apped my hands, laughed and sang, an noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is friends flocking round.
As I sate with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

When we read this poem, the first question that comes to us is "What
_was_ the 'good news from Ghent?'" But we find on looking up the matter
that the whole incident is a fanciful one; Browning simply imagined a
very dramatic situation, and then wrote this stirring poem about it. And
surely he has made it all seem very real to us. We feel the intense
anxiety of the riders to reach Aix on time--for we are given to
understand in the last line of the third stanza that Aix must learn the
news by a certain hour; we feel the despair of the two who are forced to
give up the attempt, and the increased sense of responsibility of the
only remaining rider; and we fairly hold our breath in our fear that the
gallant Roland will not stand the strain.

The towns mentioned are real places, all of them in Belgium.

Does the poem seem to you somewhat rough and jerky? It is a ballad, and
that fact accounts in part for its style, for ballads are not usually
smooth and perfect in structure.

But there is another reason for the jerkiness, if we may call it by so
strong a name. Read the first two lines aloud, giving them plenty of
swing. Do they not remind you of the galloping of a horse, with their
regular rise and fall? A little poet might have attempted to write about
this wild midnight ride in the same smooth, flowing style in which he
would describe a lazy river slipping over the stones; but Browning was a
great poet, and knew how to fit sound to sense. Other poets may excel
him in writing of quiet, peaceful scenes, but no one who has ever
written could put more dash and vigor into a poem than could Browning.

[Illustration: GHENT]

REMINISCENCES OF A PIONEER[1]

_By_ EDWIN D. COE

My father left his old home in Oneida County, New York, in June, 1839, a
young man in his twenty-fourth year. The beauty and fertility of the
Rock River valley, in Wisconsin, had been widely proclaimed by
participants in the Black Hawk War and in the glowing reports of
Government engineers. In fact, the latter declared