The Last Ride Together

“The Last Ride Together” is an example of the poetic genre called the dramatic monologue, which Robert Browning made central to 19th-century poetry. Most dramatic monologues consist of words uttered by a speaker who is different from the author and whose personality is gradually revealed through his/her own words. Sometimes the speaker addresses a listener who is another person clearly identified in the poem. In other words, the speaker’s intended audience is not the reader but an imagined character. An unambiguous example is another famous poem by Robert Browning called “My Last Duchess” (1842). The whole text of the poem consists of the words spoken by a 16th-century Italian duke to the messenger of his future father-in-law. Most of the duke’s speech is about his previous marriage—his “Last Duchess”—but it becomes gradually clear that its real purpose is to convey that he wants an obedient wife and an ample dowry. The reader realizes that the duke’s first wife displeased him and that he may have had her killed. The duke’s words are a kind of warning to his future wife. On the surface, he presents himself as loving and generous, but his words reveal him to be an arrogant and controlling man, instead. In only 56 lines, Browning provides a well-defined dramatic situation and a complex psychological portrait without any information outside of the duke’s own speech.

“The Last Ride Together” is not such a clear-cut example of the dramatic monologue because it is less obvious to whom the speaker addresses his words. He might be sharing his feelings and thoughts with his mistress, who is also a character in the poem. On the other hand, he might also be describing this last ride to someone else. The poem’s very first words (“I SAID”) and the insertion of the phrase “I thought” in Line 50 suggest that the speech does not occur during the ride itself, but that the speaker is remembering and reporting what he did, felt, and thought just before and during that ride. It is also possible that the speaker is talking to himself, perhaps reassuring himself of the value of this ride. If the latter is the case, then the poem is better categorized as a soliloquy, a speech (whether on stage or in a poem) not directed to anyone in particular but meant as an external expression of the speaker’s internal thought process. A good example is Browning’s poem “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” (1842), in which a monk grumbles to himself about another monk of whom he is jealous.

Whether “The Last Ride Together” is understood as a dramatic monologue proper (the speaker addresses his mistress) or a soliloquy (there is no particular listener) may impact the interpretation of the poem’s meaning. If most of the speaker’s words are directed to his mistress, then his feelings and thoughts come across as immediate and genuine, the final expression of his affection and an effort to persuade her how much this last ride means to him. On the other hand, if he is telling someone a story about the last ride, the reader may wonder why he does that. He might be bragging about the depths of his feelings or showing off his philosophizing about lived experience being more valuable than art or even faith. That approach invites a more critical take on his speech: Perhaps he exaggerates his emotions, being in love with his own words. The evidence for such a reading remains limited. If we were meant to observe the speaker’s flaws (as we are in “My Last Duchess”), the poet would probably provide additional clues. However, there is always a distance between the poet and the speaker in a dramatic monologue, so we should not assume that the speaker’s sentiments are Browning’s. Instead, Browning is depicting a certain kind of person: exuberant in feelings, expansive in thought, flowery in speech, and maybe a little long-winded.

This distance between the poet and the speaker is exactly why the dramatic monologue appealed to Browning. He wanted to avoid the highly personal and confessional nature of Romantic poetry, which prevailed in the early 19th century. There are echoes of Browning’s favorite Romantic poets in “The Last Ride Together.” The elaborate metaphor of the “western cloud” as a powerful life force in the third stanza is reminiscent of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” (1820). The ability to fill unencumbered joy in the present moment is a theme in John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819). These poets spoke explicitly about their own hopes and anxieties. That is not the case for Browning. In fact, one interpretation of “The Last Ride Together” is that the poem imitates—lovingly but with a touch of ironic distance—the extreme emotions and heightened rhetoric of Romantic poetry. While Browning approached that poetic movement with critical admiration, the poem’s speaker appears to be an unconditional and unabashed enthusiast.