After the loud ones;"
and we have here the whole heart of a woman, the whole heart and the very speech and accent of the most womanly of women. No woman has ever written anything so close to the nature of women, and I do not know what other man has come near to this strange and profoundly manly intuition, this "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies," as Mr. Swinburne has said, "the poet of Pompilia." All The Ring and the Book is a leading up to this monologue, and a commentary round it. It is a song of serene and quiet beauty, beautiful as evening-twilight. To analyse it is to analyse a rose's perfume: to quote from it is to tear off the petal of a rose. Here, however, for their mere colour and scent, are a few lines. Pompilia is speaking of the birth of her child.
"A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine
A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.
All women are not mothers of a boy,
Though they live twice the length of my whole life,
And, as they fancy, happily all the same.
There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long,
As if it would continue, broaden out