Poem by Robert Browning: "Porphyria's Lover." Article about porphyria -- "A Dose of Vampire’s Medicine: Disfigured blood cell enzymes may explain away the vampire myth and inspire revolutionary new treatments"
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Porphyria's Lover
by Robert Browning
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me--she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
HERE
Biography of Robert Browning
Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)
Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell (a suburb of London), the first child of Robert and Sarah Anna Browning. His mother was a fervent Evangelical and an accomplished pianist. Mr. Browning had angered his own father and forgone a fortune: the poet's grandfather had sent his son to oversee a West Indies sugar plantation, but the young man had found the institution of slavery so abhorrent that he gave up his prospects and returned home, to become a clerk in the Bank of England. On this very modest salary he was able to marry, raise a family, and to acquire a library of 6000 volumes. He was an exceedingly well-read man who could recreate the seige of Troy with the household chairs and tables for the benefit of his inquisitive son.
Indeed, most of the poet's education came at home. He was an extremely bright child and a voracious reader (he read through all fifty volumes of the Biographie Universelle) and learned Latin, Greek, French and Italian by the time he was fourteen. He attended the University of London in 1828, the first year it opened, but left in discontent to pursue his own reading at his own pace. This somewhat idiosyncratic but extensive education has led to difficulties for his readers: he did not always realize how obscure were his references and allusions.
In the 1830's he met the actor William Macready and tried several times to write verse drama for the stage. At about the same time he began to discover that his real talents lay in taking a single character and allowing him to discover himself to us by revealing more of himself in his speeches than he suspects-the characteristics of the dramatic monologue. The reviews of Paracelsus (1835) had been mostly encouraging, but the difficulty and obscurity of his long poem Sordello (1840) turned the critics against him, and for many years they continued to complain of obscurity even in his shorter, more accessible lyrics.
In 1845 he saw Elizabeth Barrett's Poems and contrived to meet her. Although she was an invalid and very much under the control of a domineering father, the two married in September 1846 and a few days later eloped to Italy, where they lived until her death in 1861. The years in Florence were among the happiest for both of them. Her love for him was demonstrated in the Sonnets from the Portugese, and to her he dedicated Men and Women, which contains his best poetry. Public sympathy for him after her death (she was a much more popular poet during their lifetimes) surely helped the critical reception of his Collected Poems (1862) and Dramatis Personae (1863). The Ring and the Book (1868-9), based on an "old yellow book" which told of a Roman murder and trial, finally won him considerable popularity. He and Tennyson were now mentioned together as the foremost poets of the age. Although he lived and wrote actively for another twenty years, the late '60s were the peak of his career. His influence continued to grow, however, and finally lead to the founding of the Browning Society in 1881. He died in 1889, on the same day that his final volume of verse, Asolando, was published. He is buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Biography by: Glenn Everett, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Martin
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A Dose of Vampire’s Medicine
by
18 December 2006
The night before Hallowe’en seems like the perfect time to talk vampires, blood, and burning flesh. But the discussion at the October 30th Royal Canadian Institute lecture was much less macabre than it was medical. David Dolphin, an organic chemist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, believes that a class of rare genetic diseases called porphyrias may explain the legends that inspired Dracula and his kin. What’s more, harnessing the power of these deadly diseases might be the key to immortality - or a cure for cancer.
Dolphin has spent years studying porphyrins, ring-shaped organic molecules that bind with metals. The most famous porphyrin rings are those found in the heme group - the red blood cell pigment responsible for catching and releasing oxygen. People with porphyria diseases have deformed hemes. There are seven main types of the disease, which range in rarity from one in 25,000 people to less than one in a million.
In sufferers, lone porphyrins build up in various tissues, especially the skin. They lie in wait like deadly little time-bombs that detonate when exposed to light by generating vicious free radicals which destroy the cells that house them. This violent reaction has led to porphryins’ nickname, “the pigments of death.” It might also explain vampires’ tendency to stray outdoors only at night, lest they burst into flames in the midday sun.
So were vampires really the blood-sucking undead of legend, or were they medically misunderstood in their time? Dr. Dolphin admits it’s only a theory but drinking blood would have allowed them to absorb more heme, which feeds back to ease up on excess porphyrin production. In fact, porphyria patients today get heme injections. Porphyrin build-up in teeth can make them appear reddish, possibly like bloody fangs. The disease is even associated with excess hair growth, especially on the forehead, possibly leading to the vampire’s trademark widow’s peak. The aversion to garlic may be explained by the fact that some chemicals in the plant, such as diallyl sulfone, increase the production of porphyrins in the body. Of course, he points out, that a wooden stake through the heart would kill anyone. As for the lack of a mirror image, Dolphin joked, “I’m a chemist, so I’ll leave that to the physicists.”
While the medical truth behind the vampire myth may always be a mystery, Dolphin is using the very earthly science of porphyrins and photodynamic therapy to help fight disease. As luck would have it porphryins like to accumulate in tumors. Like a nanoscopic Trojan Horse, Dolphin and his colleagues have experimented with injecting porphyrin-derived drugs into a patient with skin cancer. The drugs gather in the tumors and then Dolphin exposes the cancers to light. Judging by the photos in his presentation, the melanomas looked as if they had been burned right off on the very day of the treatment, much like the skin of a sunbathing vampire. And because of the drug’s preference for accumulating within fast-growing cancer cells, the healthy tissue around the tumors was unaffected. This drug is now being used to treat lung, bladder, cervical and esophageal cancers.
It’s kind of ironic that the disease thought to explain the mythology of vampires, themselves considered immortal, is helping people live longer today. I’m not sure those living in medieval times, however, would appreciate the scientific contribution to the future. “Can you imagine anything worse in the Middle Ages than having someone jump you at night and drink half your body’s blood?,” remarked Dolphin. But whether or not vampires really were porphyria sufferers, it does makes you wonder if the medical mysteries of today will inspire ghoulish myths centuries from now.
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