om
"old earth's" genial wisdom; next, the less exalted plan to be "of use,"
since there is nothing else for her to be--and finally the flight, the
whole renunciation. Echoes hover from all sad women's stories elsewhere
studied: the Tear reigns supreme, the Victim is _in excelsis_--for
hardly did Pompilia suffer such excess of misery, since she at least
could die, remembering Caponsacchi. James Lee's wife will live,
remembering James Lee.

Into the chosen commonplace of the man's name[251:1] we may read a
symbolism. "This is every-day's news," the poet seems to say; "you may
watch the drama for yourselves whenever you so please." And only indeed
in the depth of the woman's passion is there aught unusual. _That_, as
uttered in the final poem, seems more than normal--since she knows her
husband for (as she so strangely says of him) "mere ignoble earth"; yet
still can claim that he "set down to her"

"Love that was life, life that was love,
A tenure of breath at your lips' decree,
A passion to stand as your thoughts approve,
A rapture to fall where your foot might be."

More--or less--than dog-like is such love, for dogs are unaware of
"mere ignoble earth," dogs do not judge and analyse and patronise, and
resolve to "make the low nature better for their throes." Never has the
mistaken idea, the inept conduct, of passion been so subtly shown us,
with so much at once of pity and of irony.

James Lee's wife is a plain woman.

"Why, fade you might to a thing like me,
And your hair grow these coarse hanks of hair,
Your skin, this bark of a gnarled tree" . . .

So she cries in the painful concluding poem. Faded, coarse-haired,
coarse-skinned . . . is all said? But he had married her. In what, do we
find the word of that enigma? In the beauties of her heart and mind--the
passionate, devoted heart, the subtle, brooding mind. These had done the
first work; and alas! they have done the second also. The heart was
passionate and devoted, but it analysed too closely, and then clung too
closely; the mind was subtle and intense, but it could not rest, it
could not "take for granted"--male synonym for married bliss! And of
course we shall not dare deny James Lee his trustiest, sturdiest weapon:
_she had no sense of humour!_ . . . If he was incomplete, so too was
she; and her incompleteness was of the kind that, in this relation,
never fails to fail--his, of the kind that more often than not