If the rain ceased and the unlikely sun

Shone out! . . . whom our stars shake, could we emerge

Trustful and clear into the common rank,--

So long deceiving?--Days when Dathan sank

Quick to the pit not past, darling, we verge

Daily O there: have strange changes begun?

Those strange changes have indeed begun--when Lise accepts his argument. Their marriages intrude: he is jealous of the time she spends with her legal lover; she prevents him from enjoying his:

When neither my fondness nor my pity can

O no more bend me to Esther with love,

Gladden the sad eyes my lost eyes have seen

With such and so long ache, ah to unman.

When she calls, small, and grieving I must move,

The horror and beauty of your eyes burn between.

And so a pattern emerges; every aspect of his love for the excellent lady occasions pain. The tense pleasure of enjoying Lise crumbles into the grief of living with Esther. Lise, the lover necessarily shared, but temporarily the poet's alone, seems almost despised once she has been enjoyed:

Sigh as it ends . . . I keep an eye on your