"My Last Duchess" By Robert Browing :)

I enjoyed this poem, I found it very interesting because of the way the speaker felt about his last duchess. The title of "My Last Duchess” and the first few lines of the poem give  us a bit of information of what the poem is pretty much going to be about. A duchess is like a wife or a lady so given the title “My Last Duchess”, even before I read the poem I got the impression that it was going to be about a lady. The very first line of the poem “That’s my last duchess painted on the wall” (Line 1) made me think that the speaker of the poem, who I inferred is Duke Ferrara because of the side notes on the bottom, is grieving the absence of his possibly first duchess. Also with the phrase “painted on the wall” I definitely thought that the speaker was looking at a portrait of his duchess or maybe a painting that she really liked.  Although the side notes did say that it was his first duchess, given the time period that the poem was written (1842) it made me think about how in the old times many men did have more than one wife. With this theory of mine I inferred that it was possible that there were more duchesses before her, but given the title “My Last Duchess”, I thought that Duke Ferrara felt that there will never be another duchess like her. The tone of the poem overall was grieving. I got this impression because of the lines “This grew; I gave commands; then all smiles stopped together. There she stands as if alive. Will’t please you rise?” (Lines 45 to 47). He’s kind of wishing that his duchess came back; I think that he still couldn’t believe she wouldn’t come back anymore and was in denial.