greykit.poetry — #dramatic-monologue
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1920
[t-s-eliot]
Gerontion
An old man in a dry month speaks his meditation on history, faith, and the failure of knowledge — thought without action, passion lost, a dry brain in a dry season.
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1915
[t-s-eliot]
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Prufrock's hesitant interior monologue circles a visit never quite made — measuring life in coffee spoons, hearing the mermaids sing, asking "Do I dare?" — a portrait of paralysis and the fear of the overwhelming question.
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1842
[robert-browning]
My Last Duchess
A Duke of Ferrara shows an envoy a portrait of his late wife, revealing through oblique self-justification that he had her killed for being too easily pleased by anyone — then turns the conversation to the terms of his next marriage.
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1842
[alfred-lord-tennyson]
Ulysses
The aged Ulysses speaks from Ithaca, chafing against an idle kingship and rallying his mariners for one last voyage beyond the western stars — to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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1836
[robert-browning]
Porphyria's Lover
A lover tells how Porphyria came in from the storm, laid her hair on his cheek and whispered she loved him — and he strangled her with it, to hold that perfect moment forever; all night they sat, and yet God has not said a word.