A lover asks the beloved to give one moment out of a whole life, a moment of passion so complete that it stands outside past and future and lasts for ever.
How Browning's single breathless stanza, crowded with dashes, alliteration, lists and long rushing lines, tries to capture an intense moment of physical love and make it eternal.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Out of your whole life give but a moment!', 'So you make perfect the present', 'In a rapture of rage', 'Thought and feeling and soul and sense', 'Merged in a moment', 'you beneath me, above me', 'despite of time future, time past', 'This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me!', 'The moment eternal—just that and no more', 'While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!'.
Form: fourteen lines in one breathless stanza, like a loose sonnet, of long lines with a rushing rhythm, crowded with dashes, alliteration and lists that pack a whole life into one moment, ending on a line of four quick actions.
Context: Robert Browning (1812–1889), known for his dramatic monologues, who married the poet Elizabeth Barrett in 1846 and lost her in 1861; Asolando, his last book, mostly written in 1888–89 and published on the day he died; and its title, from an Italian word Browning took to mean amusing oneself at random in the open air.
Links within the cluster: Bright Star (wishing a moment of love could last for ever), In Paris With You (living for the present), Flirtation (making the most of a moment) and Poem for My Love (the peace of being together).
OCR's mark schemes suggest it for a difficult relationship (2023), for the speaker's worry about time past and future, and a satisfying one (2024), for the forceful alliteration that packs passion into one moment.
Pairs well with an unseen poem about a single moment, or physical love: compare how each poem handles time.
OCR's question on this cluster has two parts. Part (a), 20 marks, compares a named poem from the cluster, printed on the paper, with an unseen poem on a linked theme, and rewards analysis of language, form and structure (AO2) most, then your response (AO1); an answer on only one of the two poems cannot go above Level 3. Part (b), 20 marks, explores one other poem from the same cluster that you choose, from memory, with AO1 and AO2 equally weighted; a poem from a different cluster means only the higher of your two marks counts. Neither part marks context: use it only where it explains a reading. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the part it is for.
