CRITICAL ESSAYS ON POEMS WRITTEN BY ROBERT

BROWNING
Please note that some overlapping of references occurs as each
essay may be read as a separate entity
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How a young Poet found his Feet

Did Isaac Nathan Provide a Channel of Influence Between Byron and Robert
Browning?
It is perhaps one of those quirks of literary history that the same man who
prevailed on Lord Byron to write the Hebrew Melodies (1815) was later to
become the music tutor of a great Victorian poet, Robert Browning. Isaac
Nathan, the son of the then cantor of the Canterbury synagogue suggested to
Lord Byron that he write a number of lyrics to the accompaniment of certain
Jewish melodies purportedly dating from the days of the Temple in Jerusalem.
It is difficult to imagine that Nathan, never one given to false modesty, did
not recall in glowing terms his former association with Byron to impress his
pupil, then aged thirteen or fourteen. (1) If, as one has good reason to
suppose, young Browning practised his singing on some of the poems in the
Hebrew Melodies, Byrons poetry might well have provided him with a
powerful impulse to write his own verses. If that was the case, why did
Browning pay almost no tribute to Byron as a source of inspiration although
he as a young man spoke and wrote with effusive praise about the genius of
Shelley?
At least in one passage of literary criticism we may find a hint pointing to
Byrons possible influence on Brownings poetry. In the second section
entitled Byronic Lyrics for Davids Harp of his monograph Byrons Hebrew
Melodies, Thomas L. Ashton refers to Herods Lament to Mariamne as the
precursor of [Robert Brownings] Porphyrias Lover,.(2) Thus, if only by way
of a passing reference, a connection is discerned between Byron and Robert
Browning, who published what later became known as Porphyrias Lover in
1836. Together with another poem, later entitled Johannes Agricola in
Meditation, Porphyrias Lover shared the title of Madhouse Cells I and II.
The absence of any admission by Browning of a debt to Byrons influence
might at first suggest that there was none, but we have at least one good

reason for not jumping to this conclusion. Experiencing what Harold Bloom
describes as an anxiety of influence, (3) Browning obliterated almost all
traces of his Juvenilia work Incondita, and the only two poems to survive the
poets destructive hand The First- born of Egypt and The Dance of Death
betray a strongly Byronic tone, as I hope to demonstrate in the ensuing
paragraph.
The two surviving poems, which reveal Brownings early almost morbid
obsession with death and the death of the young in particular, contain echoes
of lines and word patterns found in Byrons The Destruction of
Semnacherib. This, like The First-born of Egypt is based on themes and
narratives in the Bible in which the Angel of Death appears as a central motif.
In both these poems the colors of gold and purple repeatedly suggest the
vainglorious aspirations of oriental despots before being thwarted by the
intervention of the Lord of Hosts. In themselves, this evidence and the
probability that Browning was strongly influenced by Byrons verse in his first
Period of artistic experimentation could well be dismissed as matters of mere
academic interest unless pertinent arguments can be adduced to support
the proposition that Byrons early encounter with Byrons verse through the
mediation of Isaac Nathan lent form and direction to indwelling propensities
that should in time pervade Brownings entire poetic work. I argue that this
was indeed the case for the reasons stated in the following paragraphs.
I begin by drawing attention to three entwined motifs in Hebrew Melodies,
which I term for the sake of convenience: Hebraism, the psychology of
anguish and music. (4) In My Soul Is Dark, a dramatic monologue in which
Saul implores the minstrel David to play his harp and so free him from a
mood of deep depression, all these strands come together, for here music
reveals its therapeutic power in assuaging the evil spirit that befell the first
king of Israel. In Brownings second version of Saul, in Men and Women, the
music produced by Davids harp leads to an act of spiritual apprehension that
transcends the power of song and music altogether. Music leads the aspiring
human spirit beyond, or rather higher, than a reality described by words, an
idea implied by the term a psalm of ascent. Very much the same notion
comes to the fore in line 52 in Abt Vogler that out three sounds he frame,
not a fourth sound, but a star. Even in so trivial a poem as The Pied Piper
of Hamelin the transcending powers of music are also implied by the fact
that this poems most lyrical passage demonstrates the effect the Pipers
music had on the lame child who witnessed its sound yet remained unable to
follow the Piper to a `promised land.
Some poems in Hebrew Melodies present the point of view of those
traumatised by deep mental anguish. Herod and Jephtha are haunted by their
remorse at having caused the death of either a beloved wife or a beloved
daughter. The psychological plight of these victims of mental affliction finds a

parallel in Brownings poetry in Porphyrias Lover and My Last Duchess.

The theme of the Jewish exile from their spiritual homeland is a strong
element in as it is in a number of Brownings poems that include Holy-Cross
Day,Rabbi Ben Ezra and even Pisgah Sights I / II depicting the deep
sorrow of Moses at the end of his life, when aware that he may only behold
the Promised Land in his lifes final vision without enjoying the privilege of
entering that land in person.
The presentation of a traumatised or erratic point of view concerns poetic
form as well as subject matter. Byron pioneered the dramatic monologue, a
genre combining the confessional element of intensely lyrical poetry with the
objectivity of a dramatic characterization. Browning developed, and arguably
perfected, this style of monologue in such poems as My Last Duchess,
Rabbi Ben Ezra and Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.
That music is the great reconciler aesthetically as well as spiritually and
psychologically is suggested by the very title of the Hebrew Melodies. The
inclusion of a poem such as She Walks in Beauty can hardly be justified in
terms of its obvious relevance to biblical or Hebrew themes. Byron defended
its inclusion by asserting that it was in keeping with the overriding spirit of
the Melodies i.e. through an association of feelings as experienced by those
subject to the effects of great music. Similarly, in Brownings poetry the
General title of Bells and Pomegranates, which from 1841 until 1846 served
as the heading of a seemingly odd array of poems lacking a recognizable
common theme, suggests much the same assimilative power of association
and its affinity to music. (4)
It may be more than a mere coincidence that Byron, Nathan and Browning
themselves yielded to the wandering impulse so clearly reflected in their
poetry and music. All left England never to return. Byron voiced his farewell
to his homeland in the celebrated words he ascribed to Childe Harold as he
departed from Albions shores. Browning vacillated between his periods of
residence in England and Italy, where he spent his happy married years after
his wifes romantic elopement and release from virtual captivity under the
authority of her tyrannical Victorian father. After his wifes death Browning
returned to England, but, as fate would have it, he died in Venice surrounded
by the works of art and architecture that had so greatly fascinated him.
Nathan left England for the Antipodes and made a significant contribution to
the establishment a distinct national tradition of music in Australia. As artists,
all three men, in their various ways, identified themselves with peoples and
nations that were gaining a new awareness of their cultural heritage and
were sooner or later to assert their political sovereignty, whether we speak of
Greece with regard to Byron, Italy with regard to Browning and Australia, and
perhaps even Israel, in the case of Nathan. Until well into the 1860s the
poems in Byrons Hebrew Melodies were sung at concerts and performances

to the accompaniment of Nathans music and were particularly popular in

Jewish circles, strengthening nascent hopes for a return to the land of the
Bible.

