MURDER!—All's right with the world.—Pippa Passes.
Imagine Browning senior reading "Pippa Passes," with pursed lips, at his desk. What mental pictures of his son's heroine did the old gentleman form, as he followed her on her now famous walk through that disreputable neighborhood?
I hope he enjoyed more "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent." For example, where the man says, while galloping fast down the road:
"I turned in my saddle and made the girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit—"
He made the girths tight
The banker must have been pleased that Robert could harness a horse in rhyme anyhow. I dare say he knew as we all do that it was poor enough poetry, but at least it was practical. It was something he could tell his friends at the club.
Putting Browning aside with poor Stroom, I next tried Matthew Arnold.