The poem opens with a strong sense of pathetic fallacy: the personified "sullen wind" tearing down the trees, and the rain battering down. Initially it seems as if this reflects only the mood of the narrator, but later it may take on greater significance. When Porphyria arrives, she makes up the fire and warms the cottage, transforming the "cheerless grate", which seems as if it would reflect the love of the pair. Her arrival "shut the cold out"; this seems true on a literal and a metaphorical level – it is the storm and his unhappiness that she shuts out.