References
1) Herbert Everith Greene, "Browning's Knowledge of Music," PLMA, 62
(1947), 1098.
2) Thomas L. Ashton, Byrons Hebrew Melodies, Austin, 1972
3) Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence,New York, 1975.
4) Judith Berlin-Lieberman, Robert Browning and Hebraism, (Diss. Zurich;
Jerusalem: Ariel Press, 1934).
5) Bells and Pomegranates alludes to the garment worn by the chief priest
when entering the Holy of Holies. To the hem of this garment were attached
golden bells and ornaments representing pomegranates, which the Rabbis
took to imply that pleasure and singing were essential elements in divine
ministry.and poetic inspiration. (See:Brownings letter to Elizabeth Barratt of
October 18, 1845)
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B
Browning's "By the Fire-Side" and "How they Brought the Good
News from Ghent to Aix" in the Light of Word Theory, A critical
study of Browning's poetry

1. Browning's Reticence and its Relation to the Interpretation of his

Poetry

A most remarkable characteristic of Browning's poetry lies in the fact that it

makes such little reference either to the author himself or to contemporary
England. Without embracing the position of George Santayana when arguing
that Browning sought self-concealment in all sorts of different guises in
remote historical settings, (1) one may still ask whether the poet's apparent
avoidance of themes concerned with Victorian England might not have
resulted from some psychologically conditioned estrangement from his native
land and family background. It does seem possible that Browning's use of

language served as some form of verbal camouflage behind which the

oversensitive poet was able to conceal himself and his most intimate
concerns. Certainly, G.K. Chesterton observed in Browning's poetry a
dissociation of language and content. (2)
Among modern critics, Barbara Melchiori sees the problem of artistic
reticence as the central aspect to be tackled in critical attempts to
adequately discuss Browning's poetry. She establishes this point in first
paragraph of her book Browning's Poetry of Reticence. (3)
Some of the tension, which lends strength to his work, arises from the
conflict between his wish to guard jealously his own thoughts and
feelings, and the pressing necessity he was under to reveal them.
According to her line of argument, as the reader of Browning's poetry is
debarred from making direct inferences about Browning's personal life from
his poetry, he or she should adopt an indirect approach to better understand
Browning's poetry by paying attention to clues provided by certain key words
found within it. The principle underlying Melchiori's mode of interpretation is
based on the assumption that the poet's choice of individual words is not
subject to the same degree of mental scrutiny as that applied to sentences
and groups of words combining to express ideas and opinions. Melchiori
suggests that the key word in Browning's poetry is "gold," occurring, as it
does, approximately 390 times throughout Browning's poetic works. C.
Williard Smith, on the other hand, attaches much the same order of
importance to the word "star" in his book Browning's Star Imagery.(4) Other
key words or verbal clues have apparently attracted less attention,
particularly words like "promise", tower" or "cross", which assumes a position
of importance in this study as it is also a prominent key word in the poetry of
Dylan Thomas.

2. A Three-level Approach to the Task of interpreting Browning's

Poetry
In the introduction of this study I made reference to the "sustained
Metaphor" which both lends structural unity to a particular work and helps to
reveal the unity underlying all the works of a poet or author. I suggested
earlier that the notion of a journey to the Promised Land informs a central
sustained metaphor in Browning's poetry. However, an awareness of the
macrostructure of a work in no way precludes sensitivity to its minut, the
individual words that together constitute a poem or prose passage. Indeed,
we shall soon consider how sustained metaphors and the poet's use of
individual words are inseparably connected and, when duly studied, mutually
enhancing in the light they cast on each other. In line with this argument I

wish to subject two of Browning's poems to criteria based on the contention

that poems may be read at three levels, which I set out as follows:

1. The Narrative or Literal Level

2. The Allegorical Level (based on a Sustained Metaphor, e.g. a Journey
3. The Level Implied by Key words

The following case studies may contribute to clarifying the basic approach I
apply to the study of poetic texts and provide evidence showing how the
problem of time impinges on Browning's poetry.

I: "By the Fire-Side" (published in Men and Women)

At what I have termed Level 1, the speaker, Browning himself, recalls making
a mountain excursion with his wife in Italy. The poem reaches its highest
degree of intensity in the rendering of a profound mystical insight which the
couple experience when exploring a ruined chapel. (5)
At "Level 2", the mountain climb assumes a symbolic dimension with the
implication of an ascent from the earthly to the spiritual realm (cf. the
mountain as a symbol of divine habitation or presence in the Bible or Greek
mythology, and, indeed, in other works by Browning such as Pauline or even
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" with the line "He never can cross that mighty
top."
At "Level 3", at which individual words undergo particularly close scrutiny,
we find evidence corroborating the contention that the surface description of
a mountain climb is permeated with mystical and religious symbolism. In
stanzas XXXIV, XXXV, and XXXVI there is a conspicuous repetition of the word
"cross":

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, (line 166)

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The cross is down and the altar bare, (line 174)
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We stoop and look in through the grate

See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date;
Then cross the bridge that we crossed before, (line 179)
Within the space of only thirteen lines the word "cross" occurs three times,
twice as a verb meaning "to traverse" and once as a noun signifying a
crucifix. In logical terms this repetition appears to be accidental, yet the
threefold occurrence of "cross" strikes the reader's attention, entailing
recognition that in some sense "the same word" is receiving emphasis. The
Russian Formalist Jurij Tynjanov drew attention to the phenomenon which in
my view concerns us here in an article entitled "The Word in Verse."(6) The
article points out that while the conspicuous repetition of the same word in
prose usually produces a discordant note, in poetry its effect is often to
enhance and deepen the power of language. Tynjanov and other Formalists
incurred the censure of Leon Trotsky for having succumbed to "the
superstition of the word" and allied themselves to the pronouncements of
Saint John. (7) According to one of Tynjanov's postulations the word in its
immediate context partakes in the word of like appearance that transcends
all contexts - a contention which, incidentally, echoes the second principle of
scriptural exegesis in rabbinical tradition. But what relevance has this theory
of language to the occurrences of the word "cross" in the lines cited above?
Let us consider the two lines, which follow the last citation.
Take the path again - but wait!
Oh moment, one and infinite!
In the seventh chapter of his book Browning - Background and Conflict, F.R.
G. Duckworth quotes the line "Oh moment one and infinite!" among passages
which, in his view, are expressive of Browning's quest to reconcile two
apparently contradictory concepts of time. - in short - the "Greek" and the
"Jewish" understanding of time. (8) The former conceives of eternity as an
ideal or absolute state beyond time altogether, while the latter stresses the
objective reality of time as temporal succession, even when it reveals aspects
of the eternal. Duckworth argues that both these concepts of time coexist in
the universe represented by Browning's poetry. The nearest Browning comes
to reconciling these two attitudes to time, the critic asserts, is when his
poems intimate that eternity breaks through the succession of temporal
events in moments when individuals experience a flash of intense insight and
recognition releasing them from normal time-bound consciousness. W. Whitla
argues that Browning brings theology to bear on the question of time's
relationship to eternity. The Christian belief in the Incarnation, Whitla argues

in The Central Truth, suited Browning's philosophical and intellectual frame of

mind as it pointed to a possible reconciliation of what Browning perceived as
two fundamentally different ways of understanding time. (9)
Perhaps the lines cited from "By the Fire-Side" will help to illustrate Whitla's
assertion. The lines quoted above contain a number of striking juxtapositions.
Not only does the word "cross" recur with noticeably frequency, but a
reference to the date of the builder's death, suggesting temporal fixity in the
course of history and the irreversibility of death, almost immediately
precedes the ecstatic experience of the "moment one and infinite". This
together with the force of the twice-repeated word "cross" surely recalls "the
Cross" as the central reference point in theology and the meeting of historical
time and eternity. I would even relate Browning's apparently jocular
treatment of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to his interest in the main symbolic
elements in the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, for nearly all
the literary treatments of the story, however much they vary otherwise,
retain the kernel of the original story in as far as they assign a historical date
to a supernatural or mysterious event. (10)
The appearance of "cross" as a verbal clue is not only found in Robert
Browning's poetry, of course. Another notable case of a significant repetition
of the word is found in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the
lines ''At length did cross an Albatross'' in line 63 and ''With my cross-bow/ I
shot the Albatross'' in lines 81 and 82). Here the verbal clue could point to
what G.H. Hartman sees as the sustained metaphor of the Wandering Jew
informing and underlying this poem. (11)

