Brownings Shorter Poems

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Browning
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Title: Browning's Shorter Poems
Author: Robert Browning
Editor: Franklin T. Baker
Release Date: July 28, 2005 [EBook #16376]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
BROWNING'S SHORTER POEMS ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Lesley Halamek and
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BROWNING'S
SHORTER POEMS
SELECTED AND EDITED
BY
FRANKLIN T. BAKER, A.M.
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN TEACHERS COLLEGE,

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
FOURTH EDITION. REVISED AND ENLARGED

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON; MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1917
COPYRIGHT 1899,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped October, 1899. Reprinted January, 1901; April,
1902; May, 1903; May, 1904; January, 1905; January, June, 1906;
January, July, 1907; February, 1908; September, 1909; February, 1910;
March, 1911; July, 1912; July, 1913; January, July, 1915; July, 1916;
January, September, 1917.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.,
Norwood,
Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE
These selections from the poetry of Robert Browning have been made
with especial reference to the tastes and capacities of readers of the
high-school age. Every poem included has been found by experience to
be within the grasp of boys and girls. Most of Browning's best poetry is
within the ken of any reader of imagination and diligence. To the reader
who lacks these, not only Browning, but the great world of literature,
remains closed: Browning is not the only poet who requires close study.
The difficulties he offers are, in his best poems, not more repellent to
the thoughtful reader than the nut that protects and contains the kernel.
To a boy or girl of active mind, the difficulty need rarely be more than
a pleasant challenge to the exercise of a little patience and ingenuity.
Browning, when at his best in vigor, clearness, and beauty, is peculiarly
a poet for young people. His freedom from sentimentality, his liveliness

of conception and narration, his high optimism, and his interest in the
things that make for the life of the soul, appeal to the imagination and
the feelings of youth.
The present edition, attempts but little in the way of criticism. The
notes cover such matters as are not readily settled by an appeal to the
dictionary, and suggest, in addition, questions that are designed to help
in interpretation and appreciation.
TEACHERS' COLLEGE, NEW YORK,
July, 1899.
CONTENTS
LIFE OF BROWNING
BROWNING AS POET

APPRECIATIONS
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF
BROWNING'S WORKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Tray
Incident of the French Camp

"How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"
Hervé Riel

Pheidippides
My Star
Evelyn Hope
Love among the Ruins

Misconceptions
Natural Magic
Apparitions
A Wall
Confessions

A Woman's Last Word
A Pretty Woman
Youth and Art
A Tale

Cavalier Tunes
Home-Thoughts, from the Sea
Summum Bonum

A Face
Songs from Pippa Passes
The Lost Leader
Apparent
Failure
Fears and Scruples
Instans Tyrannus
The Patriot
The
Boy and the Angel
Memorabilia
Why I am a Liberal
Prospice

Epilogue to "Asolando"
"De Gustibus--"
The Italian in England

My Last Duchess
The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's
Church
The Laboratory

Home Thoughts, from Abroad
Up at a
Villa--Down in the City
A Toccata of Galuppi's
Abt Vogler
Rabbi
Ben Ezra
A Grammarian's Funeral
Andrea del Sarto
Caliban upon
Setebos
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
An Epistle

Saul
One Word More

NOTES
INTRODUCTION
LIFE OF BROWNING
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London, May 7, 1812. He
was contemporary with Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Lowell,
Emerson, Hawthorne, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Dumas, Hugo,
Mendelssohn, Wagner, and a score of other men famous in art and
science.
Browning's good fortune began with his birth. His father, a clerk in the
Bank of England, possessed ample means for the education of his
children. He had artistic and literary tastes, a mind richly stored with
philosophy, history, literature, and legend, some repute as a maker of
verses, and a liberality that led him to assist his gifted son in following
his bent. From his father Robert inherited his literary tastes and his
vigorous health; in his father he found a critic and companion. His
mother was described by Carlyle as a type of the true Scotch
gentlewoman. Her "fathomless charity," her love of music, and her
deep religious feeling reappear in the poet.
Free from struggles with adversity, and devoid of public or stirring
incidents, the story of Browning's life is soon told. It was the life of a
scholar and man of letters, devoted to the study of poetry, philosophy,
history; to the contemplation of the lives of men and women; and to the
exercise of his chosen vocation.
His school life was of meagre extent. He attended a private academy,
read at home under a tutor, and for two years attended the University of
London. When asked in his later life whether he had been to