Whether Pauline herself stand for an actual woman--Miss Flower or another--or for the nascent spell of womanhood--she plays, for one who is ostensibly the heroine of the poem, a discouragingly minor part.

No wonder she felt tempted to advise the burning of so unflattering a record.

Instead of the lyric language of love, she has to receive the confessions of a subtle psychologist, who must unlock the tumultuous story of his soul "before he can sing." And these confessions are of a kind rare even amongst self-revelations of genius.

Pauline's lover is a dreamer, but a dreamer of an uncommon species.

He is preoccupied with the processes of his mind, but his mind ranges wildly over the universe and chafes at the limitations it is forced to recognise.