II. "How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix"
This poem, so well known to many English schoolchildren, furnishes an
example of a poem which rarely receives close critical attention, doubtless
because its riveting narrative excellence is so eminently satisfying in itself.
However, the following study of the poem will take account of verbal clues
that may deepen our perception of the poem's symbolic and allegorical
attributes that are not apparent if the poem is considered only at the
narrative or literal level.
At Level 1, three messengers, Joris, Dirck and the speaker, gallop on their
horses through the night and the following morning to "bring the news which
alone could save Aix from her fate" (line 46). The horses of Dirck and Joris die
from exhaustion on the journey but Roland, the speaker's horse, survives, all
rigours notwithstanding, and reaches Aix to be rewarded by the acclamation
of its jubilant inhabitants and by the riders' "last measure of wine" (line 58)- a
strange beverage for a horse, when one comes to think of it. Could "wine"

provide a verbal clue in view of its obvious sacramental associations?

There is more than one reason for questioning whether the poem could be
treated only as a realistically treated story, however gripping and well told.
Browning himself commented that the story had no historical foundation, and
William Clyde Devane notes that the route chosen by the riders was far from
direct (12). Was the path of the riders dictated by the poet's need to
synchronize earth-bound incidents accompanying the ride with the position
and visibility of the sun, moon and stars in accordance with a symbolic
framework?
At Level 2, the journey described in the poem reveals a sustained metaphor
based on the motif of a journey through life and experience towards everhigher states of progress, which characterizes Browning's poetry generally.
Brown skilfully avoids foisting an overt allegorical frame on the poem but
intimates one by the use of expressions which ambivalently fulfil the reader'
expectations of what is plausible in terms of the story itself and still point to
other planes of significance. This ambivalence we discover in Joris's words
"Yet there is time!" (line 18). On the one hand, they can be taken to mean
what one could paraphrase as "There's still time, it isn't too late", which are
fully consistent with the dramatic situation of the riders. On the other, the
words point to one of the major questions the poem raises in wider
metaphysical terms, the nature of time itself. Further to this inquiry, let us
now consider the main events reported in the poem.
As in Browning's poetic drama Pippa Passes, the reported events in "How
they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix" are framed by the diurnal
cycle starting from around midnight, as reported in the first stanza, and
ending not long after Joris and the narrator sight Aix in the oppressive heat of
the midday sun. We note a marked contrast between "a great yellow star" at
the break of dawn (see stanza III), probably evoking the star of Bethlehem in
many readers' minds, and the sun, which here carries negative associations
with soulless aridity and the remorseless progress of time. These lines arouse
such an impression:
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff
(Stanza VII)
The death of two horses and the survival of Roland imply a contrast of life
and death in terms that transcend the specifics of the story itself, even
carrying a possible allusion to the third day of the Resurrection reinforced by
an allusion to wine and the Eucharist, especially so in the light of a reference
to "red blood".

At level 3 we find further corroboration of the religious symbolic framework

we have already considered. The words "Good News" in the poem's title refer
in the first instance to the contents of the message which the three riders
bring to the city of Aix. It is surprising in some ways that the contents of this
message itself are never divulged to the reader, suggesting that only the the
idea of "the good news" is paramount, and of course, in a religious context,
the "good news" imports the Gospel, especially to someone like Browning,
with a staunch Nonconformist family background. Another word of particular
significance in evangelical circles appears in the wording that Aix is "saved."
This is not to say that the poem is a cryptic religious tract, though there are
strong reasons to conclude that it is the product of a mind steeped in a
Christian, particularly a Nonconformist, attitude to life, irrespective of the fact
that Browning in his youth underwent a Period of religious doubt and even
antireligious sentiment when the young poet was subject to the powerful
influence of Shelley's "Queen Mab."

End Notes
1. George Santayana, "The Poetry of Barbarism", in Robert Browning / a
Collection of Critical Essays, ed. P. Drew (London, 1966), p. .21.
2. G.K. Chesterton, Robert Browning (London, 1916), p. 142.
3. Barbara Melchiori, Browning's Poetry of Reticence (London, 1968). Ibidem,
p.1.
4. C. Williard Smith, Browning's Star Imagery (New Jersey, 1941).
5. The ruined chapel was close to a mountain pass leading to Prato Fiorito.
6. Jurij Tynjanov, "The Meaning of the Word in Verse": in Readings in Russian
Poetics Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. by Ladislav Mateijka and
Krystina Pomorska (Michigan Slavic Publications, Ann Arbor, 1978), pp. 136145.
7. Leon Trotsky, "The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism" in Literature
and Revolution (Russian version published in 1924), tr. Rose Strumsky (Ann
Arbor: 1960).
8. F.R. G. Duckworth, Browning: Background and Conflict (Connecticut,
1966).
9. W. Whitla, The Central Truth: The Incarnation in Robert Browning's Poetry
(Toronto,1963).
10. Julian Scutts, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Der Rattenfnger von Hameln)

as a Motif in European Poetry", in Wascana Review, University of Regina,

(Winter, 1985). Revised version on the website of Jonas Kuhn, University of
Stuttgart:http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/-jonas/Scutts-article.html
11. Geoffrey H. Hartman, "Romanticism and 'Anti-Self-Consciousness'" in
Romanticism and Consciousness / Essays in Criticism, ed. Harold Bloom (New
York, 1970).
12. William Clyde DeVane, A Browning Handbook (New York, 1955), p. 154.

