he snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever--"

. . . Is this like a friend? But he accepts her bidding--very nearly.
There are some things, perhaps, that he may fail in, but she need not
fear--he will try.

"Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!"

Again we have the typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor
scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess
of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such
humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "_Does truth sound
bitter, as one at first believes?_" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be,
that very philosophical reflection! . . . This has been called a noble,
tender, an heroic, song of loss. For me there lurks a smile in it. I do
not say that the smile makes the dismissal explicable; rather I a little
wonder how she could have sent him away. But is it certain that she will
not call him back, as she called the snowdrops? He means to hold her
hand a little longer than the others do!

+ + + + +

_The Worst of It_ is the cry of a man whose young, beautiful wife has
left him for a lover. He cares for nothing else in the world; his whole
heart and soul, even now, are set on discovering how he may help her.
But there is no way, for him. And the "worst of it" is that all has
happened _through_ him. She had given him herself, she had bound her
soul by the "vows that damn"--and then had found that she must break
them. And he proclaims her right to break them: no angel set them down!

But _she_--the pride of the day, the swan with no fleck on her wonder of
white; she, with "the brow that looked like marble and smelt like
myrrh," with the eyes and the grace and the glory! Is there to be no
heaven for her--no crown for that brow? Shall other women be sainted,
and not she, graced here beyond all saints?

"Hardly! That must be understood!
The earth is your place of penance, then."

But even the earthly punishment will be heavy for her to bear. . . . If
it had only been he that was false, not she! _He_ could have borne all
easily; speckled as he is, a spot or two would have made little
difference. And he is nothing, while she is all.

Too monstrously the magnanimity of this man weights the scale against
the woman. Instinctively we