's inscribed in the metaphorical book of Fate—a book that no human being can alter.
      • But simply expressing his love makes the speaker feel as if his very "soul" is "smooth[ing] itself out" like "a long-cramped scroll." The words of love in his heart, in other words, have been rolled up in a tight, secret bundle for so long that it feels "freshening" and relieving just to speak them aloud, even if they haven't had the effect he hoped for.

      In both of these instances, writing and reading are associated with either facing or telling a great truth. That association between writing and truth gets even stronger when the speaker imagines a poet "pac[ing]" his beautiful rhymes "side by side"—a metaphor in which writing becomes horseback riding, which is exactly what the speaker and his beloved are doing! Even the language here repeats the speaker's description of himself and his beloved "side by side" as they set out for their ride.

      All these writerly metaphors suggest that, even if the speaker is dubious that writing can get anywhere near capturing reality, the poet who's writing about this speaker thinks otherwise.

      The speaker is also fond of metaphorical flowers:

      • The "glory-garland" in line 95 suggests that requited love feels both like a great victory and like being wreathed in countless beautiful, fragrant blooms. (Too bad for him, then, that his love is unrequited.)
      • And in line 103, the rewards of heaven are portrayed as "life's flower." Here, the speaker is imagining that earthly pleasures, which are as lovely and temporary as flowers, might be immortalized in heaven: there, he hopes, such blossoms will never wither. (Here he might be borrowing from the great Italian poet Dante, who famously imagines the souls in heaven forming one huge white rose.)

      But such heavenly rewards are a long way off for this speaker. For now, he's stuck down on earth, where even the metaphorical "crown" of victory rarely lives up to anyone's hopes, and the "fleshly screen" of mortality and human weakness cuts even the greatest triumphs short.

    • Simile

    • Rhetorical Question

    • Allusion

    • Parallelism

    • Repetition

    • Irony

    • Enjambment

    • Alliteration

    • Assonance

  • "The Last Ride Together" Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • 'Tis
    • At length
    • Nothing all my love avails
    • Mistress
    • Demurs
    • Fixed me
    • A breathing-while
    • Replenished
    • Vain
    • Deified
    • Billowy-bosomed
    • Over-bowed by many benedictions
    • Awry
    • Befell
    • Petty
    • Conceived
    • Fleshly screen
    • Bosom
    • Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
    • Atones
    • Abbey
    • By their leave
    • Nay
    • Ere
    • Sublime
    • Fords the burn
    • Acquiesce
    • Repine
    • Strains
    • In fine
    • Sublimate
    • Signed the bond
    • Dim-descried
    • Glory-garland
    • Abide
    • An old-fashioned way of saying "it is."

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Last Ride Together”

    • Form

      "The Last Ride Together" uses one of Browning's favorite forms: the dramatic monologue. In this poem, as in many of his others, Browning takes on the voice of a character as if he were an actor; in this case, he plays a philosophical, disappointed lover.

      He also invents a new stanza form for this lover's voice. The poem is built from 10 stanzas of 11 lines apiece, all with a consistent rhyme scheme. These off-kilter stanzas, with their odd number of lines, reflect the poem's interest in the world's imperfections and consolations: while the stanzas don't fall into an easy, familiar pattern, they also have their own strange harmony and order.

    • Meter

      "The Last Ride Together" is mostly written in iambic tetrameter: that is, its lines are built from four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in lines 1 and 2:

      I said— | Then, dear- | est, since | 'tis so,
      Since now | at length | my fate | I know,

      All those swinging da-DUMs feel fitting for a poem that's about both love and a "ride" on horseback or in a carriage: the pounding rhythm here could mimic either a heart or hoofbeats.

      But this poem doesn't stick to that rhythm steadily throughout. While every line is in four-beat tetrameter, the poem introduces all sorts of different feet. Listen to what happens in lines 21-22, for instance:

      So, one | day more | am I | deified.
      Who knows | but the world | may end | tonight?

      • Line 21 introduces a spondee: two strong stresses right next to each other, DUM-DUM. That means that the words "one day more" are all stressed, giving the speaker's voice its passionate urgency. The dactyl (DUM-da-da) of "deified" also gives the line some extra punch.
      • Line 22, in comparison, sounds quieter and more thoughtful, with all its stresses to the backs of the feet. But the anapest of "but the world" adds an extra syllable, packing more into the line, and perhaps helping the speaker to sound quietly desperate as he reflects that, if he's lucky, this horseback ride might be his last act on earth!
    • Rhyme Scheme

      The surprising rhyme scheme of "The Last Ride Together" runs like this in each stanza:

      AABBCDDEEEC

      This pattern, as it gains momentum and comes to strange halts, reflects the speaker's own emotional predicament. Here's an example of how that works in the first stanza:

      • As the poem begins, readers might start to think that it's going to use steady rhymed couplets, traveling in pairs like doves: "so" / "know," "avails" / "fails."
      • But then, a single C rhyme pops up out of nowhere—and doesn't find a partner! (Readers might smell a metaphor for the speaker himself there...)
      • Instead, the poem returns to a couplet—then introduces a surprising triplet, "claim" / "same" / "blame," which makes it feel as if the poem is building up some extra momentum, a head of steam.
      • Only at the end of the stanza does the C rhyme finally conclude: "me" comes along to match with "be" from way back in line 5.

