And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres."
TO THE COUNTESS COWPER
If I mention the simple truth, that this poem absolutely owes its existence to you,—who not only suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the most delightful of May-month amusements,—I shall seem honest, indeed, but hardly prudent; for, how good and beautiful ought such a poem to be!
Euripides might fear little; but I, also, have an interest in the performance; and what wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your feet?
R. B.
London, July 23, 1871.
After the publication of the fourth volume of The Ring and the Book in February, 1869, Browning published nothing until March, 1871, when he printed Hervé Riel in the Cornhill Magazine, afterward including it in his first new volume of collected poems. In August of the same year appeared the first of his larger ventures in the field of Greek life. This poem was followed four years later by Aristophanes' Apology, and it is so intimately connected with Balaustion's Adventure that in this edition it is made to follow it, though the chronological sequence was broken, as will be seen, by the composition and publication of other considerable works. The motto at the head of the poem is from Mrs. Browning, and in the last lines of the poem Browning couples her with his friend Sir Frederick Leighton.
About that strangest, saddest, sweetest song