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"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" - An untypical Reading

A revised version from: "The motif of the Pied Piper in European Literature" in
Wascana Review, volume 20, No. 1, the University of Regina, Canada, pp. 5169

Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" has not received the attention and
respect it deserves. After Walter Bagehot's discussion of the poem in his
essay "Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning: or Pure, Ornate and Grotesque
Art in English Poetry," what is probably Browning's most popular work has
attracted little attention in critical circles.1 However, two articles in scholarly
journals published within the last twenty years have focused on the
underlying seriousness of the poem. In "Poet and Burgher: A Comic Variation
of a Serious Theme," published in Victorian Poetry (7,1969), Milton Millhauser
argues that The Pied Piper of Hamelin marks a turning- point in Browning's
early poetic career, since the theme of conflict between the poet, whom
M.Millhauser equates with the Piper, and the burghe (Hamelin represents
Victorian England) had merely been hinted at in Browning's earlier works.2
The author of the article also stresses the importance of the parallel
treatment of the visions experienced and described by the surviving rat and
the lame boy who is left behind. Since these visions are Browning's
inventions, they are particularly significant elements in the poem's economy.
Parallelism is also discernible in the uncanny resemblance between the
rapacious rats and the greedy elders of Hamelin identified as "the rich,"
There is an allusion to the saying of Jesus that it is easier for a camel to pass

through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven.
M.Millhauser discerns a less explicit Biblical reference in the words "prime
pottage," which connote Esau's renunciation of his birthright for the sake of a
tasty meal, and by extension, the preference of a material good over a
spiritual benefit. Had M. Millhauser pursued this line of enquiry further, yet
greater discoveries might have awaited him, but he is restrained from doing
so by his belief that the poem is based on a story of "trivial" and "innocent"
origins!
In ''Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin': Two Levels of Meaning", Wolfgang
Franke shares M.Millhauser's view that "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" poses a
profound critique of Victorian society and its antipathy to artistic
values.3Franke, however, sets the poem in its historical and social context
and in so doing refers to such specific issues as the massive emigration from
Britain and the passing of the Copyright Act in 1842. Though their approaches
differ, Millhauser and Franke reach similar conclusions about the poem's
underlying seriousness and concern with social and cultural issues. Franke's
historical-contextual approach and Millhauser's method of examining the
poem with reference to its structure and other intrinsic features provide a
sound basis for further research and study. Methods, however, are subject to
adaptation and revision. When defining the context of the poem, we have not
only the general historical background of the early Victorian era to consider
but also the poem's relationship to Browning's other works, to his
philosophical and religious attitudes and, not least, to the tradition
constituted by all works that take the motif of the Pied Piper as their theme.
Browning composed "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" on the approach of his
thirtieth birthday, an important psychological threshold in his experience. In
earlier years Browning had contended with three periods of crisis, each of
which has a bearing on "The Pied Piper of Hamelin."
During early adolescence, when the first of these crises occurred, Browning
was acutely aware of the transient nature of human existence and at the
same time he was hypersensitive to criticism, especially of his poetry. Thus it
was that Browning destroyed all traces of his first volume of poetry,
Incondita, with the exception of two poems which were accidentally
preserved, "The First-Born of Egypt" and "The Dance of Death." These poems
attest to the young Browning's anguished sense of mortality and obsessive
concern with the vulnerability of youth to the ravages of death and
pestilence. As noted above, the story of the Pied Piper is closely linked with
the Dance of Death in medieval tradition and with the loss of children. The
humorous, ludic quality of Browning's "Pied Piper" belies its concern with
deadly serious matters; humour often serves as a defence mechanism (cf.
Goethe's "Der Rattenfnger"). Browning's second crisis, this time of an
intellectual nature, resulted from the clash of rival ideologies. After reading

Queen Mab, Browning wholeheartedly embraced Shelleyan idealism and for a

time rejected Christianity or, more precisely, the Evangelical version of the
religion which his devout mother had instilled in him. When Browning did
return to the Christian faith, it was not unquestioningly as in his earlier days
but with a mind that sought to reconcile the claims of faith and reason. Thus
some of his poems concern the problems raised by Higher Criticism as to the
literal truth of the Bible. In "An Epistle . . . of Karshish," for example, an Arab
physician living in New Testament times sceptically sifts evidence he has
received that the leader of a religious movement has risen from the dead
after being crucified. These words attributed to the speaker in Browning's
early poem Pauline suggest that Browning himself sought to circumvent the
challenge of rationalism by identifying himself on a poetic level with the risen
Jesus:

Yet thro' my wandering have I seen all shapes

Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee,
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee,
In the damp night by weeping Olivet,
Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less-Or dying with thee on the lonely cross-Or witnessing thy bursting from the tomb! (848-854)

Another important aspect of Browning's religious outlook is his sympathetic

attitude to post-Biblical Judaism. It would not be an exaggeration to say that
there is an element of Proto-Zionism in "Holy Cross Day" and other poems
treating the theme of the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and analogous
spiritual journeys. On a more general plane, the motif of the journey in
Browning's work metaphorically expresses his typically Victorian belief in
Man's moral progress towards an ideal state. The third crisis of Browning's
early poetic career concerns his quest for a style suited to his own needs yet
accessible to a wide range of readers. It was Sordello, one of his longer and
more difficult works, that earned Browning his reputation as a confusing and
obscure poetic writer. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," on the other hand,
signalled a welcome breakthrough in the area of popular verse. Yet is is
difficult for a deeply serious poet to detach himself from his profundity of
vision even if he makes a conscious decision to do so. What are the
indications that Browning's famous poem has more to say than critics

generally assume? Relevant to this question is the problem of Browning's socalled "reticence."
In her monograph entitled Browning's Poetry of Reticence, Barbara Melchiori
argues that Browning's "reticence," his compulsive desire to conceal or
camouflage meaning, resulted from a tension between "his wish to jealously
guard his own thoughts and feelings, and the pressing necessity he was
under to reveal them." 4 It is also possible that Browning derived a certain
pleasure from making his readers work hard to probe beneath the surface
meanings of his poetry. Barbara Melchiori advises readers of Browning to pay
special attention to individual words, for these may provide clues or pointers
to deeper levels of meaning. As we have noted, Millhauser applied such a
method when considering the implications of the word "pottage" in "The Pied
Piper of Hamelin." This technique applies to verbal clues that we shall shortly
consider. With earlier discussions of the poem and Browning's situation in
1842 in mind, we shall go on to examine particular motifs and individual
words in the poem itself.
In the final lines of The Pied Piper of Hamelin a reference is made to ''Willy,"
whom the speaker enjoins to keep his promises, especially to pipers.
Browning gave the script of his poem to the convalescent son of William
Macready Senior, the theatre manager who had staged a number of
Browning's plays. It is probable that the moral of the story was addressed to
Willy's father, as the formerly cordial relations between Browning and the
stage manager had soured. The deterioration in their relations was itself
symptomatic of a more general estrangement Browning felt between himself
and his social environment in London and beyond. To make matters worse,
one of Browning's closest friends, Alfred Dommett, emigrated to New Zealand
in April 1842 and Browning himself considered leaving the country. Browning,
on the point of reaching his thirtieth birthday without having secured for
himself financial independence or unequivocal literary fame, doubtless
infused his poem with feelings of resentment. We should beware however of
unreservedly equating the Piper with Browning's self-image as "the poet.''
The Piper is depicted in the poem as one capable of transcending distance
and time and compelling all creatures to obey his will. There is nothing in the
poem to suggest that the Piper is a poet or even a singing minstrel. He is a
musician (in "Abt Vogler" the view is expressed that among artists, the
musician is closest to God). Whereas in Blake's Introduction the Piper is a
musician, a singer and a poet, Browning's Piper shows little inclination to
bridge the arts. However, through his music he makes poets of others. The
only truly lyrical section of the poem is the utterance of the lame boy as he
describes his feelings on hearing the Piper's music. In the following lines he
echoes the millennial vision of Isaiah's prophecy that Nature shall attain a
state of peace and harmony:

And everything was strange and new;

The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
Their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings. (244-248)

