The dramas, _King Victor and King Charles_ and _The Return of the Druses_ (at first named "Mansoor the Hierophant") now occupied his thoughts.
Short lyrical pieces were growing under his hand, and began to form a considerable group.

And one fortunate day as he strolled alone in the Dulwich wood--his chosen resort of meditation--"the image flashed upon him of 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."[22] In other words Pippa had suddenly passed her poet in the wood.
A cheap mode of issuing his works now in manuscript was suggested to Browning by the publisher Moxon.

They might appear in successive pamphlets, each of a single sheet printed in double-column, and the series might be discontinued at any time if the public ceased to care for it.

The general title _Bells and Pomegranates_ was chosen; "beneath upon the hem of the robe thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about." Browning, as he explained to his readers in the last number, meant to indicate by the title, "Something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought"-- such having been, in fact, one of the most familiar of the Rabbinical interpretations designed to expound the symbolism of this priestly decoration prescribed in "Exodus." From 1841 to 1846 the numbers of _Bells and Pomegranates_ successively appeared; with the eighth the series closed.

The first number--_Pippa Passes_--was sold for sixpence; when _King Victor and King Charles_ was published in the following year (1842), the price was raised to one shilling.