e is dying now, or dead;
I cannot bring myself to quite believe
This is a place you torture people in:
What if this your intelligence were just
A subtlety, an honest wile to work
On a man at unawares? 'Twere worthy you.
No, Sirs, I cannot have the lady dead!
That erect form, flashing brow, fulgurant eye,
That voice immortal (oh, that voice of hers!)
That vision of the pale electric sword
Angels go armed with,--that was not the last
O' the lady! Come, I see through it, you find--
Know the manoeuvre! Also herself said
I had saved her: do you dare say she spoke false?
Let me see for myself if it be so!
Though she were dying a priest might be of use,
The more when he's a friend too,--she called me
Far beyond 'friend.'"

Severed from its connection, much of the charm of the passage vanishes
away: always the test of the finest dramatic work; but enough remains to
give some faint shadow of the real beauty of the work. Observe how the
rhythm trembles in accord with the emotion of the speaker: now slow,
solemn, sad, with something of the quiet of despair; now strenuously
self-deluding and feverishly eager: "Let me see for myself if it be so!"
a line which has all the flush and gasp in it of broken sudden
utterance. And the monologue ends in a kind of desperate resignation:--

"Sirs, I am quiet again. You see, we are
So very pitiable, she and I,
Who had conceivably been otherwise.
Forget distemperature and idle heat;
Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much?
Pompilia will be presently with God;
I am, on earth, as good as out of it,
A relegated priest; when exile ends,
I mean to do my duty and live long.
She and I are mere strangers now: but priests
Should study passion; how else cure mankind,
Who come for help in passionate extremes?
I do but play with an imagined life.

* * * * *

Mere delectation, fit for a minute's dream!--
Just as a drudging student trims his lamp,
Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place
Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,
Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'--
Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes
To the old solitary nothingness.
So I, from such communion, pass content ...

O great, just,