and how her own infinite sweetness of spirit is mirrored in the stanza,
“I will look out to his future;
I will bless it till it shine,
Should he ever be a suitor
Unto sweeter eyes than mine.”
And read her own self-revelation again in “A Denial,”
“We have met late—it is too late to meet,
O friend, not more than friend!”
But the denial breaks down, and the last lines tell the story:
“Here’s no more courage in my soul to say
‘Look in my face and see.’”
And in that last line of “Insufficiency,”
“I love thee so, Dear, that I only can leave thee.”
In “Question and Answer,” in “Proof and Disproof,” “A Valediction,” “Loved Once,” and “Inclusions,” he who reads between the lines and has the magic of divination may read the story of her inner life.
In the poem “Confessions” is touched a note of mystical, spiritual romance, spiritual tragedy, wholly of the inner life, that entirely differentiates from any other poetic expression of Mrs. Browning. In one stanza occur these lines: