I
THE WOMAN UNWON
In the section entitled "Lovers Meeting" we saw the exultant mood of love in man, and I there pointed out how seldom even Browning has assigned that mood to woman. But he does not show her as alone in suffering love's pain. The lyrics we are now to consider give us woman as the maker of love's pain for man; we learn her in this character through the utterances of men—and these are noble utterances, every one. Mr. J. T. Nettleship, in his Essays and Thoughts, well remarks that man's passion shows, in Browning's work, "a greater width of view and intellectual power" than woman's does; that in the feminine utterances "little beyond the actual love of this life is imagined";[277:1] and that in such utterances "we notice . . . an absolute want of originality and of power to look at the passion of love in an abstract sense outside the woman herself and her lover."
I too have, by implication, found this fault with Browning; but Mr. Nettleship differs from me in that he apparently delights to dwell on the idea of woman's accepted inferiority—her "tender, unaspiring love . . . type of that perfection which looks to one superior." It will be seen from this how little he is involved by feminism. That woman should be the glad inferior quarrels not at all with his vision of things as they should be. Man, indeed, he grants, "must firmly establish his purity and constancy before he dares to assert supremacy over Nature": woman, we may suppose, being—as if she were not quite certainly a person—included in Nature. That a devotee of Browning should retain this attitude may well surprise us, since nothing in his "teaching" is clearer than that woman is the great inspiring influence for man. But the curious fact which has struck both Mr. Nettleship and myself—that, in Browning's work, woman does so frequently, when expressing herself, fail in breadth and imagination—may very well account for the obsolete gesture in this interpreter. . . . Can it be, then, that Browning was (as has frequently been said of him) very much less dramatic a writer than he wished to believe himself? Or, more aptly for our purpose to frame the question, was he dramatic only for men? Did he merely guess at, and not grasp, the deepest emotions and thoughts of women? This, if it be affirmed, will rob him of some glory—yet I think that affirmed it must be. It leaves him all nobility of mind and heart with regard to us; the glory of which he is robbed is after all but that of thaumaturgic power—it is but to say that he could not turn himself into a woman!
In what ways does Browning show us as the makers of "love's trouble" for man? First, of course, as loved and unwon. But though this be the most obvious of the ways, not obvious is Browning's treatment of it. To love "in vain" is a phrase contemned of him. No love is in vain. Grief, anguish even, may attend it, but never can its issue be futility. Nor is this merely the already familiar view that somehow, though rejected, love benignly works for the beloved. "That may be, that is" (he seems to say), "but it is not the truth which most inspires me." The glory of love for Browning resides most radiantly in what it does for the lover's own soul. It is "God's secret": one who loves is initiate.
"Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her;
Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, I shall pass my life's remainder.
Life will just hold out the proving both our powers, alone and blended:
And then, come next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended."
That is the concluding stanza of Cristina, which might be called the companion-piece to Porphyria's Lover; for in each the woman belongs to a social world remote from her adorer's; in each she has, nevertheless, perceived him and been drawn to him—but in Cristina is caught back into the vortex, while in Porphyria's Lover the passion prevails, for the man, by killing her, has kept her folded in "God's secret" with himself.
"She should never have looked at me if she meant I should not love her!
There are plenty . . . men, you call such, I suppose . . . she may discover
All her soul to, if she pleases, and yet leave much as she found them:
But I'm not so, and she knew it, when she fixed me, glancing round them."
That is the lover's first impulsive cry on finding himself "thrown over." Why did she not leave him alone? Others tell him that that "fixing" of hers means nothing—that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of women. Not that, whatever else!
And now, so sure of this that he grows sure of other things as well, he declares that it was a moment of true revelation for her also—she did perceive in him the man she wanted.
"Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! but not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, when the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way, to its triumph or undoing."
That was what she had felt—the queen of women! A coquette, if they will, for others, but not for him; and, though cruel to him also in the event, not because she had not recognised him. She had recognised him, and more—she had recognised the great truth, had deeply felt that the soul "stops here" for but one end, the true end, sole and single: "this love-way."
