I quote her outburst.

It is full of Browning's keen poetry; and the first verse of it may well be compared with a similar moment in _By the Fireside_, where nature is made to play the same part, but succeeds as here she fails: Now I may speak: you fool, for all Your lore! Who made things plain in vain?
What was the sea for?
What, the grey Sad church, that solitary day, Crosses and graves and swallows' call?
Was there nought better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
No wise beginning, here and now, What cannot grow complete (earth's feat) And heaven must finish, there and then?
No tasting earth's true food for men, Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?
No grasping at love, gaining a share O' the sole spark from God's life at strife With death, so, sure of range above The limits here?
For us and love.
Failure; but, when God fails, despair.
This you call wisdom?
Thus you add Good unto good again, in vain?
You loved, with body worn and weak; I loved, with faculties to seek: Were both loves worthless since ill-clad?
Let the mere star-fish in his vault Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed, Rose-jacynth to the finger tips: He, whole in body and soul, outstrips Man, found with either in default.
But what's whole, can increase no more, Is dwarfed and dies, since here's its sphere.
The devil laughed at you in his sleeve! You knew not?
That I well believe; Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.
For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist, Ankle or something.

"Pooh," cry you?
At any rate she danced, all say, Vilely; her vogue has had its day.
Here comes my husband from his whist.
Here the woman speaks for herself.

It is characteristic of Browning's boldness that there are a whole set of poems in which he imagines the unexpressed thoughts which a woman revolves in self-communion under the questionings and troubles of the passions, and chiefly of the passion of love.

The most elaborate of these is _James Lee's Wife_, which tells what she thinks of when after long years she has been unable to retain her husband's love.