Browning's Heroines

an she not have done with thinking, or at all events with talking about thinking? Perhaps, with every striving, she shall achieve no more than that: to say noth

wild as w

hen birds debate about some tiny marvel of those marvel

creatur

we s

hide th

on c

lls on joy and kills it; and that may just as well be "talking" as aught else! He sh

false as

to t

ld abstraction; she does

he apple

er

lose o

an

od and

a c

an and

thine

only tea

I o

ak thy spe

thy th

thou re

dem

flesh a

hy h

*

in her soul that this is not the way. Something is wrong. She hears, but cannot

all be t

to-n

bury

of s

little w

lish

all asle

by t

Herself. Then the real herself sha

moral force? By her silence, her abjection, her suppression, he shall prevail: not otherwise. And so, if this endure, wh

that in By the Fireside, one of hi

eel your brai

anticipat

just befor

e me see, f

hs of th

o. . . . As the poet grew, so grew the man in Browning: we reach By the Fireside from these. For the woman in the Last Word, strong to lay aside herself, to "think his thought," could with that strength, used otherwise, bring that husband to

ct wife,

own, oh eye

ld I dare loo

side should

grey he

*

nfirm me!

ack, is it

little I dr

blest that,

s the wast

w read

f thou r

dem

flesh a

hy h

ire, and she so yield, that backward-treading path

th me to the

and love i

forget and

osary in a

r what we

sary-the wife who had begun so soon to know

on the bough: but talking, as this wife will quickly see, is not the sum of individuality's expression. She can teach him-learning from him all th

all be t

to-n

bury

of s

ghest in the tyranny of to-night. Then be sure that she, so loving a