The eighteen-forties were a decade of unrest, agitation, and revolution; for Browning it was a decade of withdrawal from the social and literary life he had known briefly in London. The great literary document of the decade was The Communist Manifesto, commissioned by the London Communist League. The forties were filled with schemes aimed at reforming economic, social, political, even personal relationships. Christianity teaches people to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour. The response of the small group suggests the reaction Tennyson must have anticipated from his contemporary readers. The poem describes the harmony and joy with which the Italian peasants gather their harvest before the oncoming winds of the sirocco. Jules's and Phene's marriage is founded on a cruel hoax though Jules hopes to sustain the love with a vague romantic ideal, which the Monsignor gently mocks.