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EBook of Browning’s Shorter Poems, by Robert Browning
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Browning’s Shorter
Poems, by Robert 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
* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING’S
SHORTER POEMS
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Lesley
Halamek
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
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
