The Poems of Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812-1889) represents the intellectual and argumentative strand in English poetry in contrast to the more ornate and melodious style of Spenser and Tennyson. Browning vividly demonstrates in his verse how the poet must be a sharply perceptive observer of the complexity of the human condition. Perhaps his most moving poetry was written to express his feelings for his wife, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in which he deals in a very ’modern’ way with the uncomfortable fact that we can never quite bridge the gap between ourselves and the people we love.