Poetry
Men and Women
Robert Browning · 1855
Opening lines
I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In the evening, a shepherd speaks before pastures that cover an ancient capital, where a girl awaits him in the last turret. In Florence, after midnight, the watch surprises at the end of an alley a monk who is a painter, who invokes the Medici. A knight distrusts the old cripple who points out to him the way to a dark tower. After dinner, a Catholic bishop answers a journalist who despises him. A painter speaks to his wife, one evening, facing Fiesole. The last poem, addressed to his wife, is spoken by the author in his own name.
Context
The collection was published by Chapman and Hall in November 1855, in two volumes, and brought together poems written mostly from 1852 onwards. Its author had told his friend Joseph Milsand of poems with more music and painting than before, and several take Renaissance painters as their subject. The book went almost unnoticed, but it made its author the idol of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites, and William Morris gave it a laudatory review in 1856. In 1863 the author redistributed these poems among his collections of short pieces.
Who it is for
Two volumes originally; in French, a bilingual selection since 1938, with no complete translation of the collection.
Prizes and reception
Received quietly on its publication, it is now placed by critics among the high points of its author's work.
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