The original title in `Dramatis Personae' (first published in 1864)
was `James Lee'.

The poem consists of a succession of soliloquies (rather than monologues*),
separated, it must be supposed, by longer or shorter intervals of time,
and expressive of subjective states induced in a wife whose husband's love,
if it ever were love, indeed, gradually declines to apathy
and finally entire deadness. What manner of man James Lee was,
is only faintly intimated. The interest centres in, is wholly confined to,
the experiences of the wife's heart, under the circumstances,
whatever they were.

--
* For the distinction between the soliloquy and the
monologue, see the passage given in a note, from Rev. Prof.
Johnson's paper on `Bishop Blougram's Apology', under the
treatment of the monologue, p. 85 {part III of Intro.}.
--

The scene is a cottage on a "bitter coast of France".

I. `James Lee's Wife speaks at the Window'.--The first misgivings
of her heart are expressed; and these misgivings are responded to
by the outer world. Summer has stopped. Will the summer of
her husband's love stop too, and be succeeded by cheerless winter?
The revolt of her heart against such a thought is expressed
in the third stanza.

II. `By the Fireside'.--Here the faintly indefinite misgiving
expressed in the first soliloquy has become a gloomy foreboding of ill;
"the heart shrinks and closes, ere the stroke of doom has attained it."

The fire on the hearth is built of shipwreck wood, which tells of
a "dim dead woe befallen this bitter coast of France",
and omens to her foreboding heart the shipwreck of their home.
The ruddy shaft of light from the casement must, she thinks,
be seen by sailors who envy the warm safe house and happy freight.
But there are ships in port which go to ruin,

"All through worms i' the wood, which crept,
Gnawed our hearts out while we slept:
That is worse."

Her mind reverts to the former occupants of their house,
as if she felt an influence shed within it by some unhappy woman who,
like herself, in Love's voyage, saw planks start and open hell beneath.

III. `In the Doorway'.--As she looks out from the doorway,
everything tells of the coming desolation of winter,
and reflects the desolation which, she feels, is coming upon herself.
The swallows are ready to depart, the water is in stripes, black,
spotted white with the wailing wind. The furled leaf of the f