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piedpiper
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 Robert
Browning was born on May 7, 1812, in Camberwell, England. His mother
was an accomplished pianist and a devout evangelical Christian. His
father, who worked as a clerk in the Bank of England.
Browning's education came from his father, It is believed that he
was already proficient at reading and writing by the age of five, he
learnt Latin, Greek, and French by the time he was fourteen.
Robert Browning was long unsuccessful as a poet and financially
dependent upon his family until he was well into adulthood.
In his teens, Browning discovered Shelley, adopting the author's
confessionalism in poetry. His first poems Browning wrote under the
influence of Shelley, who also inspired him to adopt atheist
principles for a time.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a folk tale, documented by the
Brothers Grimm
which tells of a disaster that occurred in the town of Hamelin
(Hameln), Germany, 26 June 1284. The town of Hamelin was suffering
from a rat infestation. A man claiming to be a rat catcher told the
villagers he could rid them of the rats. They promised to pay him a
schilling for each rat. The man accepted and thus took a pipe and
lured the rats with a song into the Weser river, where all 999,999
drowned.
However the villagers refused to pay him, as he didn't bring any
dead rats for them to see (All drowned in river) So he left the
village, but returned several weeks later for revenge. While the
villagers were in the church, he played his pipe again, this time
attracting the children of Hamelin, 130 boys and girls followed him
out of the town.
Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889 in Venice in his son's
house. Various difficulties made the poet's requested burial in
Florence impossible, and his body was returned to England to be
interred in Westminster Abbey. |
