is a _vraie verite_ which only the
poet, evolving from dramatic concepts rather than attempting to
concentrate these in a quick, moving verisimilitude, can attempt. The
passing hither and thither of Pippa, like a beneficent Fate, a wandering
chorus from a higher amid the discordant medley of a lower world,
changing the circumstances and even the natures of certain more or less
heedless listeners by the wild free lilt of her happy song of innocence,
is of this _vraie verite_. It is so obviously true, spiritually, that
it is unreal in the commonplace of ordinary life. Its very effectiveness is
too apt for the dramatist, who can ill afford to tamper further with the
indifferent banalities of actual existence. The poet, unhampered by the
exigencies of dramatic realism, can safely, and artistically, achieve an
equally exact, even a higher verisimilitude, by means which are, or
should be, beyond adoption by the dramatist proper.

But over and above any 'nice discrimination,' "Pippa Passes" is simply a
poem, a lyrical masque with interspersed dramatic episodes, and
subsidiary interludes in prose. The suggestion recently made that it
should be acted is a wholly errant one. The finest part of it is
unrepresentable. The rest would consist merely of a series of tableaux,
with conversational accompaniment.

The opening scene, "the large mean airy chamber," where Pippa, the
little silk-winder from the mills at Asolo, springs from bed, on her New
Year's Day _festa_, and soliloquises as she dresses, is as true as it
is lovely when viewed through the rainbow glow of the poetic atmosphere:
but how could it succeed on the stage? It is not merely that the
monologue is too long: it is too inapt, in its poetic richness, for its
purpose. It is the poet, not Pippa, who evokes this sweet sunrise-music,
this strain of the "long blue solemn hours serenely flowing." The
dramatic poet may occupy himself with that deeper insight, and the wider
expression of it, which is properly altogether beyond the scope of the
playwright. In a word, he may irradiate his theme with the light that
never was on sea or land, nor will he thereby sacrifice aught of
essential truth: but his comrade must see to it that he is content with
the wide liberal air of the common day. The poetic alchemist may turn a
sword into pure gold: the playwright will concern himself with the due
usage of the weapon as we know it, and attribute to it no transcendent
value, no miraculous