Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Poetry of Robert Browning
    The Poetry of Robert Browning
    The Poetry of Robert Browning
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    The Poetry of Robert Browning

    By Robert Browning

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper Of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian Poets will always be secure in popular culture. For the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim. In the last years of his life he recorded part of a poem on a wax cylinder which was played after his death. It was said to be the first time anyone’s voice had been heard from beyond the grave!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCopyright Group
    Release dateMar 4, 2014
    ISBN9781783949816
    Author

    Robert Browning

    Robert Browning (1812-1889) was an English poet and playwright. Browning was born in London to an abolitionist family with extensive literary and musical interests. He developed a skill for poetry as a teenager, while also learning French, Greek, Latin, and Italian. Browning found early success with the publication of Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835), but his career and notoriety lapsed over the next two decades, resurfacing with his collection Men and Women (1855) and reaching its height with the 1869 publication of his epic poem The Ring and the Book. Browning married the Romantic poet Elizabeth Barrett in 1846 and lived with her in Italy until her death in 1861. In his remaining years, with his reputation established and the best of his work behind him, Browning compiled and published his wife’s final poems, wrote a series of moderately acclaimed long poems, and traveled across Europe. Browning is remembered as a master of the dramatic monologue and a defining figure in Victorian English poetry.

    Read more from Robert Browning

    Related to The Poetry of Robert Browning

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Eight Essential Books Set in the Middle of Nowhere

      May 22, 2019

      Turns out, no matter what remote place we wind up, we can’t escape ourselves. The post Eight Essential Books Set in the Middle of Nowhere appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Mystery of Time’s Arrow

      Apr 4, 2019

      As conscious beings, we are constantly aware of the relentless march of time. You can make an egg into an omelet, but you can’t turn an omelet back into an egg. Dropped glasses shatter and do not reassemble themselves. Above all, we age and become de

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Shakespeare Grieves His Son’s Death In Maggie O’Farrell’s Poignant Novel

      Aug 19, 2020

      In an interview, Maggie O’Farrell explains why she believes the play “Hamlet” is tied in part to the death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son, Hamnet.

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A 350th-Anniversary ‘Paradise Lost’ Reading List

      Feb 6, 2018

      Before John Milton could be a visionary writer, first he had to be a visionary reader. All poetry is supported by the accumulated scaffolding of tradition and defines itself in part by subverting that tradition. Milton was simultaneously partisan for

      16 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Recent Winners

      Dec 15, 2021

      Four poets won the 2021 Discovery Poetry Contest. They are Kenzie Allen of Toronto, Ina Cariño of Raleigh, North Carolina, Mag Gabbert of Dallas, and Alexandra Zukerman of Tel Aviv. They each received $500, publication of their work in Paris Review D

      24 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      More MFA Programs Closing

      Aug 14, 2024

      More MFA Programs Closing
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Russian Roulette

      Feb 1, 2021

      As a longterm fan of Dostoevsky (and yes, unusually for a 19th century literary novelist, he does have a kind of fan club, many of whom are adolescents high on the thrill of first encountering his freewheeling combo of philosophical pondering and jaz

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ada Limón

      Jun 8, 2021

      Three guys in fluorescent vests are taking downa tree along my neighbor’s fence line, which is, of course, my fence line, with my two round-eyed snakes and my wandering raccoon. That is, if you go in for ownership. My, my, my.For weeks the tree they’

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of PoetryNo. 110

      Dec 1, 2020

      The Art of PoetryNo. 110
      31 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Planet in Peril

      Mar 5, 2018

      THE WIZARD AND THE PROPHET: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World BY CHARLES C. MANN Knopf, 640 pp., $28.95 ONE OF THE PLEASURES of reading Charles C. Mann’s new book, The Wizard and the Prophet, is the simpl

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ada Limón And The Poetry Of Rebellion

      Apr 7, 2022

      You know what? I’m 45, and I get to write whatever poems I want. The post Ada Limón and the Poetry of Rebellion appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Dec 7, 2021

      He wouldin case of divorcelay claim to halfof everythinghe said.Half a sofa,half a TV,half a summerhousehalf a pound of butterhalf a child. The apartment was hishe saidbecause it was in his name.The thing washe loved her. She loved anotherwhose wife

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Kekulé Problem

      Apr 20, 2017

      Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels. These include Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and thought of in complementary te

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'The World Broke In Two': Four Writers, One Transformational Year

      Jul 25, 2017

      Using excerpts from letters and diaries, historian and critic Bill Goldstein follows writers Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot through the tumultuous literary year of 1922.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Must-Read Poetry: Summer 2023

      Jun 28, 2023

      Notable new poetry collections from Taylor Byas, Terrance Hayes, Sam Sax and more. The post Must-Read Poetry: Summer 2023 appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Library Grows in Norway

