And again he warns the monster:
“Ay: you are great
Above us by your station, as the vulture
Upon his mountain pinnacle. What then?
The arrow makes a pathway in the air:
The peasant’s hands can reach the feathered tyrant,
And from the vale quench his despotic eye.”
—“Vulture,” mark: not eagle.
We find a profound study in Mary’s love for Philip, and particularly in its persistence. How she could feel toward such a man anything beyond wife-like duty—she, too, who had loved Reginald Pole from her childhood—is mysterious indeed. It will doubtless be said that the poet intends this new love for a part of her madness—like her passion for the worthless Courtenaye: her craving for love being such as to invest any spouse with “Cytherea’s zone.” Then, again, the treatment Pole receives at Philip’s hands, and his sublime bearing under it, ought to have the result of alienating her affections from the Spaniard even more than the latter’s behavior to herself. Hear her cry, one moment:
“Poor heart!