women; but
these all, to her mind, resolve themselves into a confession of
weakness; and it grieves her that such a confession should proceed from
one, in all other respects, so much stronger than she. "Were she the
survivor, it would be so easy to her to be faithful to the end!" Her
grief is unselfish. The wrong she apprehends will be done to his
spiritual dignity far more than to his love for her, though with a touch
of feminine inconsistency she identifies the two; and she cannot resign
herself to the idea that he whose earthly trial is "three parts"
overcome will break down under this final test. She accepts it, however,
as the inevitable.

"TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA." The sentiment of this poem can only be rendered
in its concluding words:

"Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn." (vol. vi. p. 153.)

For its pain is that of a heart both restless and weary: ever seeking to
grasp the Infinite in the finite, and ever eluded by it. The sufferer is
a man. He longs to rest in the affection of a woman who loves him, and
whom he also loves; but whenever their union seems complete, his soul is
spirited away, and he is adrift again. He asks the meaning of it
all--where the fault lies, if fault there be; he begs her to help him to
discover it. The Campagna is around them, with its "endless fleece of
feathery grasses," its "everlasting wash of air;" its wide suggestions
of passion and of peace. The clue to the enigma seems to glance across
him, in the form of a gossamer thread. He traces it from point to point,
by the objects on which it rests. But just as he calls his love to help
him to hold it fast, it breaks off, and floats into the invisible. His
doom is endless change. The tired, tantalized spirit must accept it.

"LOVE IN A LIFE" represents the lover as inhabiting the same house with
his unseen love; and pursuing her in it ceaselessly from room to room,
always catching the flutter of her retreating presence, always sure that
the next moment he will overtake her.

"LIFE IN A LOVE" might be the utterance of the same person, when he has
grasped the fact that the loved one is determined to elude him. She may
baffle his pursuit, but he will never desist from it, though it absorb
his whole life.

"THE LOST MISTRESS" is the farewell expression of a discarded love which
has accepted the conditions of friendship. Its tone is full of manly
self-restraint and of patient sadness.

"