The Complete Works of Robert Browning

by Crowder, Ashby Bland; Dooley, Allan C.

• ISBN13: 9780821419816
• ISBN10: 0821419811
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-13
• Publisher: Ohio Univ Pr

Summary

With this seventeenth and final volume, The Complete Works of Robert Browningconcludes the major phase of a great scholarly project: the accurate preservation and transmission of the poet's works for future generations of readers. Volume XVII begins with Browning's last collection of poems, Asolando: Fancies and Facts,published on the day of the poet's death, 12 December 1889. Wonderful in its diversity and intensity, Asolandocontains lyrics of startling emotion, autobiographical narratives, and a few of the dramatic monologues for which Browning had become famed. Also in this final volume are ninety-nine fugitive pieces, either unpublished or uncollected during the poet's lifetime. Ranging from experimental poems of Browning's youth to Greek translations to joking couplets and witty ephemera, these works illustrate the endless variety of the poet's talent. Finally, Volume XVII includes ;Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, ; a biographical essay that Browning coauthored with John Forster in 1836. The historical research done for this work formed a basis for Strafford, a play Browning completed the following year. Comprehensive explanatory notes for the works in this volume are provided, as is a title index to all seventeen volumes of The Complete Works.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xiii
Tables	p. xxvii
Acknowledgments	p. xxxiii
Asolando: Fancies and Facts
Prologue	p. 7
Rosny	p. 9
Dubiety	p. 10
Now	p. 11
Humility	p. 12
Poetics	p. 13
Summum Bonum	p. 14
A Pearl, A Girl	p. 15
Speculative	p. 16
White Witchcraft	p. 17
Bad Dreams I	p. 18
Bad Dreams II	p. 19
Bad Dreams III	p. 23
Bad Dreams IV	p. 25
Inapprehensiveness	p. 27
Which?	p. 28
The Cardinal and the Dog	p. 29
The Pope and the Net	p. 30
The Bean-Feast	p. 31
Muckle-Mouth Meg	p. 33
Arcades Ambo	p. 35
The Lady and the Painter	p. 36
Ponte delP Angelo, Venice	p. 37
Beatrice Signorini	p. 44
Flute-Music, with an Accompaniment	p. 56
"Imperante Augusto Natus Est"	p. 63
Development	p. 68
Rephan	p. 72
Reverie	p. 77
Epilogue	p. 86
Unpublished or Uncollected Poems
Good People, If You Wish to See	p. 91
[Verses on the Rev. Thomas Ready and His School at Peckham]	p. 91
The First-Born of Egypt	p. 91
The Dance of Death	p. 94
Impromptu on Hearing a Sermon by the Rev. T. R. -Pronounced "Heavy"	p. 97
Cockney Anthologyùa Specimenù	p. 97
Sonnet	p. 98
[Epigram]	p. 99
The King	p. 99
[Lines to the Memory of James Dow]	p. 101
A Forest-Thought	p. 102
Could I, Heart-Broken, Reach	p. 103
[Lines to Helen Faucit]	p. 104
Go Forth O Song Amid the Banks of Morning	p. 105
Reader, Robert Browning Wishes	p. 105
And Sinners Were We to the Extreme Hour	p. 106
Where's Luigi Pulci... ?	p. 106
Studying My Ciphers, With the Compass	p. 106
Be It Your Unerring Rule	p. 107
That I Only Deceive	p. 107
Dear Miss Unger	p. 107
And Who is He That, Sculptured in Huge Stone	p. 108
How Much Upon a Level	p. 108
The Grand Duke	p. 109
Ben Karshook's Wisdom	p. 109
Here Lies Browning	p. 110
Oh, My Isa! Ah, My Annette	p. 110
The Plate Was Large	p. 110
An Angel from His Paradise	p. 110
Now You Are Young	p. 111
Very Original Poem, Written with Even a Greater Endeavour Than Ordinary After Intelligibility	p. 111
Onward, My Merry Men	p. 111
Terse VerseùBeing A Contribution to Scottish Anthology	p. 112
On Being Defied to Express in a Hexameterù"You Ought to Sit on the Safety Valve"	p. 112
'Tis the Voice of Prince Caro!	p. 113
Don't Play with Sharp Tools	p. 113
And Now in Turn See Swinburne Bent	p. 113
'Twas Goethe Taught Us	p. 113
Loch Luichart, Dingwall, N. B.	p. 114
Living, a Woodland Tree	p. 115
Helen's Tower	p. 116
The Dogma Triumphant	p. 116
Mettle and Metal: Written at the End of January, 1871	p. 117
In Dickens, Sure, Philosophy was Lacking	p. 117
Replies to Challenges to Rhyme	p. 117
Gerousios Oinos	p. 119
[Fragment of a Sonnet on Keely's Discovery]	p. 121
A Prig, Sir, Is Coventry Patmore!	p. 121
Wagner Gave Six Concerts	p. 122
He Gazed	p. 122
We Don't Want to Fight	p. 122
O, Love, Love	p. 123
The Blind Man to the Maiden Said	p. 124
The Delivery to the Secular Arm	p. 124
Thus I Wrote in London	p. 125
And to These Rhodians She, the Sharp-Eyed One	p. 125
When This You See	p. 126
All Sorts of Singers	p. 126
The Gift is Small	p. 126
K. de K. Bronson	p. 126
Life We Have Long Been Friends	p. 127
Goldoni	p. 127
[Rawdon Brown]	p. 128
The Air One Breathes	p. 129
The Founder of the Feast	p. 129
The Names	p. 130
To Bret Harte, Esq.	p. 130
Be the Next Three Months a Game	p. 131
There Was a Sky-Painter at Folkestone	p. 131
Why I Am a Liberal	p. 131
There Was a Young Man with Lumbago	p. 132
I Dined at Natorp's Yester Eve	p. 132
Written to Be Inscribed on the Gravestone of Levi Thaxter	p. 132
Her Advent Was Not Hailed with Shouts	p. 133
Epps	p. 133
Duty	p. 136
Hail to the Man Who Upward Strives	p. 136
Oct. 3. Bancroft's Birthday	p. 137
Not a Soul More	p. 137
Margaret E. Keep / "Magari"	p. 137
[Jubilee Memorial Lines]	p. 138
Yellow and Pale as Ripened Corn	p. 138
Horns to Bulls	p. 138
Oh Love, I Bring No Posies	p. 139
He Saidùand Stopped the Lyre	p. 139
[The Isle's Enchantress]	p. 139
To Edward FitzGerald	p. 140
What Seems a Soul	p. 141
Is Loredano Proved the Worst of Vipers	p. 141
Sun's Light is Come	p. 141
Here I'm Gazing	p. 141
Iliad. Book XIII. 202-231	p. 142
Dictated by the Spirit of Shelley	p. 143
He a Recreant	p. 144
He for His Volume Meant	p. 144
ImposthumeùCostume-ùI Had Lost You M'M	p. 144
O The Terror of the Death Song	p. 144
Sipping Grog One Day at Sea	p. 145
Without Their Ensigns, Axe & Fasces	p. 145
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford	p. 147
Editorial Notes
Asolando: Fancies and Facts	p. 325
Unpublished or Uncollected Poems	p. 382
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford	p. 467
Index of Titles. Volumes I-XVII	p. 487
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.