SOURCE: Markley, A. A. “‘Love for the Sake of Love’: William Morris's Debt to Robert Browning in ‘Riding Together.’” English Language Notes 37, no. 3 (March 2000): 47-55.

In the following essay, Markley determines the influence of Robert Browning on Morris's “Riding Together.”

Published in 1856 in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, and later in the 1858 collection, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems, William Morris's poem “Riding Together,” like other poems among Morris's early works, is an impressive formal experiment in fusing the dramatic monologue and the old English ballad. In this sense, Morris was clearly working in the tradition of the Romantics, and was obviously highly influenced by such works as Lyrical Ballads and particularly Keats's “La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”¹ More importantly, however, “Riding Together” illustrates the extent to which Morris was influenced by Robert Browning in his experimentation with the form of the dramatic monologue. Browning's influence on...