To Robert Browning

By Walter Savage Landor 1775–1864

There is delight in singing, tho’ none hear

Beside the singer; and there is delight

In praising, tho’ the praiser sit alone

And see the prais’d far off him, far above.

Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world’s,

Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,

Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,

No man hath walkt along our roads with step

So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue

So varied in discourse. But warmer climes

Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze

Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on

Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where

The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

Biography

As a poet, Walter Savage Landor has enjoyed a permanent minority reputation for the classicism of his epigrams and idyls. He was a seriously emulative classicist and wrote a significant proportion of his poetry in Latin, which was also the original language of some of the long and short poems that he published in English. Indeed, he was deterred from making it his chief medium only by the example of John Milton and the advice of . . .

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