‘Your wife, sir! I must certainly be changed, If I, Aurora, can have said a thing So light, it catches at the knightly spurs Of a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh, And trips him from his honourable sense Of what befits’ ... ‘You wholly misconceive,’ He answered. I returned,—‘I’m glad of it; But keep from misconception, too, yourself: I am not humbled to so low a point, Nor so far saddened. If I am sad at all, Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head, Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth, Though ne’er so merry: I’m perforce more wise, And that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest, Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole, That birthday morning. ’Tis impossible To get at men excepting through their souls, However open their carnivorous jaws; And poets get directlier at the soul, Than any of your œconomists:—for which, You must not overlook the poet’s work When scheming for the world’s necessities. The soul’s the way. Not even Christ Himself Can save man else than as He holds man’s soul; And therefore did He come into our flesh, As some wise hunter creeping on his knees With a torch, into the blackness of some cave, To face and quell the beast there,—take the soul, And so possess the whole man, body and soul. I said, so far, right, yes; not farther, though: We both were wrong that June-day,—both as wrong As an east wind had been. I who talked of art, And you who grieved for all men’s griefs ... what then? We surely made too small a part for God In these things. What we are, imports us more Than what we eat; and life, you’ve granted me, Develops from within. But innermost Of the inmost, most interior of the interne, God claims his own, Divine humanity Renewing nature,—or the piercingest verse, Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keep As much upon the outside of a man, As the very bowl, in which he dips his beard. —And then, ... the rest. I cannot surely speak. Perhaps I doubt more than you doubted then, If I, the poet’s veritable charge, Have borne upon my forehead. If I have, It might feel somewhat liker to a crown, The foolish green one even.—Ah, I think, And chiefly when the sun shines, that I’ve failed. But what then, Romney? Though we fail indeed, You ... I ... a score of such weak workers, ... He Fails never. If He cannot work by us, He will work over us. Does He want a man, Much less a woman, think you? Every time The star winks there, so many souls are born, Who all shall work too. Let our own be calm: We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars, Impatient that we’re nothing.’ ‘Could we sit Just so for ever, sweetest friend,’ he said, ‘My failure would seem better than success.