If the soul miss that way, it goes wrong. There may be better ends, there may even be deeper blisses, but that is the essential—that is the significant thing in life.
But they need not smile at his fatuity! He sees that she "knew," but he can see the issue also.
"Oh, observe! of course, next moment, the world's honours, in derision,
Trampled out the light for ever. Never fear but there's provision
Of the devil's to quench knowledge, lest we walk the earth in rapture" . . .
That must be reckoned with; but all it does to those who "catch God's secret" is simply to make them prize their capture so much the more:
"Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her;"
—for though she has cast him off, he has grasped her soul, and will retain it. He has prevailed, and all the rest of his life shall prove him the victorious one—the one who has two souls to work with! He will prove all that such a pair can accomplish; and then death can come quickly: "this world's use will have been ended." She also knew this, but would not follow it to its issue. Thus she lost him—but he gained her, and that shall do as well.
No loving "in vain" there! But this poem is the high-water mark of unsuccessful love exultant. Browning was too true a humanist to keep us always on so shining a peak; he knew that there are lower levels, where the wounded wings must rest—that mood, for instance, of wistful looking-back to things undreamed-of and now gone, yet once experienced:
"This is a spray the bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
Oh, what a hope beyond measure
Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to—
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!
This is a heart the Queen leant on" . . .
—and in a stanza far less lovely than that of the bird, he shows forth the analogy. The Queen "went on"; but what a moment that heart had had! . . . Gratitude, we see always, for the gift of love in the heart, for God's secret. The lover was left alone, but he had known the thrill. "Better to have loved and lost"—nay, but "lost," for Browning, is not in the scheme. She is there, in the world, whether his or another's.
Sometimes she has never been his at all, has never cared:
"All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was, they might take her eye."
And then, for many a month, he tried to learn the lute to please her.
"To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music's wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!"
Thus we gradually see that all his life he has been learning to love her. Now he has resolved to speak. . . . Heaven or hell?
"She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
Lose who may—I still can say
Those who win heaven, blest are they!"
Here again is Browning's typical lover. Never does he whine, never resent: she was free to choose, and she has not chosen him. That is pain; but of the "humiliation" commonly assigned to unsuccessful love, he never dreams: where can be humiliation in having caught God's secret? . . . And even if she have half-inclined to him, but found that not all herself can give herself—more pain in that, a nearer approach to "failure," perhaps—even so, he understands.
"I said—Then dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be—
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave—I claim
Only a memory of the same
—And this beside, if you will not blame,
Your leave for one more last ride with me."
The girl hesitates. Her proud dark eyes, half-pitiful, dwell on him for a moment—"with life or death in the balance," thinks he.
". . . Right!
The blood replenished me again;
My last thought was at least not vain;
I and my mistress, side by side
Shall be together, breathe and ride;
So, one day more am I deified.
Who knows but the world may end to-night?"[285:1]
Now the moment comes in which he lifts her to the saddle. It is as if he had drawn down upon his breast the fairest, most celestial cloud in evening-skies . . . a cloud touched gloriously at once by setting sun and rising moon and evening-star.
"Down on you, near and yet more near,
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here—
Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fear!
Thus lay she a moment on my breast."
And then they begin to ride. His soul smooths itself out—there shall be no repining, no questioning: he will take the whole of his hour.
"Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!
* * * * *
And here we are riding, she and I."
He is not the only man who has failed. All men strive—who succeeds? His enfranchised spirit seems to range the universe—everywhere the done is petty, the undone vast; everywhere men dream beyond their powers:
"I hoped she would love me; here we ride!"
No one gains all. Hand and brain are never equal; hearts, when they can greatly conceive, fail in the greatest courage; nothing we do is just what we dreamed it might be. We are hedged in everywhere by the fleshly screen. But they two ride, and he sees her bosom lift and fall. . . . To the rest, then, their crowns! To the statesman, ten lines, perhaps, which contain the fruit of all his life; to a soldier, a flag stuck on a heap of bones—and as guerdon for each, a name scratched on the Abbey stones.
