good God! Miserable me!"

From the passionate defence of Caponsacchi, we pass to the death-bed of
_Pompilia_. Like Shakespeare, Browning makes all his heroines young; and
this child of seventeen, who has so much of the wisdom of youth, tells
on her death-bed, to the kind people about her, the story of her life,
in a simple, child-like, dreamy, wondering way, which can be compared,
so far as I know, with nothing else ever written.

"Then a soul sighs its lowest and its last
After the loud ones;"

and we have here the whole heart of a woman, the whole heart and the
very speech and accent of the most womanly of women. No woman has ever
written anything so close to the nature of women, and I do not know what
other man has come near to this strange and profoundly manly intuition,
this "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies," as Mr.
Swinburne has said, "the poet of Pompilia." All _The Ring and the Book_
is a leading up to this monologue, and a commentary round it. It is a
song of serene and quiet beauty, beautiful as evening-twilight. To
analyse it is to analyse a rose's perfume: to quote from it is to tear
off the petal of a rose. Here, however, for their mere colour and scent,
are a few lines. Pompilia is speaking of the birth of her child.

"A whole long fortnight: in a life like mine
A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.
All women are not mothers of a boy,
Though they live twice the length of my whole life,
And, as they fancy, happily all the same.
There I lay, then, all my great fortnight long,
As if it would continue, broaden out
Happily more and more, and lead to heaven:
Christmas before me,--was not that a chance?
I never realized God's birth before--
How He grew likest God in being born.
This time I felt like Mary, had my babe
Lying a little on my breast like hers."

With a beautiful and holy confidence she now "lays away her babe with
God," secure for him in the future. She forgives the husband who has
slain her: "I could not love him, but his mother did." And with her last
breath she blesses the friend who has saved her:--

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death.

* * * * *

So, let him wait God's instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty!