and who, among her losses, counted it a gain that—
Some respect for social fictions
Hath been also lost by me.
And some generous genuflections
Which my spirit offered free
To the pleasant old conventions of our false humanity.
Vain is the effort wholly to hold passion in the social leash; cold the heart which condemns without hearing, or hears without sympathy.
That love may sometimes spurn the social law with large excuse, this nor any poet denies; but what if untrue to its own vows, traitor to itself, faithless to the faithful? Does not the rosy finger of the god inscribe a code severer than any Draco's laws? Its very victories over society's edicts proclaim that its own requirements are yet more unflinching. This is the secret which is embodied in Shakespeare's magnificent paradox:
Love is too young to know what Conscience is;
Yet who knows not Conscience was born of love?
No question has wrought human emotion to whiter heat than this, and the master painters of passion have nowhere found fitter stuff to their hands. Repeatedly has Browning treated of it, from many sides, from all angles of observation. The whole of his largest effort, "The Ring and The Book," is occupied with it; if he could, he would say all on all sides. Pompilia may be white as the doe of Rylestone, or red with the brand of the scarlet letter, it is the poet's duty to mirror those wild passions in their sinfulest shades and fairest palliations.
Take this subtle question: May not the very excess of love lead love astray? Intolerant of a neighbor, let alone a rival, it may grasp the weapon fatal to itself. Such is the story limned forth in the poem entitled "A Forgiveness." The happy husband, high in power and place, returns one day to find a low-born rival fleeing from his hearth. The wife denies not, and for three years they live as strangers in their palace. Then the burden becomes too great, and seeking him she exclaims,—
