The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic — Story, Setting & Ideas

Two Kinds of Restraint

The excerpts present two very different forms of emotional constraint. In The Sisters' Tragedy, Muriel's love has been hidden for years, a "vestal flame" burning unseen. She speaks only after the beloved's death, and her confession is met with a kiss, not words. The poem values silence and sacrifice: "The hidden love that guards another's bliss." The language is elevated, the grief decorous.

In Pauline Pavlovna, constraint is social and political. The soldier cannot marry the woman he loves because the Tsar has decreed otherwise. His frustration erupts in bitter jokes: "A lover by imperial ukase!" Pauline, too, is bound—she confesses her love only once, then says, "and then forever hold my peace." Both works explore love that cannot be openly claimed, but the first treats it as a sacred secret, the second as a cruel absurdity.

Voice and Address

The two poems differ markedly in who speaks and how. The Sisters' Tragedy uses a third-person narrator who describes the scene and occasionally editorializes: "No purer love may mortals know." The sisters themselves speak in the excerpt only briefly—Muriel delivers a eulogy for the dead man, praising his "charity" and "honor spotless as unfallen snow." The voice is formal, almost liturgical.

Pauline Pavlovna, by contrast, is all dialogue. The soldier speaks first, in long, agitated speeches full of dashes and exclamations. He addresses Pauline directly, and she responds with short, measured lines. The effect is theatrical: we overhear a private conversation. The soldier's voice is wry and self-pitying ("I thought me poor then. How stript am I now!"), while Pauline's is restrained until her sudden confession. The shift from narrated to dramatic form is the collection's most striking structural feature.

Setting as Symbol

Both excerpts use setting to reinforce emotional states. In The Sisters' Tragedy, the action is confined to a "turret's westward-facing room" with a painted window that "held the sunset's bloom." The sisters are described as "like dusk and dawn"—one dark, one fair—suggesting a symbolic opposition that the poem does not fully develop in the excerpt. The room is a space of grief and revelation, cut off from the world.

Pauline Pavlovna is set in Russia, but the excerpt gives no specific location—only references to the Nevski Prospekt and the Tsar's court. The soldier's speech evokes a world of political maneuvering: "eyes, eyes everywhere!" The setting is not a private chamber but a public sphere where even love is subject to imperial decree. The contrast between the enclosed, timeless room and the dangerous, gossip-ridden court underscores the different kinds of pressure each poem explores.

What the Excerpts Leave Unresolved

The excerpts are incomplete, and the reader should be cautious about inferring the full arc of either poem. In The Sisters' Tragedy, we see only the opening: Muriel's confession and Aglae's silent kiss. The title promises a tragedy, but the excerpt does not reveal what that tragedy is—whether it involves the dead man, the sisters' relationship, or some later event. The poem may continue with a plot or remain a static tableau.

In Pauline Pavlovna, the dialogue breaks off just after Pauline's confession. The soldier proposes three choices—marriage, Siberia, or France—and hints at a fourth, which he dismisses. The reader does not learn which path is taken, nor how the story ends. The excerpt also leaves unclear the relationship between the soldier and Pauline: are they old friends? former lovers? The text suggests a history ("It was that / First made us friends") but does not specify it.

Reading these excerpts side by side, one notices how Aldrich uses different poetic forms to approach similar themes. The title poem is lyrical and retrospective, while Pauline Pavlovna is dramatic and immediate. Both concern love that cannot be openly acknowledged, but the first treats it as a private grief, the second as a public dilemma. A reader new to the collection might start with the title poem for its formal elegance, then move to the later work for its sharper, more conversational edge. The remaining poems—lyrics, interludes, and bagatelles—likely offer further variations on these modes.

That afternoon, the rain flattened the light against my window, and Aldrich’s sisters—their grief so neatly bound by decorum—made me wonder how love ever survives constraint. I set the book down, and my hand drifted to an old translation of Ovid’s Remedia Amoris; or, The Remedy of Love Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes — Text and Context, as if the first poem had already asked its question aloud.