"My riding is better, by their leave!"
Even our artists! The poet says the thing, but we feel it. Not one of us can express it like him; but has he had it? When he dies, will he have been a whit nearer his own sublimities than the lesser spirits who have never turned a line?
"Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride."
(Note the fine irony here. The poet shall sing the joy of riding; this man rides.)
The great sculptor, too, with his twenty years' slavery to Art:
"And that's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!"
But the sculptor, with his insight, acquiesces, so this man need not pity him. The musician fares even worse. After his life's labours, they say (even his friends say) that the opera is great in intention, but fashions change so quickly in music—he is out-of-date. He gave his youth? Well—
"I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine."
Supposing we could know perfect bliss in this world, what should we have for which to strive? We must lead some life beyond, we must have a bliss to die for! If he had this glory-garland round his soul, what other joy could he ever so dimly descry?
"Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride."
* * * * *
Thus he has mused, riding beside her, to the horses' rhythmic stretching pace. It shall be best as she decrees. She rejects him: he will not whine; what she does shall somehow have its good for him—she shall not be wrong! He has the thought of her in his soul, and the memory of her—and there will be, as well, the memory of this ride. That moment he has, whole and perfect:
"Who knows but the world may end to-night!"
Yes; they ride on—the sights, the sounds, the thoughts, encompass them; they are together. His soul, all hers, has yet been half-withdrawn from her, so deeply has he mused on what she is to him: it is the great paradox—almost one forgets that she is there, so intimate the union, and so silent. . . . But is she not there? and, being there, does she not now seem to give him something strange and wonderful to take from her? She is there—
"And yet—she has not spoke so long!"
She is as silent as he. They might both be in a trance. He knows what his trance is—can it be that hers is the same? Then what would it mean? . . . And the hope so manfully resigned floods back on him. What if this be heaven—what if she has found, caught up like him, that she does love?
Can it mean that, gazing both, now in this glorious moment, at life's flower of love, they both are fixed so, ever shall so abide—she with him, as he with her? Can it mean that the instant is made eternity—
"And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride?"
* * * * *
Despite the transcendental interpretations of this glorious love-song—surpassed, I think and many others think, by none in the world—I believe that the concluding stanza means just that. Hope has rushed on him again from her twin-silence—can she be at one with him in all, as she is in this? Will the proud dark eyes have forgotten the pity—and the pride? . . . The wrong that has been done to Browning by his too-subtle "interpreters" is, in my view, incalculable. Always he must be, for them, the teacher. But he is the poet! He "sings, riding's a joy"—and such joy brings hope along with it, hope for the "obvious human bliss." People seem to forget that it was Browning who made that phrase[289:1]—which might almost be his protest against the transcendentalists.
Much of his finest work has been thus falsified, thus strained to meanings so "profound" as to be none at all. Mr. Nettleship's gloss upon this stanza of The Last Ride is a case in point. "[The lover] buoys himself with the hope that the highest bliss may be the change from the minute's joy to an eternal fulfilment of joy." Does this mean anything? And if it did, does that stanza mean it? I declare that it means nothing, and that the stanza means what instinctively (I feel and know) each reader, reading it—not "studying" it—accepts as its best meaning: the human one, the true following of the so subtly-induced mood. And that is, simply, the invigoration, the joy, of riding; and the hope which comes along with that invigoration and that joy.
In the strange Numpholeptos we find, by implication, the heart of Browning's "message" for women. "The nympholepts of old," explains Mr. Augustine Birrell in one of the volumes of Obiter Dicta, "were those unfortunates who, whilst carelessly strolling among sylvan shades, caught a hasty glimpse of some spiritual inmate of the woods, in whose pursuit their whole lives were ever afterwards fruitlessly spent."
