Again he says to her,—
Pain had been saved,
Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned
As woman only, holding all your art
As attribute to that dear sovereignty—
Concentering your power in home delights
Which penetrate and purify the world.
Armgart will not listen; her whole heart is enlisted in music. She says to the Graf,—
I will live alone and pour my pain
With passion into music, where it turns
To what is best within my better self.
A year later Armgart's throat has failed, and her career has ended in nothing. Then her servant and friend, Walpurga, who has devoted her life to Armgart, speaks that lesson George Eliot would convey in this little story, that a true life is a life of service. Walpurga chides Armgart's false ambition in these words:
I but stand
As a small symbol for the mighty sum
Of claims unpaid to needy myriads;
I think you never set your loss beside
That mighty deficit. Is your work gone—
The prouder queenly work that paid itself
And yet was overpaid with men's applause!
Are you no longer chartered, privileged,
But sunk to simple woman's penury,
To ruthless Nature's chary average—
Where is the rebel's right for you alone?
Noble rebellion lifts a common load;
But what is he who flings his own load off
And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right?
Say, rather, the deserter's.
Armgart learns from her master, the old and noble Leo, that he had also been ambitious, that he had won only small success, and that he now lived for the sake of the good he could do to those about him. He says to her,—
We must bury our dead joys,
And live above them with a living world.
Then Armgart is brought to see that there is a noble privilege in living as her friend has lived, in making music a joy to others, and in doing what she can to make life better for humanity.
There are two very distinct ideas running through the poem, that a life guided by altruism is better than—a merely artistic life, and that woman is to find in home and wedded joys that opportunity for the development of her soul, without which no artistic career can be complete. The words of the Graf speak George Eliot's own thought, that Armgart's life and her art would have been both more perfect and more noble had she held all her art as attribute to the dear sovereignty of affection.