The Last Ride Together

The Victorian period refers to poetry written during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). One of the defining characteristics of the Victorian period was a major shift in thinking, in both the public and private sectors. This shift affected ideas on class, gender, politics, nationalism, and philosophy, among other areas. The era’s poets, including Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, utilized poetry to critique their world and express changing worldviews. They implemented literary devices from other art forms as well (see Literary Context) to further express feelings of uncertainty and nostalgia and highlight new ways of looking at old issues. Poetic themes include romantic love, innocence lost, social injustice, and shared experiences. Skepticism, brooding, and flashy literary techniques also define the poetics of this time period. Browning’s “The Last Ride Together” underscores many of the period’s touchstones.

Browning’s speaker compares his lost hope for a lasting relationship to unfulfilled aspirations that all people face: “all man strive and who succeeds?” (Line 46). Disappointment and failure are shared experiences of humankind, whether at the end of a single unsuccessful project or at the end of life. Lines 52-53 allude to both situations: “at the end of work” (or life) we “contrast / The petty done, the undone vast” (how little we achieved compared to all that we could have done). The reality of the present moment contradicts the aspirations of our past. This contradiction is in the very nature of human life because we have the mental ability to dream and imagine things that outreach our physical power. In that sense, “hand and brain” are never perfectly paired up (Line 56), what we can conceive and what we dare to do are never the same (Line 57), our actions cannot go as far as our thought (Line 58), and our will runs against the weakness of the body, our “fleshly screen” (Line 59). Yet the speaker finds comfort in these melancholy thoughts because they allow him to cease worrying about what could have been and live more fully in the present moment.

Browning’s speaker, knowing that his love could not last forever and that his (and all mankind’s) aspirations are bound to face the reality check of limited ability and unfortunate circumstance, turns to living in the moment as a way to make up in intensity what is necessarily lost in time. This is a variation of the idea of Carpe Diem (Seize the Day): since nothing lasts forever and our lives are fragile, it is important to live to the fullest in every moment of life. The potency of these heightened moments of experience compensates for the brevity of life (or love). Therefore, the speaker does not pine for the desired but unrealized future with his mistress. Instead, he invests himself in the moment of their last ride. If he can cast aside all worries and fears, and if nothing distracts him from the intensity of the present moment, then this moment will change “in degree, / The instant made eternity” (Lines 107-08). In other words, he will find in this moment the fulfillment that others seek in some otherworldly bliss. Thus, this ride proves to be “heaven” itself (Lines 109-10). Instead of projecting his hopes for happiness into the future (in this world or beyond), the speaker finds it in the present moment.