"All's over, then: does truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter About your cottage eaves! And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, I noticed that, to-day; One day more breaks them open fully --You know the red turns grey." That is what his life has turned, but he will not maunder about it. "To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest? May I take your hand in mine? Mere friends are we--well, friends the merest Keep much that I resign." He is no more "he" for her: he is a friend like the rest. _He_ resigns. But the friends do not know what "he" knew. "For each glance of the eye so bright and black Though I keep with heart's endeavour-- Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, Though it stay in my soul for ever--" . . . Is this like a friend? But he accepts her bidding--very nearly. There are some things, perhaps, that he may fail in, but she need not fear--he will try. "Yet I will but say what mere friends say, Or only a thought stronger; I will hold your hand but as long as all may, Or so very little longer!" Again we have the typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "_Does truth sound bitter, as one at first believes?_" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be, that very philosophical reflection! . . . This has been called a noble, tender, an heroic, song of loss. For me there lurks a smile in it. I do not say that the smile makes the dismissal explicable; rather I a little wonder how she could have sent him away. But is it certain that she will not call him back, as she called the snowdrops? He means to hold her hand a little longer than the others do! + + + + + _The Worst of It_ is the cry of a man whose young, beautiful wife has left him for a lover. He cares for nothing else in the world; his whole heart and soul, even now, are set on discovering how he may help her. But there is no way, for him. And the "worst of it" is that all has happened _through_ him. She had given him herself, she had bound her soul by the "vows that damn"--and then had found that she must break them. And he proclaims her right to break them: no angel set them down! But _she_--the pride of the day, the swan with no fleck on her wonder of white; she, with "the brow that looked like marble and smelt like myrrh," with the eyes and the grace and the glory! Is there to be no heaven for her--no crown for that brow? Shall other women be sainted, and not she, graced here beyond all saints? "Hardly! That must be understood! The earth is your place of penance, then."