The man here has fallen in love with "an angelically pure and inhumanly cold woman, who requires in him an unattainable union of immaculate purity and complete experience of life."[290:1]
She does not reject his love, but will wholly accept it only on these impossible terms. Herself dwells in some "magic hall" whence ray forth shafts of coloured light—crimson, purple, yellow; and along these shafts, which symbolise experience, her lover is to travel—coming back to her at close of each wayfaring, for the rays end before her feet, beneath her eyes and smile, as they began. He goes forth in obedience; he comes back. Ever the issue is the same: he comes back smirched. And she—forgives him, but not loves him.
"What means the sad slow silver smile above
My clay but pity, pardon?—at the best
But acquiescence that I take my rest,
Contented to be clay?"
She "smiles him slow forgiveness"—nothing more; he is dismissed, must travel forth again. This time he may return, untinged by the ray which he is to traverse. She sends him, deliberately; he must break through the quintessential whiteness that surrounds her—but he is to come back unsmirched. So she pitilessly, for all her "pity," has decreed.
And patient, mute, obedient, always he has gone—until this day. This day his patience fails him, and he speaks. Once more he had come back—once more been "pardoned." But the pity was so gentle—like a moon-beam. He had almost hoped the smile would pass the "pallid moonbeam limit," be "transformed at last to sunlight and salvation." If she could pass that goal and "gain love's birth," he scarce would know his clay from gold's own self; "for gold means love." . . . But no; the "sad slow silver smile" had meant, as ever, naught but pity, pardon, acquiescence in his lesserness for him. She acquiesced not; she keeps her love for the "spirit-seven" before God's throne.[291:1]
He then made one supreme appeal for
"Love, the love sole and whole without alloy."
Vainly! Such an appeal "must be felt, not heard." Her calm regard was unchanged—nay, rather it had grown harsh and hard, had seemed to imply disdain, repulsion, and he could not face those things; he rose from his kissing of her feet—he did go forth again. This time he might return, immaculate, from the path of that "lambent flamelet." . . . He knew he could not, but—he might! She promises that he can: should he not trust her?
And now, to-day, once more he is returned. Still she stands, still she listens, still she smiles! But he protests at last:
"Surely I had your sanction when I faced,
Fared forth upon that untried yellow ray
Whence I retrack my steps?"
The crimson, the purple had been explored; from them he had come back deep-stained. How has the yellow used him? He has placed himself again for judgment before her "blank pure soul, alike the source and tomb of that prismatic glow." To this yellow he has subjected himself utterly: she had ordained it! He was to "bathe, to burnish himself, soul and body, to swim and swathe in yellow licence." And here he is: "absurd and frightful," "suffused with crocus, saffron, orange"—just as he had been with crimson, purple!
She willed it so: he was to track the yellow ray. He pleads once more her own permission—nay, command! And, as before, she shows
"Scarce recognition, no approval, some
Mistrust, more wonder at a man become
Monstrous in garb, nay—flesh-disguised as well,
Through his adventure."
But she had said that, if he were worthily to retain her love, he must share the knowledge shrined in her supernal eyes. And this was the one way for man to gain that knowledge. Well, it is as before:
"I pass into your presence, I receive
Your smile of pity, pardon, and I leave."
But no! This time he will not leave, he will not dumbly bend to his penance. Hitherto he has trusted her word that the feat can be achieved, the ray trod to its edge, yet he return unsmirched. He has tried the experiment—and returned, "absurd as frightful." This is his last word.
". . . No, I say:
No fresh adventure! No more seeking love
At end of toil, and finding, calm above
My passion, the old statuesque regard,
The sad petrific smile!"
And he turns upon her with a violent invective. She is not so much hard and hateful as mistaken and obtuse.
"You very woman with the pert pretence
To match the male achievement!"
Who could not be victorious when all is made easy, when the rough effaces itself to smooth, the gruff "grinds down and grows a whisper"; when man's truth subdues its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush spear that womanly falsehood fights with? Oh woman's ears that will not hear the truth! oh woman's "thrice-superfine feminity of sense," that ignores, as by right divine, the process, and takes the spotless result from out the very muck that made it!
