The Complete Poetical Works of Browning

I have read the following poems by Robert Browning that can be found in this work (listed alphabetically with ratings):

• “Abt Vogler”: The speaker, a musician who has just been playing some music, praises the superiority of music and musicians like himself. Rating: 3/5
• “Andrea Del Satro”: A great painter speaks with his wife, explaining that he is a technically good painter with no soul and placing partial blame for this on her. Rating: 3.5/5
• “Bad Dreams III”: This poem is the third of four nightmare poems that center on the end of a marriage. In this poem, the speaker has a dream in which he sees a magnificent forest and a beautiful city, but these two entities start to devour each other. Rating: 3/5
• “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”: A dying bishop gives instructions to his “nephews” (who are really his sons) on how to bury him so that his burial would be more magnificent and envy-invoking than his predecessor’s. Rating: 3.5/5
• “By the Fireside”: The speaker, now an older man, recounts a trip through the wilderness to an old chapel with his wife. Rating: 2.5/5
• “Caliban upon Setebos”: Caliban, an enslaved character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, outlines his theology: He believes that a god-like creator figure, who was himself the creation of a higher figure, is “cold and ill at ease” and often does things to spite his creations. Rating: 4/5
• “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”: This poem is told from the point of view of a quester who knows he is walking into certain death. It raises questions about the meaningfulness of human action. Rating: 4.5/5
• “Cleon”: A poet writes to a king enumerating his thoughts on progress, joy, immortality, and their relationship to one another. Rating: 4/5
• “Fra Lippo Lippi”: An artistically talented monk is caught in the town at night engaging in some un-monk-like activity, and he tells the guards who found him about his life. He shares his view of art, which (in contrast to the view of many of the higher-up monks) is that it should be realistic in is depictions. Rating: 3/5
• “The Heretic’s Tragedy”: The speaker gives the gruesome account of the burning at the stake of John, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templars, who was falsely accused of a number of heresy. Rating: 4/5
• “How It Strikes a Contemporary”: The narrator of this poem describes “the poet” as one who is both a sort of transcendent, wise figure and a humble, every-day person. Rating: 4/5
• “Johannes Agricola in Meditation”: This work is an attack on the doctrine of predestination, told from the perspective of a man who believes in predestination. Rating: 4.5/5
• “Love among the Ruins”: The speaker describes the ruins of a once-great city where he is going to meet a young woman. Rating: 3/5
• “Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha”: An organist criticizes the “cumbersome” work named Master Hughes and ponders truth and nature. Rating: 3/5
• “Memorabilia”: Browning recalls an encounter in which he overheard someone talking about Percy Shelley, his hero. Rating: 2/5
• “My Last Duchess”: A duke speaks with an envoy of a man whose daughter he intends to marry and reveals the problem—and dark solution—that he had with his last wife. Rating: 3.5/5
• “Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession": A young man praises a past love and wishes he could once again become the person he used to be. Rating: 1/5
• “Popularity”: The speaker uses the example of a beautiful dye that supplants all others and takes a long time to be made and discovered as a metaphor for the coming of a poet that will shed light on his generation like no one ever has. Rating: 4/5
• “Prologue” (from Asolando): The speaker praises the clarity with which older men can see the world. Rating: 4.5/5
• “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”: A hypocritical monk expresses his hatred for another monk. Rating: 4.5/5
• “Thamuris Marching” (excerpt from “Aristophanes Apology”): The poet describes the confident march of Thamuris, a poet who had boasted that he could beat the Greek Muses in a poetry contest, to that contest, before he lost and was punished severely by the Muses. Rating: 3/5
• “A Toccata of Galuppi’s”: The speaker imagines the effect of Galuppi’s (a pianist) playing on some attenders of a ball in Venice. The crowd is happy for the moment, but the music also hints at the soullessness of the city. Rating: 3/5
• “Two in the Campagna”: The speaker touches on an ecstatic feeling of wanting absolute oneness with his love, but expresses just how fleeting that height of emotion can be. Rating: 3/5