The operative word in this passage is ''new." The vision the Piper's music
induces in the lame child's mind is of a new creation. It is prophetic, that is,
oriented to the future, with no trace of nostalgic regret at the passing of a
lost paradise. For Browning, the terms "poet" and "prophet'' were virtually
synonymous, a point stressed in Judith Berlin-Lieberman's dissertation
Browning and Hebraism (Jerusalem, 1934).5 The reason that the lame child
could not follow the Piper beyond Koppelberg Hill lay in his physical disability
(in Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, two other children stayed behind, one of whom
was blind). To Browning anything which could be classed as an imperfection
implied a positive possibility. According to his "Theory of the Imperfect," that
which falls short of perfection admits the possibility of further development
towards perfection." 6 For this reason Browning was a Pre-Raphaelite in the
realm of art, preferring those "naive" Italian painters who depicted Man as he
is rather than as he should be according to a perfect aesthetic model.
Browning's "Theory of the Imperfect" also found expression in his manner of
treating his heroes, Sordello, Paracelsus and Saint John the Divine, as those
who experience their greatest visionary insights when their sense of human
frailty is greatest, at the point of death. Underlying the motif of the vision
before death is the paradigm of Moses surveying the Promised Land which he
may not physically enter. This vision of Moses is, in fact, the sub ject of
Browning's poems "Pisgah Sights 1 & 11." It is not death but his physical
handicap which prevents the lame child from entering a domain comparable
to the Promised Land. It is surely significant that the words "promised" and
"land" are found in close proximity in the lines:

I can't forget that l'm bereft

Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me,
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land. (237-240)

As Browning's "Theory of the Imperfect" directly impinges on his concept of

progress, it is important to define Browning's understanding of progress. It
meant for him a universal process involving all living creatures and spanning
all ages. Mankind in its present state has advanced through the stage of
animal existence; it must continue to advance in the future towards its
ultimate spiritual goal ordained by God. As Millhauser noted, the parallelism
between the elders of Hamelin, who represent mankind in its present state,
and the rats, who have human characteristics, significantly affects the
poem's structure. Moreover, the parallelism elucidates Browning's view of the
relation of mankind to the animal kindom in the great chain of progress. In "A
Death in the Desert," we read that Man is:

Lower than God who knows all and can all,

Higher than beasts which know and can so far
As each beast's limit, perfect to an end,
Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more. (578-581 )

If the Piper's music brought out the Iyricist in the lame child, it brought out
the satirist in the surviving rat. The rat poetically describes the best of all
possible worlds to one who is totally consumerist in attitude. The quest for
the gratification afforded by material things ends in death, while the quest for
a spiritual good is not subject to death's power. Another contrast in
Browning's treatment of the rats and the children is evident. The children are
led to the brink of the Weser, the "deep and wide" river symbolic of death,
before he changes direction. For a terrible moment the children's parents fear
that their children will suffer the fate of the rats. The Weser is thus the divide
between life and death, like the waters of the Red Sea, or like water in the
symbology of baptism where the Old Adam perishes and the New Adam rises
to enter a life of the spirit. 7 Since the origins of the Pied Piper legend lie in
medieval religious mysticism, it is not surprising that Browning found it a
suitable vehicle for his own religious vision.
As the poem's subtitle states," The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is "a Child's Story."
This subtitle implies more than the poem's suitability as reading material for
children. Since the poem contains a reference to the passage in the New
Testament which describes the rich man's difficult path to Heaven, the
subtitle may recall other words in the New Testament which state that those
seeking the Kingdom of God must "become as little children.'' If, as A.

Dickson's research indicates, Browning had read any of the early Latin or
German versions of the tale, he would have noted the traditional association
of Koppelberg with Calvary.8 If he had, it is strange that Browning's poem
should include a reference to the moral teachings of Jesus but none at all to
the Crucifixion. It seems to me that Browning, in a manner quite typical of
him, did plant a number of veiled allusions to Calvary in his poem. The
following quotations from the text illustrate his method:

a) "He never can cross that mighty top". (223)

It is plausible that the word "cross" not only denotes the action of traversing
but also connotes the Cross as a religious symbol. A study of Browning's
contextualization of "cross" in "By the Fire-side" provides evidence that, in
one instance at least, Browning plays on the double meaning of the word by
juxtaposing an appearance of the word in the substantive form (denoting a
cross on a church altar) with three appearances of the word as a declined
verb. 9 The Piper's words "put me in a passion" (183) may be considered in a
similar light.

b) "And what's dead can't come to life I think''. (166)

In their immediate context, these words spoken by the Mayor of Hamelin

reflect his confidence that, with all the rats drowned, no further trouble from
that quarter is to be feared. Outside this context, the words state that there is
no survival after death, and thus they could reflect the disbelief of the
Sadducees in the resurrection of the dead. There is an unmistakable
reference elsewhere in the poem to this idea:

"Quoth one: It's as my great-grandsire,

Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!" (67-69)

c) The poetic speaker passes on the information that, according to hearsay,

the children may have "risen" from a subterranean prison and found their

way to Transylvania (290-299).

The choice of the verb "rise" suggests a parallelism between the Piper, the
sun and the Risen Christ. The mystical significance of the number three (cf.
''on the third day") is established in the poem by the three introductory notes
produced on both occasions when the Piper played his instrument.
The double connotation of the word "risen" suggests an association,
reinforced elsewhere in the poem, of the Piper with the sun. The Piper claims
that he can draw all creatures "living beneath the sun'' after him. He leads
the children from south to west. The colours of his coat are red and yellow.
Under the influence of his music, the surviving rat experiences a vision of a
giant pumpkin which has the appearance of "a great sun" (141-144). It may
be assumed, therefore, that Browning, mindful of the traditional association
of the Piper with the summer, conflated solar imagery with his religious
motifs. A knotting together of these motifs, indicated by colour or the use of a
verbal clue, is to be found in the Fifth Book of Paracelsus.

"Dear Mihal! See how bright St. Saviour's spire

Flames in the sunset; all bright figures quaint
Gay in the glancing light: you might conceive them
A troop of yellow-vested Jews
Bound for their own land where redemption dawns." (342-346)

End Notes
1. "Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning: or Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art
in English Poetry," in: The Works and Life of Walter Bageshot, Volume IV, ed.
Mrs. Russel Barrington (London, 1915).
2. Milton Millhauser, "Poet and Burgher: A Comic Variation on a Serious
Theme,' Victorian Poetry, 7 (1969), I63-168.
3. For a discussion of the sociological context in which Browning wrote "The
Pied Piper," see Wolfgang Franke, "Browning's 'Pied Piper of Hamelin': Two
Levels of Meaning," Ariel, 2 (1971), 90- 97. 14 Barbara Melchiori, Browning's
Poetry of Reticence (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1968), p.1.
4. Barbara Melchiori, Browning's Poetry of Reticence, London; Oliver & Boyd,
1968.

