Let me see for myself if it be so!
Though she were dying a priest might be of use,
The more when he's a friend too,—she called me
Far beyond 'friend.'"
Severed from its connection, much of the charm of the passage vanishes away: always the test of the finest dramatic work; but enough remains to give some faint shadow of the real beauty of the work. Observe how the rhythm trembles in accord with the emotion of the speaker: now slow, solemn, sad, with something of the quiet of despair; now strenuously self-deluding and feverishly eager: "Let me see for myself if it be so!" a line which has all the flush and gasp in it of broken sudden utterance. And the monologue ends in a kind of desperate resignation:—
"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are
So very pitiable, she and I,
Who had conceivably been otherwise.
Forget distemperature and idle heat;
Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much?