Robert Browning

Robert Browning perfected the dramatic monologue — poems spoken by invented characters whose words reveal more than they intend. In his own lifetime he was half of literature's most famous marriage, having wooed and secretly wed the poet Elizabeth Barrett.

"Meeting at Night" distills his early romantic urgency into twelve breathless lines, while "Pippa's Song" gave English its most quoted morning optimism: "God's in his heaven— / All's right with the world!"