Robert Browning: How to Know Him

The dramatic lyric in two parts called _Meeting at Night_ and _Parting at Morning_ contains only sixteen lines and is a flawless masterpiece. Of the four dimensions of mathemati...

Tis but a case of mania--subinduced By epilepsy, at the turning-point Of trance prolonged unduly some three days: When, by the exhibition of some drug Or spell, exorcization, st...

But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I'll wor...

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with: (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it,...

The two volumes of _Dramatic Idyls_ are full of paradoxes, for Browning became fonder and fonder of the paradox as he descended into the vale of years. The Russian poem _Ivan Iv...

Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement! He who smites the rock and spreads the water, Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, Even he, the minute makes immortal, P...

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only mad...

The Duke tells the envoy that his late Duchess was flirtatious, plebeian in her enthusiasm, not sufficiently careful to please her husband; but the evident truth is that he had...

What does it all mean, poet? Well, Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell What we felt only; you expressed You hold things beautiful the best, And pace them in rhyme so, side by...

Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could ever be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose whe...

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it? Back to my room shall you take your sweet self. Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, _sufficit_! See the snug niche I have made on...

Browning's dramatic lyrics differ from Tennyson's short poems as the lyrics of Donne differed from those of Campion; but Browning occasionally tried his hand at the composition...

To whom used my boy George quaff else, By the old fool's side that begot him? For whom did he cheer and laugh else, While Noll's damned troopers shot him? CHORUS.--_King Charles...

In this volume I have attempted to give an account of Browning's life and an estimation of his character: to set forth, with sufficient illustration from his poems, his theory o...

You saw go up and down Valladolid, A man of mark, to know next time you saw. His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have wor...

No modern Pagan has ever sung the joy of life with more gusto than Browning trolls it out in the ninth stanza. The glorious play of the muscles, the rapture of the chase, the de...

Wanting is--what? Summer redundant, Blueness abundant, --Where is the blot? Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, --Framework which waits for a picture to frame: What of th...

These three men were fortunate in all reaching the age of seventy, for had they died midway in their careers, even after accomplishing much of their best work, they would have d...

"I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke: I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain And pronounced on the rest of his handwork--returned...

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright...

Browning was an optimist with his last breath. In the _Prologue_ to _Asolando_, a conventional person is supposed to be addressing the poet: he says, "Of course your old age mus...