Robert Browning and Benjamin Gibbard

It will be flippant to say that all songwriters are poets. Not all poets are songwriters. Although some have such mastery of language, rhythms and meters, they cross borders. That is if you believe that there is a border separating fantastic lyricists and poets.

After repeated listens of We Looked Like Giants by Death Cab For Cutie (will I ever get over this band?), I found myself reminded of Robert Browning's Meeting At Night, whose letters to Elizabeth Barrett Browning - How Do I Love Thee? had thrown her into ecstasies. These two contemporaries of Edgar Allan Poe, who is brilliant as a lyrical poet (listen to Antony And The Johnsons' take on his poem The Lake) who praised Elizabeth in a letter he sent, famously eloped.

Which really fitted the lyrics of the Death Cab song above.

Also the amorous shenanigans youthful exuberance get up to as described by both We Looked Like Giants and Meeting At Night are so similar in setting.....I'm sure the Brownings would have got it on in their horse carriages as well......they don't own cars yet, not like the couple described in We Looked Like Giants.