‘Ah, why,’ said Ellen, sighing to herself, ‘Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, And nature, that is kind in woman’s breast, And reason, that in man is wise and good, And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,-- Why do not these prevail for human life, To keep two hearts together, that began Their springtime with one love, and that have need Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet To grant, or be received; while that poor bird-- O, come and hear him! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature, One of God’s simple children, that yet know not The Universal Parent, _how_ he sings! As if he wished the firmament of heaven Should listen, and give back to him the voice Of his triumphant constancy and love. The proclamation that he makes, how far His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.’ The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable. But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly. Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought. ‘As if,’ she says,--‘I know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if.’ The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen’s character is throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength.[34] [34] I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in _Maud_: For a great speculation had fail’d; And ever he mutter’d and madden’d, and ever wann’d with despair; And out he walk’d, when the wind like a broken worldling wail’d, And the _flying gold of the ruin’d woodlands drove, thro’ the air_. There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. _The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near!’ And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late.’ The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear!’ And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’_ It is, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just state of the human mind. JOHN STUART MILL 1806-1873