epitomised in a haunting and ambiguous phrase--

"For each man kills the thing he loves."

Thus, even in Shakespeare, the Girl is not so much that transient,
exquisite thing as she is the Woman-in-love; thus, even for Rosalind,
there waits the Emersonian _precis_--

"Whither went the lovely hoyden?
Disappeared in blessed wife;
Servant to a wooden cradle,
Living in a baby's life."

I confess that this tabloid "story of a woman" has, ever since my first
discovery of it, been a source of anger to me; and I do not think that
such resentment should be reckoned as a manifestation of modern
decadence. The hustling out of sight of that "lovely hoyden" is unworthy
of a poet; poet's eyes should rest longer upon beauty so
irrecoverable--for though the wife and mother be the happiest that ever
was, she can never be a girl again.

In the same way, to me the earliest verses of _Evelyn Hope_ are the
loveliest. As I read on, doubts and questions gather fast--

"But the time will come--at last it will,
When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
In the lower earth, in the years long still,
That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
And your mouth of your own geranium's red--
And what you would do with me, in fine,
In the new life come in the old one's stead.

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men,
Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,
Either I missed, or itself missed me:
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
What is the issue? let us see!

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while.
My heart seemed full as it could hold?
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,
And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.
So, hush--I will give you this leaf to keep:
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
You will wake, and remember, and understand."

* * * * *

Here the average man is revived, the man who can imagine no meaning for
the loveliness of a girl's body and soul but that it shall "do
something" with him. When they meet in the "new life come in the old
one's stead," this is the question he looks forward to ask