 Most critics have seen it simply as a parting on hostile terms, but others have given their last lines a more sinister interpretation.Charmed by the character of Pippa, Alfred Noyes pronounced "Pippa Passes" to be Browning's best, but even the sentimental passages of the work had not been able to win over all Victorian critics.In Chapter XVII of the novel "With Harp and Crown" (1875), Walter Besant mentioned the poem, singling out "The hill-side's dew-pearled!"