f-fact details, such as the bowl
of water that stood amidst flowers, and in which the sister Amelotte
"slid a cup" and offered it to Aloyse to drink. But the one great charm
of the poem lies in its subtle and most powerful psychical analysis,
seen foreshadowed in the first mention of the bride sitting in the
shade, but first felt strongly when she begs her sister to pray, and
again when she tells how, at God's hint, she had whispered something of
the whole tale to her sister who slept

The dread introspection pictured after the sin is in the highest degree
tragic, and affects one like remorse in its relentlessness, although
less remorse than fear of discovery. The sickness of the following
condition, with its yearnings, longings, dizziness, is very nobly
done, and delicate as is the theme, and demanding a touch of unerring
strength, yet lightness, the part of the poem concerned with it contains
certain of the most beautiful and stirring things. The madness (for it
is not less than such) in which at the sea-side, believing Urscelyn to
be lost, the bride tells the whole tale, whilst her curse laughed within
her to see the amazement and anger of her brothers and of her father,
is doubtless true enough to the frenzied state of her mind; but my
sympathies go out less to that part of the poem than to the subsequent
part, in which the bride-mother is described as leaning along in thought
after her child, till tears, not like a wedded girl's, fall among her
curls. Highly dramatic, too, is the passage in which she fears to curse
the evil men whose evil hands have taken her child, lest from evil lips
the curse should be a blessing.

The characterisation seemed to be highly powerful, and, so far as it
went, finely contrasted. I could almost have wished that the love for
which the bride suffers so much had been more dwelt upon, and Urscelyn
had been made somehow more worthy of such love and sacrifice. The only
point in which the poem struck me, after mature reflection, as less
admirable than certain others of the author's, lay in the circumstance
that the narrative moves slowly, but, of course, it should be remembered
that the poem is one of emotion, not incident. There are most magical
flashes of imagery in the poem, notably in the passage beginning

Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
Gave her a sick recoil;
As, dip thy fingers through the green
That masks a pool, where they have been,
T