The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Browning tells this story in third person and throughout the work switches up the rhymes but fluctuates between light and dark when speaking about the townsfolk and the rodents

'To see townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.' (lines 8 & 9)

Nonetheless his stanzas persist to be clever and playful.

Lines 55 to 69: When describing the Piper, there is not once a reference to music, Browning leaves him a unique, solitary stranger, who displays none of his thoughts. Browning lets the Piper stay a mystery, only describing his appearance of vibrant colours, relating to the audience it's for. ('A child's story')

The rhyming pattern to this story flows at an easy pace, giving it almost a sing-a-long approach, like a nursery rhyme, relating again to children. It is also in past tense implying that Browning himself or another was establishing the story to a different character (this is backed up by lines 300 -303 'Willy, let me and you be wipers of scores out with all men' where Browning changes the narrative, making the reader believe maybe 'Willy' is a young boy being told the story, making it 'a childs story') and evidently, the reader.

Browning marks the stranzas like chapters in his story to put them into a timeline from the start til the recent, setting the date in line 274

'On  the twenty second of July'