For, Mother, the voice was the voice of the soul."



LATER IDYLLS 255



(" Mother " means the Eoman Church) ; when this "first
and greatest of men," who is so impressive when he
" flames at a public wrong," tells the woman who has
just, I ■will not mention broken her marriage vows,
but deserted her infant child, that there was "never
the heart among women more tender and true," and
exhorts her, her conscience having begun to awaken
about her child, " Comfort yourseK ; the man will
take care of his own ; " when, her lover being dead,
she has written home to the nurse to inquire after
the child, this woman finds the culmination of her
husband's brutality in the fact that he sends her the
information she seeks in a newspaper-cutting from
among the deaths, and addresses her by her maiden
name; — when all this is told by the woman herself
with an air of heroic penitence, as if, though of course
she was very much to be blamed, she was very much
to be pitied too — for there is plenty of incidental
agony — we feel that either the poet is playing some
trick upon us, or that this is bewilderment absolute.