5. Judith Berlin-Lieberman, Robert Browning and Hehraism, (Diss. Zurich;

Jerusalem: Ariel Press, 1934).
6. Browning's optimism on the possibility of Man's moral progress through
history finds clear expression in his poem "A Death in the Desert" and in
Paracelsus, Part V, 769-777.
7. Browning may well have been struck by the parallel to be drawn between
the exodus of the children of Hamelin and that of the Children of Israel from
Egypt. In the earliest version of the poem in Bells and Pomegranates (1842),
there is a reference to "Children" in line 277; the capitalization was
subsequently suppressed. See: The Complete Works of Robert Browning with
Variant Readings and Annotations, ed. Roma A. King (Athens,Ohio: Ohio
University Press, 1971),111, p.258.1t is a matter of incidental interest that
the locusts which plagued Egypt were swept into the Red Sea by the west
wind according to Exodus 10:19.
8. In "Browning's Source for the Pied Piper of Hamelin," A. Dickson suggests
that the following sources vere probably consulted by Browning: Dr.Johann
Wier's version in De Preastigiis Daemonum (imprint Basileae, 1583); G.
Schott's version in Physica Curiosa (1622). These versions are in Latin and
refer to "Calvary" as "Calvariae montem" or "ad Calvariae locum" with the
alternative German names of "Kpffelberg" or "Koppen."
9. In strophes XXXIV, XXXV and XXXVI of "By the Fire-Side" in Men and
Women, there are the following occurrences of "cross": "Silent the crumbling
bridge we cross". (166) "The cross is down, the altar bare," (174) "We stoop
and look in through the grate,/ See the little porch and rustic door,/ Read duly
the dead builder's date; / Then cross the bridge that we crossed before" (176179). In terms used by the Russian Formalist Jurij Tynjanov the noticeable
repetition of a word within the same passage, however irksome this may be
in non-literary language, implies that underlying individual occurrences there
is a factor he describes as "lexical unity" centred in "the word" itself,
transcending any context.This almost mystical supposition is uncannily like
the second hermeneutic principle of traditional rabbinical exegesis.

***************************************************************************

D
How Robert Browning and Dylan Thomas Treated the
Motif of the Pied Piper
From the Introduction of a lengthy Study entitled:

EDEN OR THE PROMISED LAND, - A STUDY INTO THE PROBLEM OF TIME AND
THE ASSOCIATED THEMES OF CHILDHOOD AND MUSIC IN THE POETIC WORKS
OF ROBERT BROWNING AND DYLAN THOMAS[0]
by Susan Scutts (ShoshanaTtita) and Julian Scutts

1. A Discussion of the Title and its Relevance

Perhaps the first question to arise from the title is quite simply why Dylan
Thomas and Robert Browning should be closely associated in the first place.
Could Dylan Thomas not be more aptly associated with poets like Shelley or
Wordsworth, especially when one considers that the latter initiated the poetry
of recollected childhood?
In general terms, the clearest critical insights are gained when one can
compare and contrast two poets with equal facility. The more closely two
poets resemble each other, the more difficult it becomes to contrast them;
conversely, the more dissimilar they are, the more difficult it becomes to
compare them.. As in the field of science, one has to ascertain constants
before attempting to establish variables.
What then do Dylan Thomas and Robert Browning share in common? First,
both came from nonconformist (Congregational) backgrounds in which the
mother exerted a dominant formative influence. Both felt a profound love of
music, and not surprisingly, musical motifs pervade their poetry. both
suffered a crisis of identity and self-confidence in youth and early manhood.
David Holbrook and betty Miller in their respective psychological analyses
point to similar fundamental problems attributable to what they consider a
maladjusted mother-child relationship.
Once a basis for comparison has been established, a discussion of
dissimilarities becomes all the more significant, and there are, to be sure,
striking dissimilarities that set them apart. One pint of contrast is seen in
their divergent attitudes to the past, particularly to their own childhood
experience. While Dylan Thomas drew on his childhood memories and
experience as a source of poetic inspiration, Browning's obliteration of almost
all traces of his boyhood verse was - in marked contrast - symptomatic of his
desire to negate the relevance of his childhood past to his poetry; he was
oriented to the future, to a vision that awaited fulfillment. In this respect
Browning typified his age and its spirit of buoyant optimism. This found
expression in the idea of general progress so clearly evident in William Ewart
Gladstone`s words;-

Above all things, men and women, believe me, the world grows better
from century to century, because God reigns supreme from generation
to generation. Let pessimism be absent from our minds, and let
optimism throw its glory over all our lives henceforth and forever. [1]

Perhaps the Victorians could afford to be such out-and-out optimists, as the

nineteenth century did not experience the equivalents of genocide, global
conflict and the threat of nuclear extinction, though it certainly knew the
most appalling forms of social deprivation, which, despite the first stirrings of
a social conscience, the majority of middle-class Victorians regarded with
complacency. it was a age of pomp and splendor, apparently self-assured and
outwardly confident and yet beset by secret or suppressed doubts. Browning,
as a poet of his age, was obsessed with the idea of presenting a fixed image
of himself to the world - that of the Poet-Prophet, who declared what he saw
as the unchanging divine truth. Anything that might detract from that image
had to be ruthlessly expunged, even though Browning was otherwise excited
by new ideas, progress and change. Browning was as concerned not to reveal
his private personality in his poetry as Dylan Thomas, in the post-Freudian
era, was concerned to do so, feeling a compulsion to lay his soul bare.
the problem of time referred to in the title of this study was not merely the
subject of intellectual and philosophical speculation for either poet, rather, it
acquired the significance of a lifelong obsession inseparable from that crucial
stage in their early development when they were wrestling to establish both
their personal and poetic identities. This study is addressed to the question
why Dylan Thomas turned to his childhood for inspiration and material, while
Robert Browning utterly refused to do so. The two fundamental propositions
to be established are:
Both Browning and Dylan Thomas, in their different ways, the one seeking
refuge and consolation in the past, the other fastening his hopes for
fulfillment on the future, abnegated the present, or the notion that Man
should live in and for the present moment.
Their orientation towards the past or the future finds expression in certain
recurrent metaphors, particularly those that are based on the idea of Eden or
the Promised Land.. These two metaphorical motifs manifest not only the
common ground that the two poets share but also the differences that
distinguish them. Their common lies in the Nonconformist biblical tradition in
which they were both steeped mainly as the result of their mothers' influence
on their upbringing. The differences lie in the meaning that both poets
attached to the biblical symbols of their choice. The following lines provide a
ready basis for an initial contrast and comparison.

1.
"We boast our proof that at least the Jew
"Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew.
"Thy face took never so deep a shade
"But we fought them in it, God our aid!
"A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band,
"South, east, and on to the Pleasant Land!"

