The meaning and value of Fet's poetry have provided food for debate for over a century, but its musicality has long stood beyond question. Whatever the decision about their ultimate worth, his melodic lyrics undoubtedly call up some of the sweetest sounds of nineteenth-century Russian verse. Just as there is hardly a Russian poet who has been more widely or successfully parodied, so scarcely is there one who has been more often set to music. As a mid-century poet he had serious rivals for the favors of composers and yet defeated them all—A. K. Tolstoy, Polonsky, Mei, Grigoriev, even the redoubtable Nekrasov. His whole poetic manner seemed to impinge so far upon music itself that the composer could see immediately how the music should be written and set to work at once with the enthusiasm of any expert who suddenly finds before him a small challenge which is right in his own field.