In other poems of the evil passions the relieving element is pity. There are the two poems entitled _Before_ and _After_, that is, before and after the duel. _Before_ is the statement of one of the seconds, with curious side-thoughts introduced by Browning's mental play with the subject, that the duel is absolutely necessary. The challenger has been deeply wronged; and he cannot and will not let forgiveness intermit his vengeance. The man in us agrees with that; the Christian in us says, "Forgive, let God do the judgment." But the passion for revenge has here its way and the guilty falls. And now let Browning speak--Forgiveness is right and the vengeance-fury wrong. The dead man has escaped, the living has not escaped the wrath of conscience; pity is all. Take the cloak from his face, and at first Let the corpse do its worst! How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And, absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change. Ha, what avails death to erase His offence, my disgrace? I would we were boys as of old In the field, by the fold: His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn Were so easily borne! I stand here now, he lies in his place; Cover the face. Again, there are few studies in literature of contempt, hatred and revenge more sustained and subtle than Browning's poem entitled _A Forgiveness_; and the title marks how, though the justice of revenge was accomplished on the woman, yet that pity, even love for her, accompanied and followed the revenge. Our natural revolt against the cold-blooded work of hatred is modified, when we see the man's heart and the woman's soul, into pity for their fate. The man tells his story to a monk in the confessional, who has been the lover of his wife. He is a statesman absorbed in his work, yet he feels that his wife makes his home a heaven, and he carries her presence with him all the day. His wife takes the first lover she meets, and, discovered, tells her husband that she hates him. "Kill me now," she cries. But he despises her too much to hate her; she is not worth killing. Three years they live together in that fashion, till one evening she tells him the truth. "I was jealous of your work. I took my revenge by taking a lover, but I loved you, you only, all the time, and lost you-- I thought you gave Your heart and soul away from me to slave At statecraft. Since my right in you seemed lost, I stung myself to teach you, to your cost, What you rejected could be prized beyond Life, heaven, by the first fool I threw a fond Look on, a fatal word to.