grace from one who covertly encores the swift vengeance portrayed in "A Forgiveness," or the undying unforgetfulness of the verses I have just quoted. Let the poet make his own apology, for himself, for me, and for all our sex. I find it in his "Parleyings with Daniel Bartoli":
Man's best and woman's worst amount
So nearly to the same thing, that we count
In man a miracle of faithfulness.
If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress
On the main fact, that love, when love indeed,
Is wholly solely truth from first to last—
Truth—all the rest a lie.
I turn another facette of this gem. What has this singer to say of the permanence of love? What replies he to Tennyson's question?
Love that hath us in his net,
Can he pass, and we forget?
Like Tennyson's, his answer is,—
Ah! No, no!
This answer is given in more than one passage, and when treating of more than one type of temperament. We cannot shake off our old loves. They come unbidden to our feasts; their cold ghosts take up their abode in our new houses; they slip their shadowy arms between us and our new embraces. So the poet in "St. Martin's Summer,"—
Ay, dead loves are the potent!
Like any cloud they used you.
Mere semblance you, but substance they.
Build we no mansion, weave we no tent;
Mere flesh, their spirit interfused you;
Hence, I say.
All theirs, none yours, the glamour;
Theirs each low word that won me.
Soft look that found me love's, and left
What else but you?—The tears and clamor,
That's all your very own. Undone me—
Ghost-bereft!
