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"A Grammarian's Funeral" is a poem by Robert Browning, first published in his 1855 collection, Men and Women.
A Grammarian's Funeral | |
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Shortly After the Revival of Learning in Europe | |
by Robert Browning | |
Publication date | 1855 |
Lines | 148 |
The poem is from the point of view of the grammarian's students. Their master has just died, and they take his body for interment on a high mountain. As they go singing, his casket on their shoulders, they recount the his life story, how he put aside poetry for learning, and, ignoring earthly desire and life's fleeting opportunities, spent his later years writing on the fine points grammar. Even when old age had slowed him, he carried on, refusing to set aside the work for life's pleasures even onto death.
The traditional view of A Grammarian's Funeral is that it applauded lives spent in academic drudgery. Some more recent views take other positions; that Browning meant us to view the grammarian's choice, to devote himself to study rather than to life, as ill-advised.