These lines conclude "Holy Cross Day", a poem which Robert Browning
included in Men and Women (1855).[2]

2.
I know the legend
Of Adam and Eve is never for a second
Silent in my service
Over the dead infants
Over the one
Child who was priest and servants,
Word, singers, and tongue
in the cinder of the little skull, .[3]

"Holy-Cross Day" is altogether typical of Browning's use of the dramatic

monologue to present the viewpoint of an imaginary figure, in the case of this
poem one of the Jews who was being forced to attend a Christian sermon in
Rome. The narrative describes the speaker's circumstances and the action in
which he is involved, here that of marching along to church. It is significant,
however, that in the final lines quoted above the Jews are not marching to
church - they are marching to "the Pleasant Land." The final lines therefore

open up the dimension of an unseen world that transcends the physical

circumstances described in the narrative. Elsewhere in Browning's poetry the
motif of the journey, ride, march, etc. recurs so insistently and so frequently
that it cannot be attributed to chance. Indeed, the idea of the march is
entirely consistent with Browning's optimistic belief in Man's moral progress
.in contrast, the lines quoted from "Ceremony after a Fire Raid," the lyrical "I"
can be readily identified with the poet Dylan Thomas. By obligingly allowing
the reader to share his thoughts into, and reflections on, the process of his
poetic creativity, Dylan Thomas facilitates the interpretation of his poems in a
manner which Browning scholars can but envy. The very fact that the story of
Eden has such a profound significance for Dylan Thomas is in itself an
indication that he was emotionally more committed to the past than to either
the present or the future. However, Dylan Thomas turns the story of Eden,
itself a religious myth pertaining to the origin of mankind, into a metaphor of
intense personal significance. The words "never for a second" in Thomas's
statement imply that the legend of Adam and Eve is more than a frequently
used metaphor, rather it is one that underlies the whole of his poetry and, as
such, might be termed the central sustained metaphor evinced by his poetry.
According to Daniel Jones, a sustained metaphor furnishes the structural unity
of a poem.[4] Far from merely showing how X is similar to Y in one particular
respect, the sustained metaphor expresses all that is fundamental to a poet's
thinking.
The aim of this study is to show how Dylan Thomas's Eden and Browning's
Promised Land are to be regarded as sustained metaphors, which - to recall
Thomas's words - are "never for a second silent" in the service of either poet
in giving expression to the poets' fundamental attitudes to life and time. I
hope that this study will shed further light on the reasons why Thomas
sought a psychological refuge and solace in the past conflating "Eden" and
recollections of his own childhood, while Browning looked steadfastly forward
to a future state symbolized by "the Promised Land." Beyond these issues I
shall investigate their differing attitudes to time and their philosophies of
time, even if these are only implicit. What factors in their personal and
historic situations may have molded or influenced their attitudes to time?
Such differences in attitude apart, in one fundamental respect, at least, the
poets evince a deep affinity, and it is with respect to this affinity that a
discussion of the second part of the title of this study becomes relevant. In
what ways are the concepts of childhood and music associated?
Since the age of the Romantics, indeed from antiquity, the concepts of music
and childhood and youth have conveyed to people's minds the quintessence
of the intuitive and mystical side of human nature. Both Robert Browning and
Dylan Thomas sought some truth or reality they found lacking in the ordinary
run of life. In this sense at least, they may both be considered essentially

"religious" in outlook, although only Browning evinced any commitment to

established Christian doctrines. It is perhaps in regard to this quest that the
intangible influence of their common nonconformist background becomes
most evident. Both felt keenly aware of the inadequacy of human reason in
grappling with whatever might lie beyond the bounds of common experience
in everyday life. Both sought to explore beyond these bounds using their
intuitive powers to the full. The belief that music is the highest of the arts by
virtue of its direct appeal to the imagination and the emotions had become
almost a commonplace idea by Brownings time and Browning endorsed it
himself without reservation. Though Browning's dramatic characters are
clearly not merely mouthpieces uttering the poet's personal views, words
attributed to Abt Vogler in the poem that bears his name in its title surely
reflect Browning's belief in the sublime nature of music:

But God has few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.
88

87-

In view of their attitude to music and "childhood", both Robert Browning and
Dylan Thomas may be regarded as heirs of the Romantic movement, though
they themselves were not Romantics according to any strict definition.
While all Romantic poets attached the highest importance to the intuition and
the imagination, few would dispute that it was Wordsworth who initiated the
most fundamental reassessment of the value and relevance of childhood
experience as a major source of inspiration. However, while only Wordsworth
went so far as to draw on personal childhood experience as a major source of
inspiration and poetic raw material, other Romantics, particularly Blake and
Byron, followed Wordsworth in imbuing the child figure with profound
symbolic significance. The child became a symbol of so much that the
Romantics greatly valued in human nature, not only intuition and the
imagination but also innocence, for the Romantics a moral state untainted by
the corrupting influence of society and the adult world.
Blake went further to establish a far-reaching cross-connection between the
figure of the child and the theme of music in full recognition of their mutual
affinity as powerful symbols appealing to the romantic imagination. Such a
cross-connection is immediately evident in the first stanza of Blake's
"Introduction" to The Songs of Innocence.

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

[5]

It is interesting to note that in Robert Brownings The Pied Piper of Hamelin

there is an analogous association of piping and childhood. In an article
entitled Poet and Burgher: a Comic Variation on a Serious Theme2 Milton
Millhauser touches on this association when he asks:
And first of all, he is a piper that is, a musician, an artist, whose magic is
not unlike the magic of a poet; did not Shakespeare pipe his native woodnotes wild? [6]
One might even go one step further and inquire whether the figure of the
Pied Piper, which Brownings Childs Story popularized throughout the
English-speaking world, is not evoked in Dylan Thomass poem Fern Hill. If
the validity of such of such a connection is admitted, then the subtle
influence of what T.S. Eliot terms tradition may be seen to be at work.[7]
Even if the backgrounds of the two poems cannot as yet be properly
considered, there is perhaps prima facie evidence that The Pied Piper of
Hamelin and Fern Hill are related in some significant way.

2. An Initial Comparison of The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Fern

Hill

The following lines from Fern Hill will serve as a starting point for an initial
comparison of the two poems:

And nothing I cared, at all my sky blues, that time allows

In all its tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace [8]
The lines cited above contain the poems only reference to children as
opposed to the central child figure in the poem, suggesting an allusion to an
external source, possibly to the figure of the Pied Piper as interpreted by

Robert Browning. .Other parallels between Fern Hill and Brownings The
Pied Piper of Hamelin follow under the seven headings listed below:

1.

The Themes of Animal and Nature

In both Fern Hill and the lame childs account of what the Pied Pipers music
conjured up in his mind there is an evocation of an Edenic or millennial vision
of harmony in nature as sublimely expressed in Isaiah 11, 5-9. A similar
vision of harmony is evoked by images found in Fern Hill such in the words
the calves/ Sang to my green horn, the cock on his shoulder: it was all/
Shining, it was Adam and maiden or the spellbound horses (spellbound
offering particularly strong evidence of an affinity between the poems under
consideration). In The Pied Piper of Hamelin the lame childs vision portrays
a new world rather than a lost Eden in the words;

And everything was strange and new;

The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles wings. (244-248)

2.

An nalogous Treatment of Contrasting Colours

The Pied Pipers coat is described as half of yellow and half of red, while in
Fern Hill the words green and golden occur twice and green and
golden occur four times and twice respectively.. An association of red and
green is implied by the line and fire green as grass.[9]

3.

The Themes of Sound and Music

There is little need to emphasize the importance of these elements in the

Pied Piper of Hamelin. In a somewhat more suggestive manner, Fern Hill
is pervaded by a subtle musical quality instilled by such words as the lilting
house, the tunes from the chimneys, tuneful turning and morning
songs.