      Dec 11, 2024

      A Library Grows in Norway
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How to Have an Opinion: The Criticism of Martin Seymour-Smith

      Oct 9, 2018

      Martin Seymour-Smith was a grumpy fellow. A promising poet who took up writing big reference books of literary criticism, his highly idiosyncratic 1977 survey Who’s Who In Twentieth Century Literature is deliciously highbrow junk food. But like straw

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Simple Steps To HAPPY FEET

      Feb 3, 2021

      Simple Steps To HAPPY FEET
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Focus On… Forest Gardening

      May 25, 2021

      Focus On… Forest Gardening
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Poetry of Robert Browning

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Poetry of Robert Browning - Robert Browning

      The Poetry Of Robert Browning

      Volume 1

      With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper Of Hamelin’ Robert Browning, born on May 17th 1812 in Camberwell in London status as one of the great Victorian Poets will always be secure in popular culture.  For the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues.  It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim.  In the last years of his life he recorded part of a poem on a wax cylinder which was played after his death. It was said to be the first time anyone’s voice had been heard from beyond the grave!

      Index Of Poems

      Home Thoughts From Abroad

      Now

      Among the Rocks

      The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

      The Last Ride Together

      The Year’s At The Spring

      My Last Duchess

      A Woman's Last Word

      A Lovers' Quarrel

      Among the Rocks

      Confessions

      Life in a Bottle

      Women And Roses

      Fears And Scruples

      Prospice

      Epilogue

      In Three Days

      Earth's Immortalities

      Patriot, The

      The Lost Mistress

      Memorabilia

      Never The Time And The Place

      Home Thoughts, from the Sea

      Verse-Making Was Least of My Virtues

      Nationality In Drinks

      Respectability

      The Lost Leader

      Time's Revenges

      The Heretic's Tragedy

      The Guardian-Angel

      The Italian In England

      Abt Vogler

      The Flight Of The Duchess

      Home Thoughts, From Abroad

      Oh, to be in England

      Now that April's there,

      And whoever wakes in England

      Sees, some morning, unaware,

      That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

      Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

      While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

      In England—now!

      And after April, when May follows,

      And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

      Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

      Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

      Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge— 

      That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

      Lest you should think he never could recapture

      The first fine careless rapture!

      And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

      All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

      The buttercups, the little children's dower

      —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 

      Now

      Out of your whole life give but a moment!

      All of your life that has gone before,

      All to come after it, so you ignore,

      So you make perfect the present, condense,

      In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,

      Thought and feeling and soul and sense,

      Merged in a moment which gives me at last

      You around me for once, you beneath me, above me

      Me, sure that, despite of time future, time past,

      This tick of life-time's one moment you love me!

      How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet,

      The moment eternal - just that and no more

      When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core,

      While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet! 

      Among the Rocks

      Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, 

      This autumn morning! How he sets his bones 

      To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet 

      For the ripple to run over in its mirth; 

      Listening the while, where on the heap of stones 

      The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet. 

      That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true; 

      Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. 

      If you loved only what were worth your love, 

      Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you: 

      Make the low nature better by your throes! 

      Give earth yourself, go up for gain above! 

      The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

      I.

      Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,

      By famous Hanover city;

      The river Weser, deep and wide,

      Washes its wall on the southern side;

      A pleasanter spot you never spied;

      But, when begins my ditty,

      Almost five hundred years ago,

      To see the townsfolk suffer so

      From vermin, was a pity.

      II.

      Rats!

      They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

      And bit the babies in the cradles,

      And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

      And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,

      Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

      Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,

      And even spoiled the women's chats

      By drowning their speaking

      With shrieking and squeaking

      In fifty different sharps and flats.

      III.

      At last the people in a body

      To the Town Hall came flocking:

      'Tis clear,'' cried they, our Mayor's a noddy;

      "And as for our Corporation - shocking.

      "To think we buy gowns lined with ermine

      "For dolts that can't or won't determine

      "What's best to rid us of our vermin!

      "You hope, because you're old and obese,

      "To find in the furry civic robe ease?

      "Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking

      "To find the remedy we're lacking,

      "Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!''

      At this the Mayor and Corporation

      Quaked with a mighty consternation.

      IV.

      An hour they sat in council,

      At length the Mayor broke silence:

      "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,

      "I wish I were a mile hence!

      "It's easy to bid one rack one's brain

      "I'm sure my poor head aches again,

      "I've scratched it so, and all in vain.

      "Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!''

      Just as he said this, what should hap

      At the chamber door but a gentle tap?

      Bless us,'' cried the Mayor, what's that?''

      (With the Corporation as he sat,

      Looking little though wondrous fat;

      Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister

      Than a too-long-opened oyster,

      Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous

      For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)

      "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?

      "Anything like the sound of a rat

      "Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!''

      V.

      "Come in!'' the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1