"For each glance of the eye so bright and black
Though I keep with heart's endeavour—
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever—"
. . . Is this like a friend? But he accepts her bidding—very nearly. There are some things, perhaps, that he may fail in, but she need not fear—he will try.
"Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!"
Again we have the typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "Does truth sound bitter, as one at first believes?" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be, that very philosophical reflection! . . . This has been called a noble, tender, an heroic, song of loss. For me there lurks a smile in it. I do not say that the smile makes the dismissal explicable; rather I a little wonder how she could have sent him away. But is it certain that she will not call him back, as she called the snowdrops? He means to hold her hand a little longer than the others do!
The Worst of It is the cry of a man whose young, beautiful wife has left him for a lover. He cares for nothing else in the world; his whole heart and soul, even now, are set on discovering how he may help her. But there is no way, for him. And the "worst of it" is that all has happened through him. She had given him herself, she had bound her soul by the "vows that damn"—and then had found that she must break them. And he proclaims her right to break them: no angel set them down!
But she—the pride of the day, the swan with no fleck on her wonder of white; she, with "the brow that looked like marble and smelt like myrrh," with the eyes and the grace and the glory! Is there to be no heaven for her—no crown for that brow? Shall other women be sainted, and not she, graced here beyond all saints?
"Hardly! That must be understood!
The earth is your place of penance, then."
But even the earthly punishment will be heavy for her to bear. . . . If it had only been he that was false, not she! He could have borne all easily; speckled as he is, a spot or two would have made little difference. And he is nothing, while she is all.
Too monstrously the magnanimity of this man weights the scale against the woman. Instinctively we seek a different "excuse" for her from that which he makes—though indeed there scarce is one at which he does not catch.