In the poem, a man strangles his lover – Porphyria – with her hair; "... and all her hair / In one long yellow string I wound / Three times her little throat around, / And strangled her." Porphyria's lover then talks of the corpse's blue eyes, golden hair, and describes the feeling of perfect happiness the murder gives him. Although he winds her hair around her throat three times to throttle her, the woman never cries out. The poem uses a somewhat unusual rhyme scheme: A,B,A,B,B, the final repetition bringing each stanza to a heavy rest.