was `James Lee'.

The poem consists of a succession of soliloquies (rather than monologues*),
separated, it must be supposed, by longer or shorter intervals of time,
and expressive of subjective states induced in a wife whose husband's love,
if it ever were love, indeed, gradually declines to apathy
and finally entire deadness. What manner of man James Lee was,
is only faintly intimated. The interest centres in, is wholly confined to,
the experiences of the wife's heart, under the circumstances,
whatever they were.

--
* For the distinction between the soliloquy and the monologue,
see the passage given in a note, from Rev. Prof. Johnson's paper
on `Bishop Blougram's Apology', under the treatment of the monologue,
p. 85 {part III of Intro.}.
--

The scene is a cottage on a "bitter coast of France".

I. `James Lee's Wife speaks at the Window'. -- The first misgivings
of her heart are expressed; and these misgivings are responded to
by the outer world. Summer has stopped. Will the summer of
her husband's love stop too, and be succeeded by cheerless winter?
The revolt of her heart against such a thought is expressed
in the third stanza.

II. `By the Fireside'. -- Here the faintly indefinite misgiving
expressed in the first soliloquy has become a gloomy foreboding of ill;
"the heart shrinks and closes, ere the stroke of doom has attained it."