Or "What is life in its perfection, and when shall we have it ?"; a question also not asked by those who live in the morning of a new aera, when the world--as in Elizabeth's days, as in 1789, as perhaps it may be in a few years--is born afresh; but which is asked continually in the years when a great movement of life has passed its culminating point and has begun to decline.

Again and again the world has heard these questions; in Cleon's time, and when the Renaissance had spent its force, and at the end of the reign of Louis XIV., and before Elizabeth's reign had closed, and about 1820 in England, and of late years also in our society.

This is the temper and the time that Browning embodies in Cleon, who is the incarnation of a culture which is already feeling that life is going out of it.
Protus, the king, has written to him, and the poem is Cleon's answer to the king.

Browning takes care, as usual, to have his background of scenery quite clear and fair.

It is a courtyard to Cleon's house in one of the sprinkled isles-- Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea, And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece." I quote it; it marks the man and the age of luxurious culture.
They give thy letter to me, even now; I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.
The master of thy galley still unlades Gift after gift; they block my court at last And pile themselves along its portico Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee; And one white she-slave from the group dispersed Of black and white slaves (like the chequer work Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift, Now covered with this settle-down of doves), One lyric woman, in her crocus vest Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands Commends to me the strainer and the cup Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.
But he is more than luxurious.