Narrative Poems: ‘Childe Roland’ and ‘The Pied Piper’ by Robert Browning

Narrative Poems: ‘Childe Roland’ and ‘The Pied Piper’ by Robert Browning31 Aug18 min

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‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ has baffled readers and critics ever since it was published in Men and Women in 1855. It baffled its author, too. It ‘came upon me as a kind of dream’, Browning recalled. ‘I had to write it then and there, and I finished it the same day.’ The result, inspired by a line spoken by Edgar (as Poor Tom) in Act III of King Lear, is a grim, hallucinatory quest poem that exemplifies Browning’s talent for what G.K. Chesterton called ‘the poetry of mean landscapes’.

In this episode, Seamus and Mark read Browning’s mysterious poem as a rejection of the resources and consolations established by the Romantics. They then turn to an earlier narrative poem, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1843), in which Browning uses a comical, Byronic tone to tell the story of another prophetic figure.

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