ill,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!"

* * * * *

This poem was first published as the second of two headed "Madhouse
Cells"; and though the classifying title was afterwards rejected, that
it should ever have been used is something of a clue to the meaning. But
only "something," for even so, we wonder if the dream were all a dream,
if Porphyria ever came, and, if she did, was this the issue? What truly
happened on that night of wind and rain?--that night which _is_ real,
whatever else is not . . . I ask, we all ask; but does it greatly
matter? Enough that we can grasp the deeper meaning--the sanity in the
madness. As Porphyria, with her lover's head on her breast, sat in the
little cottage on that stormy night, the world at last rejected, the
love at last accepted, she was at her highest pulse of being: she was
_herself_. When in all the rest of life would such another moment
come? . . . How many lovers have mutually murmured that: "If we could
die _now_!"--nothing impaired, nothing gone or to go from them: the
sanity in the madness, the courage in the cowardice. . . . So this lover
felt, brooding in the "madhouse cell" on what had been, or might have
been:

"And thus we sit together now,
And yet God has not said a word!"

Six poems of exultant love--and a man speaks in each! With Browning, the
woman much more rarely is articulate; and when she does speak, even
_he_ puts in her mouth the less triumphant utterances. From the
nameless girl in _Count Gismond_ and from Balaustion--these only--do we
get the equivalent of the man's exultation in such lyrics as I have just
now shown. . . . Always the tear assigned to woman! It may be "true"; I
think it is not at least _so_ true, but true in some degree it must be,
since all legend will thus have it. What then shall a woman say? That
the time has come to alter this? That woman cries "for nothing," like
the children? That she does not understand so well as man the ends of
love? Or that she understands them better? . . . Perhaps all of these
things; perhaps some others also. Let us study now, at all events, the
"tear"; let us see in what, as Browning saw her, the Tro