4.
An ambivalent Treatment of time in Fern Hill and the Pied
Piper, who personifies Time

In both poems the figure of time or the Pied Piper respectively has a rather
sinister as well as benign aspect. An association of the Pied Piper with time is
suggested by such lines as Starting up at the Trump of Dooms Tone (68),
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever (268) and from the very fact that
the Piper can cover great distances in no time at all. In other works, notably
in Pippa Passes and The Flight of the Duchess, Browning associates time
with persons and their movements or actions. Brownings typically jocular
and lighthearted tone should not beguile the reader into assuming that many
subjects he treats are not themselves profound. This is not to deny that at
one level of meaning The Pied Piper of Hamelin cannot be enjoyed by
young readers as an entertaining story. In due I shall argue that The Pied
Piper of Hamelin can be interpreted at a profound level at which its affinities
with Fern Hill will readily emerge.

5.

The Theme of Retrospect and the Rekindling of the Childhood

Vision in the Memory

The childless land in Fern Hill finds a parallel in Hamelin as seen through
the lame child. The desolation of Hamelin as conveyed by Brownings poem is
similar in quality to the image of a town in Keatss Ode on a Grecian Ode,
namely:

Little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can eer return

6.

Water Symbolism

The Pied Piper of Hamelin should not, of course, be treated as a pure

invention of Brownings. The English poet was not the first to render the
German folktale in literary form, for Goethe had done so in his
Rattenfngerlied as had Prosper Mrime in the first chapter of his novel
Chronique du rgne de Charles IX. The legend contains great symbolic and
epic potential. The Weser bears comparison with the Red Sea or Noahs flood,
for like the waters of the Red Sea according to the biblical account, the Weser
is both an agent of death and deliverance. The rats of Hamelin represent
more than just vermin but also and more significantly the worst in human
nature and society (cf. the modern rat-race). The drowning of the rats
recalls not only biblical themes such as Noahs flood and the destruction of
Pharaohs cavalry but also allegorical interpretations of these events
according to which the old and corrupt nature of man perishes while a new
and regenerated nature arises- hence the ambivalence that pervades story of
the Israelites passing through the Red Sea. A parallel between the Red sea
and the Weser ma be suggested by a verbal clue arising from the proximity
of the words land and promised (239, 240). Dylan Thomass profound
concern with the themes of water and the sea may well have been induced
by a reflection on his Christian name Dylan, meaning son of the sea. In
Fern Hill water symbolism, a ubiquitous feature of Dylan Thomass poetry,
comes to the fore in the famous concluding lines of the poem, the same ones
inscribed on the plaque in Cwmdonkin Park to honour the poets memory:

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains by the sea.

7.

The Hill as a Symbol of Transition

Whereas the children of Hamelin mysteriously disappear into Koppelberg Hill,

the child in Fern Hill is led up by time into the swallow thronged loft of
his aunts farmhouse. The Latin sources of the Pied Piper story, at least one
version of which Browning probably read, [10] refer to Koppen or
Kpfelberg as alternative names of montem Calvariae, i.e. Mount Calvary,
the Place of the Skull. Giving due consideration to this reference, one will
probably be prepared to consider Brownings poem as something more than
just an entertaining poem to amuse children. One will then consider the poem
less as an anomaly in the body of Browning`s serious poetry.
It may seem little more than a coincidence that in both poems considered the
word Hill has an important function. The hill is a physical location in both
cases, but the very word recalls images to which poet tradition has
contributed. In Keatss La Belle Dame sans Merci the bewitched knight
languishes by the cold hill side. Perhaps certain words appeal to poets
because they recall memories that transcend the scope of any one
individuals consciousness.
Thus far, the comparison of The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Fern Hill has
been base on recognizing similarities in the internal elements of these poems
with only tentative suggestions as to what overriding influences might
account for the poems# common features. We have yet to consider the
poems in the context of the entire work of Browning and Thomas. Both poems
were written when the poets were about thirty years of age while in the case
of Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill represents the attainment of the poets maturity
regarding technique and the mastery or words, The Pied Piper of Hamelin
together with the other poems that appeared under the general heading of
Bells and Pomegranates in 1842, do not deserve acclaim as the finest or
most accomplished examples of Brownings verse. However, they do mark a
major turning-point in Brownings development as a poet. By 1842 Browning
had long realized that subjective poetry in the sty<le of the Romantics was
not for him, and although he was to write his last stage drama in 1846, it
was becoming increasingly clear to him that his talents would not bear much
fruit in the domain of writing for the theatre. Indeed, his former friendly
relationship with the theatrical director William Macready, to whose young
son Willie Browning dedicated a final appeal in The Pied Piper of Hamelin,
was approaching breaking point. Brownings experimentation with drama at
least left a permanent residue in his mastery of the dramatic monologue, a

genre pioneered by lord Byron. It appears in all its essentials in The Pied
Piper of Hamelin and other poems belonging to Bells and Pomegranates.

3.General Methods of Approach to be Applied in the Study

Comparing poets of different generations is no mere academic exercise.

Browning himself, in his Essay on Tasso and Chatterton underlined the
benefit of making such a comparison when he wrote:

It shall be our endeavour , by extending the application of this text

from Tasso to Chatterton to throw a new light upon a not dissimilar
portion of the latter poets career.[11]

While not ignoring later achievements, the primary aim of this study will be to
compare the earlier portion of each poets career to the point where the
achieved his characteristic style. This study will endeavour to show that in
the case of either poet concern with the problem of time lies at the heart f
their poetry, particularly during their formative periods that were attended by
emotional turmoil and inner crisis. If it can be shown that the motifs of Eden
and the Promised Land (and the associate themes of childhood and music)
constitute sustained metaphors which reveal the poets fundamental attitude
to the problem of time and strategy each poet employed to contend with it,
an effective criterion for contrasting the poets and their works will result.
This method may also provide a key to an understanding of the relationship
between poetry and the poets life in Brownings case no easy task, for he,
unlike Dylan Thomas, denies any direct insight into his own creative
processes, concealing often deliberately connections between his poetry and
the inner and outer events in his life.
The following sections will discuss these aspects in closer detail, referring in
turn to Robert Browning and Dylan Thomas. Reference will also be made to
the poets historical and social backgrounds, as no poet or poetry exists in
vacuo. The problem of time, or the various guises in which it presented itself,
was influenced not only by personal factors and influences affecting the poets
but also by the spirit of the age in which they lived.
End Notes
[1] See E. von Khnelt-Leddihn, Liberty or Equality (London, 1952), p.12.

[2]). All quotations of Brownings poetry, with the exception of his Juvenilia
works, are taken from the centenary edition of Works, ed. F.G. Kenyon, 10
vol. (New York, 1966).
[3]). Dylan Thomas first had this poem published in May 1944 in "Our Time.
All quotations of Dylan Thomass poetry are from The Poems, ed. Daniel Jones
(London, 1971).
[4]). Ibidem, p.264.
[5] William Blake, Songs of Innocence: Introduction in: Blake, Complete
Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1966).
[6] Milton Millhauser, Poet and Burgher: a Comic Variation of a Serious
Theme, Victorian Poetry, 7 (1969), p.167
[7] T.S.Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, in The Sacred Wood
(London, 1972), p.47.
[8] Fern hill, 5th stanza, 6-8.
[9] Ibid. 3rd stanza, 4
[10] Arthur Dickson, Brownings Source for the Pied Piper of Hamelin,
Studies in Philology, Vol. XXIII (1926),331-332.
[11] The Complete Works of Robert Browning, ed. Roma A. King,jr. (Ohio,
1971),Vol. III, p. 165-166.