Walter Savage Landor's "To Robert Browning"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Though we remember Browning far more readily than we do Landor, this poem dates from a period when their fortunes were reversed and the latter was eager to acquaint the world with the budding talent he had discovered.

Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity. As remarkable as his work was, it was equalled by his rumbustious character and lively temperament. Both his writing and political activism, such as his support for Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Garibaldi, were imbued with his passion for liberal and republican causes. He befriended and influenced the next generation of literary reformers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Browning.

-bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.3	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, October 7th, 2004.
0:09.2	Today's poem is by a Victorian poet Walter Savage Landor, who was a giant in his day, and unfortunately, is often overlooked in our own time. But in addition to his masterful command
0:24.0	of style and technique and diction and the poetic combining of the three, one of the great
0:33.1	marks to his credit is that he was an early supporter of the young poet Robert Browning.
0:40.7	Landor saw in Browning a great talent well before Browning had achieved any kind of general success
0:49.6	and did his part to bring that success about.
0:56.4	Today's poem is an example of that effort.
0:58.9	It's a sonnet called To Robert Browning.
1:03.0	I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it once more.
1:07.8	To Robert Browning.
1:16.0	There is delight in singing, though none here beside the singer.
1:23.3	There is delight in praising, though the praiser sit alone, and see the praised far off, far above.
1:30.6	Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's, therefore on him no speech, and a brief for thee, Browning.
1:38.4	Since Chaucer was alive and hail, no man hath walked along our roads with step, so active, so inquiring, or tongue so varied in discourse, but warmer climes give brighter plumage, stronger wing, the breeze of alpine heights
1:47.3	thou playest with, born on beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where the siren waits thee, singing,
1:54.1	song for song.
2:00.7	This is an unusual sonnet structurally. It's unrhymed, but Landor has also played with the sonnet format a little bit.
2:10.4	Usually there's a single thematic turn, a kind of question and answer or problem and solution.
2:16.7	I talk about the function of the sonnet structure a lot here on the daily poem.
2:21.9	Landor has created, it seems, multiple turns, and none of them come exactly where traditionally
2:30.0	you might expect them to come.
	...

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