Read "Robert Browning" by Henry van Dyke online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
How blind the toil that burrows like the mole, / In winding graveyard pathways underground, / For Browning's lineage! What if men have found / Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll / Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul?
Nay, for he came of ancestry renowned / Through all the world -- the poets laurel-crowned / With wreaths from which the autumn takes no toll.
The blazons on his coat-of-arms are these: / The flaming sign of Shelley's heart on fire, / The golden globe of Shakespeare's human stage, / The staff and scrip of Chaucer's pilgrimage, / The rose of Dante's deep, divine desire, / The tragic mask of wise Euripides.
November, 1906.