Apparitions - Prologue To "The Two Poets Of Croisic."

Such a starved bank of moss
Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!

Sky, what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!

World, how it walled about
Life with disgrace,
Till God's own smile came out:
That was thy face!

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His work was initially harshly criticized, but he gained recognition later in life. He is best known for works such as "The Ring and the Book" and "Men and Women" which exhibit his deep understanding of human character and psychological insight.

Robert Browning

Poetics

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

By The Fire-Side

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

Rosny

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

Pictor Ignotus

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

A Serenade At The Villa

I.
That was I, you heard last night,
When there rose no moon at all,
Nor, to pierce the strained and tight
Tent of heaven, a planet small:
Life was dead and so was light.

II.
Not a twinkle from the fly,
Not a glimmer from the worm;
When the crickets stopped their cry,
When the owls forbore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

III.
Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
In at heaven and out again,
Lightning! where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.

IV.
What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singings best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.

V.
So wore night; the East was gray,
...

Robert Browning

Inapprehensiveness

We two stood simply friend-like side by side,
Viewing a twilight country far and wide,
Till she at length broke silence. How it towers
Yonder, the ruin oer this vale of ours!
The Wests faint flare behind it so relieves
Its rugged outline, sight perhaps deceives,
Or I could almost fancy that I see
A branch wave plain, belike some wind-sown tree
Chance-rooted where a missing turret was.
What would I give for the perspective glass
At home, to make out if tis really so!
Has Ruskin noticed here at Asolo
That certain weed-growths on the ravaged wall
Seem . . . something that I could not say at all,
My thought being rather, as absorbed she sent
Look onward after look from eyes distent
With longing to reach Heavens gate left ajar,
Oh, fancies that might be...

Robert Browning

Pacchiarotto - Prologue

Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe, do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life oer brims
The body, the house, no eye can probe,
Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps:
So, the old wall throbbed, and its lifes excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps!

Wall upon wall are between us: life
And song should away from heart to heart!
I, prison bird, ...

Robert Browning

Asolando - Prologue

The Poets age is sad: for why?
In youth, the natural world could show
No common object but his eye
At once involved with alien glow,
His own souls iris-bow.

And now a flower is just a flower:
Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man,
Simply themselves, uncinct by dower
Of dyes which, when lifes day began,
Round each in glory ran.

Friend, did you need an optic glass,
Which were your choice? A lens to drape
In ruby, emerald, chrysopras,
Each object, or reveal its shape
Clear outlined, past escape,

The naked very thing? so clear
That, when you had the chance to gaze,
You found its inmost self appear
Through outer seeming, truth ablaze,
Not falsehoods fancy-haze?

How many a year, my Asolo,
Since, one step ju...

Robert Browning

Songs From Pippa Passes

Day! Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn:
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pea...

Robert Browning

Appearances

And so you found that poor room dull,
Dark, hardly to your taste, my dear?
Its features seemed unbeautiful:
But this I know, twas there, not here,
You plighted troth to me, the word
Which, ask that poor room how it heard.

And this rich room obtains your praise
Unqualified, so bright, so fair,
So all whereat perfection stays?
Ay, but remember here, not there,
The other word was spoken! Ask
This rich room how you dropped the mask!

Robert Browning