      In other words, the rhyme scheme raises readers' expectations of some kind of familiar poetic order, only to break them over and over again—just as, in the speaker's view, the world never quite lives up to anyone's hopes.

      But this off-kilter rhyme scheme, like the speaker, still finds an odd harmony in the end. That dangling C rhyme always meets its match eventually, even if it's not in a predictable place—and the speaker, disappointed in his hopes of marriage, still feels that simply being near his beloved is as close to heaven as he can get.

  • “The Last Ride Together” Speaker

    • The speaker of this dramatic monologue is heartbroken. Disappointed in love when his beloved turns down his proposal, he feels that "all [his] life seemed meant for" has come to nothing. But he's not letting that make him bitter. Equal parts idealistic and realistic, this lover decides that, since he can't have what he wants, he's simply going to enjoy every last second he gets to spend in his beloved's company—and to hope that heaven might one day reward him with a version of their "last ride together" that stretches out into eternity.

      This lover's reflections on life's combination of disappointments and sublime delights mark him out as a true romantic. While he knows that life never really lives up to people's hopes and dreams, he's also pretty sure that merely being near the woman who rejected him is as close as any mortal could get to heaven.

  • “The Last Ride Together” Setting

    • The setting doesn't come up too much in "The Last Ride Together": all readers know is that the speaker and his beloved are out for a horseback ride somewhere. While there are a few hints that the poem takes place in Browning's own England—for instance, the mention of a capitalized "Abbey" that seems likely to be Westminster—it doesn't really matter when or where these events take place. The poem is dealing with problems that are the same for everyone, everywhere: love is sometimes unrequited, hearts sometimes break, and the world generally falls a little short of our dreams.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “The Last Ride Together”

    • Literary Context

      Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a great Victorian writer—and one quite unlike those around him. Considered a minor poet for most of his early career, Browning became famous toward the end of his life for his wild dramatic monologues: theatrical poems spoken in the voices of characters from murderous Italian dukes to good-hearted 16th-century soldiers. The philosophical, reflective, passionate speaker of "The Last Ride Together" is one of the sweeter figures in these monologues, standing apart from a gallery of scoundrels.

      Many of Browning's contemporaries didn't quite know what to do with his poetry, which—with its experimental rhythms and sometimes earthy language—rarely conformed to the elegant standards of his time. Many suggested that he'd make a better novelist than a poet. Even Oscar Wilde, a great Browning enthusiast, couldn't resist quipping that "[George] Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning." The Modernist poets of the early 20th century, though, admired Browning's poetry for the very strangeness and narrative vigor that put so many of the Victorians off.

      Browning's greatest influence was, without question, his beloved wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose poetry he deeply admired. This literary duo critiqued and championed each other's work for 14 happy years of marriage. But like many Victorian writers, Browning also followed in the lyrical and imaginative footsteps of the earlier Romantic poets. As a young man, he particularly respected Shelley as both a poet and a radical political thinker.

      While Browning was ahead of his time in many ways, more and more writers and thinkers learned to admire and appreciate his work as the 19th century rolled into its final years. His reputation has only grown since his death.

      Historical Context

      While the speaker of "The Last Ride Together" isn't altogether sure that poetry-writing is the best way to spend one's life, his philosophy on love doesn't seem so distant from Browning's own. Browning was a deeply romantic man, and he lived out one of literature's most touching love stories.

      In 1845, Browning paid his first visit to a rising star in the literary world: Elizabeth Barrett. Unusually for a woman writer of the time, Barrett had become wildly famous; Browning was only one of many readers to be moved by her soulful, elegant poetry. He wrote her a fan letter, and the two began a warm correspondence. Eventually, they fell deeply in love.

      Barrett's tyrannical father was having none of it, however. Besides preferring to keep his talented daughter (and her earnings) to himself, he disapproved of Browning, who was several years younger than Barrett—unconventional in a Victorian marriage—and not yet a commercially successful writer himself. In order to defy Mr. Barrett, the couple had to elope; they left England for Italy in 1846. Outraged, Elizabeth's father disinherited her.

      The newlywed Brownings, undaunted, set up house in Florence, where they would live happily for over a decade before Elizabeth fell ill. She died in Robert's arms at the age of only 55.

  • More “The Last Ride Together” Resources