statecraft. Since my right in you seemed lost,
I stung myself to teach you, to your cost,
What you rejected could be prized beyond
Life, heaven, by the first fool I threw a fond
Look on, a fatal word to.

"Ah, is that true, you loved and still love? Then contempt perishes, and
hate takes its place. Write your confession, and die by my hand.
Vengeance is foreign to contempt, you have risen to the level at which
hate can act. I pardon you, for as I slay hate departs--and now, sir,"
and he turns to the monk--

She sleeps, as erst
Beloved, in this your church: ay, yours!

and drives the poisoned dagger through the grate of the confessional
into the heart of her lover.

This is Browning's closest study of hate, contempt, and revenge. But
bitter and close as it is, what is left with us is pity for humanity,
pity for the woman, pity for the lover, pity for the husband.

Again, in the case of Sebald and Ottima in _Pippa Passes_, pity also
rules. Love passing into lust has led to hate, and these two have slaked
their hate and murdered Luca, Ottima's husband. They lean out of the
window of the shrub-house as the morning breaks. For the moment their
false love is supreme. Their crime only creeps like a snake, half
asleep, about the bottom of their hearts; they recall their early
passion and try to brazen it forth in the face of their murder, which
now rises, dreadful and more dreadful, into threatening life in their
soul. They reanimate their hate of Luca to lower their remorse, but at
every instant his blood stains their speech. At last, while Ottima loves
on, Sebald's dark horror turns to hatred of her he loved, till she lures
him back into desire of her again. The momentary lust cannot last, but
Browning shoots it into prominence that the outburst of horror and
repentance may be the greater.

I kiss you now, dear Ottima, now and now!
This way? Will you forgive me--be once more
My great queen?

At that moment Pippa passes by, singing:

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!

Something in it smites Sebald's heart like a hammer of God. He repents,
but in the cowardice of repentance curses her. That baseness I do not
think Browning should have introduced, no, nor certain carnal phr