The Last Ride Together

"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning (1842)

“My Last Duchess” is an excellent example of the dramatic monologue in which the speaker addresses another character who is clearly identified in the poem. Therefore, it is useful to compare it to “The Last Ride Together,” in which the recipient of the speaker’s words is less clearly defined.

"Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" by Robert Browning (1842)

Unlike “My Last Duchess,” this poem features a speaker who appears to talk to himself; that is, his words externalize his thought process rather than address a specific person, which makes it a soliloquy rather than a dramatic monologue. “The Last Ride Together” falls somewhere in between the two paradigms.

"Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)

In this Romantic poem, Shelley celebrates the west wind as the carrier of natural rebirth and a metaphor for spiritual renewal for which the poet yearns. The third stanza in “The Last Ride Together” contains similar language and develops an elaborate description of a western cloud as a symbol of the speaker’s overwhelming feelings. Browning’s speaker appears fond of the emphasis on strong emotions and metaphors drawn from nature typical of Romantic poetry.

"Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats (1819)

Keats describes his fascination with the pure joy he hears in the nightingale’s song. Humans can never experience such joy because we are burdened by our consciousness of suffering and mortality. (Keats himself was aware that he would die young from tuberculosis.) Striving for such a moment of unspoiled bliss is a major theme in Browning’s poem, embodied in the experience of riding with the person one loves, and another indication of the speaker’s Romantic inclinations.