"I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright, particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere."
Then she gives a touch of woman's petulance at being so ensnared:—
"'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In my heart's table,—heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favor."
How frank and strong is the expression of her love! The lines are chiselled by a delicate distinctness: they suggest her profile. The verse has the high instep of a woman who can be haughty enough to crush the blossoms of this new, surprising sentiment.
She does not half listen to the gossip of Parolles. It is the absent Bertram who is drawing her thoughts to wander in the distance, to be in imagination for him
"A thousand loves,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster."
It is a pity "that wishing well had not a body in 't."
Now as Parolles departs, saying, "Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee," Helena shows us the originality of her character by compelling love, that is usually of a habit so timid and retiring, to put it off and become adventurous. She chides the weakness of sitting still to mope and be macerated by passion. Something must be done to justify and consecrate it, to vindicate Nature's scope: she already claims Bertram by divine sanction of her feeling. No matter whether he knows it or not, she knows he is that other part of her which her clear soul misses; and Fate shall not be pardoned if it leaves her less whole and rounded than she ought to be. Hitherto she is but half a person, and that half is disabled at the discovery. Love fills her with this rebuke of incompleteness, till she cannot tolerate thus being half-born into the world. When love takes hold of such determined minds, who are capable of willing and well endowed to confirm the will in action, the feminine traits acquire a bravery which inspires an invention not inconsistent with womanhood. She must find some way to reach the court, and put love's halo round his person: perhaps it will be absorbed and mingle with his blood. When the heart pronounces strongly, its meaning is sure to gather on the countenance and lend to conduct the purple of victory. So Helena will not have a secret, to prey like a worm upon the damask buds of all her youth. "Fortune," she said, "was no goddess, that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; love, no god, that would not extend his might only where qualities were level." She will not risk leaving the business to Heaven, and sit half made up till Providence may by chance observe her plight.
"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
What hath been cannot be."