But he breaks off. "Ah me!" he cries,
"The true slave's querulous outbreak!"
And forth again, all slavishly, at her behest he fares. Who knows but this time the "crimson quest" may deepen to a sunrise, not decay to that cold sad sweet smile—which he obeys?
Such a being as this, said Browning himself, "is imaginary, not real; a nymph and no woman"; but the poem is "an allegory of an impossible ideal of love, accepted conventionally." How impossible he has shown not only here but everywhere—how conventionally accepted. This is not woman's mission! And in the lover's querulous outbreak—the "true slave's" outbreak—we may read the innermost meaning of the allegory. If women will set up "the pert pretence to match the male achievement," they must consent to take the world as men are forced to take it. There must be no unfairness, no claim on the chivalry which has sought to shield them: in the homely phrase, they must "take the rough with the smooth"—not the stainless result alone, with a revolted shudder for the marrings which have made it possible.
But having flung these truths at her, observe that the man rues them. He accepts himself as a slave: the slave (as I read this passage) to what is true in the idea of woman's purity. The insufferable creature of the smile is (as he says) the "mistaken and obtuse unreason of a she-intelligence"; but somewhere there was right in her demand. If man could but return, unstained! He must go forth, must explore the rays—of all the claims of woman on him this is most insistent; but if he could explore, and not return "absurd as frightful." . . . He cannot. Experience is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"—the colours! The shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, but this is not experience, and she shall not conceit herself into believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. One or the other she must choose: knowledge and the right to judge, or ignorance and the duty to refrain from judgment. . . . And yet—he goes again; he obeys the silver smile! For the "crimson-quest may deepen to a sunrise"; he may come back and find her waiting, "sunlight and salvation," because she understands at last; and both shall look for stains from those long shafts, and see none there. . . . Maybe, maybe: he goes—will come again one day; and that at last may prove itself the day when "men are pure, and women brave."
We pass from the unearthly atmosphere of Numpholeptos—well-nigh the most abstract of all Browning's poems—to the vivid, astonishing realism of Too Late.
Edith is dead, and the man who loved her and failed to win her, is musing upon the transmutation of all values in his picture of life which has been made by the tidings. Not till now had he fully realised his absorption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her and loved her and lost her—and it was as if a great stone had been cast by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it—the waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible stone full-tide."
The stone thwarted God. But the lover has had two ways of thinking about it. Though the waves, in all their strength and fullness, could not win past, a thread of water might escape and run through the "evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea. This would be his tender, acquiescent brooding on all she is to him, and the hope that still they may be united at the last, though time shall then have stilled his passion.
The second way was better!
"Or else I would think, 'Perhaps some night
When new things happen, a meteor-ball
May slip through the sky in a line of light,
And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,
And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,
Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!'"
For the husband might die, and he, still young and vigorous, might try again to win her. . . . That was how he had been wont to "sit and look at his life."
"But, Edith dead! No doubting more!"
All the dreams are over; all the brooding days have been lived in vain.
"But, dead! All's done with: wait who may,
Watch and wear and wonder who will.
Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!
Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,
'The woman is dead that was none of his;
And the man that was none of hers may go!'
There's only the past left: worry that!" . . .
All that he was or could have been, she should have had for a word, a "want put into a look." She had not given that look; now she can never give it—and perhaps she does want him. He feels that she does—a "pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" assures him that she "needs help in her grave, and finds none near"—that from his heart, precisely his, she now at last wants warmth. And he can only send it—so! . . . His acquiescence then had been his error.
"I ought to have done more: once my speech,
And once your answer, and there, the end,
And Edith was henceforth out of reach!
Why, men do more to deserve a friend,
Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,
Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.
Why, better even have burst like a thief
And borne you away to a rock for us two,
In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief" . . .
Well, he had not done this. But—
"What did the other do? You be judge!
Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!
Give him his six whole years: I grudge
None of the life with you, nay, loathe
Myself that I grudged his start in advance
Of me who could overtake and pass.
But, as if he loved you! No, not he,
Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain" . . .
—for he who speaks, though he so loved and loves her, knows that he is and was alone in his worship. He knows even that such worship of her was among unaccountable things. That he, young, prosperous, sane, and free, as he was and is, should have poured his life out, as it were, and held it forth to her, and said, "Half a glance, and I drop the glass!" . . . For—and now we come to those amazing stanzas which place this passionate love-song by itself in the world—
"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held,
More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:
* * * * *
The others? No head that was turned, no heart
Broken, my lady, assure yourself!"
Her admirers had quickly recovered: one married a dancer, others stole a friend's wife, or stagnated or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to believe that the peace of singleness was peace, and not—what they were finding it! But whatever these rejected suitors did, the truth about her was simply that
"On the whole, you were let alone, I think."
And laid so, on the shelf, she had "looked to the other, who acquiesced." He was a poet, was he not?
"He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,
Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh?"
Oh, what a prize! Had she appreciated adequately her pink of poets? . . . But, after all, she had chosen him, before this lover: they had both been tried.
"Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,
Tekel, found wanting, set aside,
Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark
Till comfort come, and the last be bled:
He? He is tagging your epitaph."
And now sounds that cry of the girl of In a Year.
"If it could only come over again!"
She must have loved him best. If there had been time. . . . She would have probed his heart and found what blood is; then would have twitched the robe from her lay-figure of a poet, and pricked that leathern heart, to find that only verses could spurt from it. . . .
"And late it was easy; late, you walked
Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name
Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;
If I heard good news, you heard the same;
When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;
I could bide my time, keep alive, alert."
Now she is dead: "no doubting more." . . . But somehow he will get his good of it! He will keep alive—and long, she shall see; but not like the others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he means to end. Those others may go on with the world—get gold, get women, betray their wives and their husbands and their friends.
"There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here."[301:1]
And he recurs to her cherished, her dwelt-on, adored defects. Only he could have loved her so, in despite of them. The most complex mood of lovers, this! Humility and pride are mingled; one knows not which is which—the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in those eyes—and yet "the others" did not love so, the defects were valid: there should be some recognition: "I loved, quand même!" Why, it was almost the defects that brought the thrill:
"I liked that way you had with your curls,
Wound to a ball in a net behind:
Your cheek was chaste as a quaker-girl's,
And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,
Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;
And the dented chin, too—what a chin!
There were certain ways when you spoke, some words
That you know you never could pronounce:
You were thin, however; like a bird's
Your hand seemed—some would say, the pounce
Of a scaly-footed hawk—all but!
The world was right when it called you thin.
But I turn my back on the world: I take
Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.
Bid me live, Edith!"
—and she shall be queen indeed, shall have high observance, courtship made perfect. He seems to see her stand there—
"Warm too, and white too: would this wine
Had washed all over that body of yours,
Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!"
. . . The wine of his life, that she would not take—but she shall take it now! He will "slake thirst at her presence" by pouring it away, by drinking it down with her, as long ago he yearned to do. Edith needs help in her grave and finds none near—wants warmth from his heart? He sends it—so.
Assuredly this is the meaning; yet none of the commentators says so. She was the man's whole life, and she has died. Then he dies too, that he may live.
"There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here."
Yet even in this we have no sense of failure, of "giving-in": it is for intenser life that he dies, and she shall be his queen "while his soul endures."
This is the last of my "women unwon." In none of all these poems does courage fail; love is ever God's secret. It comes and goes: the heart has had its moment. It does not come at all: the heart has known the loved one's loveliness. It has but hoped to come: the heart hoped with it. It has set a price upon itself, a cruel crushing price: the heart will pay it, if it can be paid. It has waked too late—it calls from the grave: the heart will follow it there. No love is in vain:
"For God above creates the love to reward the love."