Robert Browning's Selected Poems

by Browning, Robert (Author); Karlin, Daniel (Editor)

• ISBN13: 9780140437263
• ISBN10: 0140437266
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Henry James called Robert Browning (1812 - 89) 'a tremendous and incomparable modern', and the sheer immediacy and colloquial energy of his poetry ensure its enduring appeal. Browning paints landscapes both suburban and sublime, combines lyric and demotic language and introduces the everyday events of the streets and market place into the rarefied world of Victorian poetry. This selection includes examples from the early Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), from the collections that count as Browning's masterpieces, Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864), and from the fine, though less familiar, works of his later years. Together they reveal Browning as one of the most intense and constantly surprising poets.

Table of Contents

Introduction	9	(7)
Note on the Text	16	(1)
Porphyria's Lover	17	(2)
Johannes Agricola in Meditation	19	(2)
Song from Pippa Passes (`The year's at the spring')	21	(1)
Scene from Pippa Passes (`There goes a swallow to Venice...')	22	(3)
My Last Duchess	25	(2)
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister	27	(3)
The Pied Piper of Hamelin; A Child's Story	30	(9)
`How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'	39	(3)
The Lost Leader	42	(1)
Meeting at Night	43	(1)
Parting at Morning	43	(1)
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad	44	(1)
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church	45	(4)
Love Among the Ruins	49	(3)
A Lovers' Quarrel	52	(6)
Up at a Villa - Down in the City	58	(4)
Fra Lippo Lippi	62	(11)
A Toccata of Galuppi's	73	(3)
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician	76	(9)
Mesmerism	85	(5)
A Serenade at the Villa	90	(3)
`Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'	93	(7)
The Statue and the Bust	100	(8)
How It Strikes a Contemporary	108	(4)
The Patriot	112	(2)
Memorabilia	114	(1)
Andrea del Sarto	115	(8)
In a Year	123	(3)
Cleon	126	(10)
Two in the Campagna	136	(3)
A Grammarian's Funeral	139	(5)
James Lee's Wife	144	(13)
James Lee's Wife Speaks at the Window	144	(1)
By the Fireside	145	(1)
In the Doorway	146	(1)
Along the Beach	147	(1)
On the Cliff	148	(1)
Reading a Book, Under the Cliff	149	(3)
Among the Rocks	152	(1)
Beside the Drawing-Board	152	(3)
On Deck	155	(2)
Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic	157	(6)
Dis Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de Nos Jours	163	(6)
A Death in the Desert	169	(19)
Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island	188	(9)
Confessions	197	(2)
Youth and Art	199	(3)
A Likeness	202	(2)
Mr Sludge, `The Medium'	204	(43)
Apparent Failure	247	(3)
Epilogue [to Dramatis Personae]	250	(4)
House	254	(2)
Saint Martin's Summer	256	(4)
Ned Bratts	260	(11)
Clive	271	(12)
[Wanting is - what?]	283	(1)
Donald	284	(8)
Never the Time and the Place	292	(1)
The Names	293	(1)
Now	294	(1)
Beatrice Signorini	295	(11)
Spring Song	306	(1)
Notes	307	(30)
Index of Titles	337	(2)
Index of First Lines	339