Emerson was a wise man.
In reshuffling the short poems in the three works mentioned above,
it is not always easy to see the logic of the distribution and it
would be interesting if we could know the reasons that guided the
poet in the classification of particular poems. Thus it is perfectly
clear why _Incident of the French Camp_, _Count Gismond_, and
_In a Gondola_ were taken from the _Dramatic Lyrics_ and placed
among the _Dramatic Romances_; it is easy to see why _The Lost Leader_
and _Home-Thoughts, from Abroad_ were taken from the _Romances_ and
placed among the _Lyrics_; it is not quite so clear why _Rudel_ and
_Artemis Prologizes_ were taken from the _Lyrics_ and classed
among _Men and Women_, when nearly all the poems originally
published under the latter head were changed to _Lyrics_ and _
Romances_. In changing _How They Brought the Good News_ from the
_Dramatic Romances_, where it was originally published, to _
Dramatic Lyrics_, Browning probably felt that the lyrical sound of
the piece was more important than the story: but it really is a
dramatic romance.
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