'Pippa Passes' Summary

The author described the work as "the first of a series of dramatic pieces". A young, blameless silk-winding girl is wandering innocently through the environs of Asolo, in her mind attributing kindness and virtue to the people she passes. She sings as she goes, her song influencing others to act for the good—or, at the least, reminding them of the existence of a moral order. Alexandra Leighton (Mrs Sutherland Orr) described the moment of inspiration:

Mr Browning was walking alone, in a wood near Dulwich, when the image flashed upon him of some one walking thus alone through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of Asolo, Felippa, or Pippa.

This theme followed with great naturalness from Sordello (1840), in which the role in life of poets was analysed.

The work caused some controversy when it was first published, due to the matter-of-fact portrayals of many of the area's more disreputable characters—notably the adulterous Ottima—and for its frankness on sexual matters. In 1849, a writer in The English Review^, complained:

We have already referred to the two drawbacks, of which we have to complain in particular: the one is the virtual encouragement of regicide, which we trust to see removed from the next edition, being as unnatural as it is immoral: the other is a careless audacity in treating of licentiousness, which in our eyes is highly reprehensible, though it may, no doubt, have been exhibited with a moral intention, and though Mr. Browning may plead the authority of Shakespeare, Goethe, and other great men, in his favour.

Despite this, the most famous passage in the poem is charming in its innocence:

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world!

— from Act I: Morning

although the timing of this song (during Sebald and Ottima's discussion of their affair and the murder of Luca) renders it deeply ironic.