unsteadfast

He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet.

243-244); to Maud (1855), whose heroine's unsteadfast. ness in love leads the speaker to despair and whose voice, "Singing of Death, and of Honour that cannot die" (I.177) then leads him to war; to the idylls of 1859, "Enid," "Elaine," "Vivien," and "Guinevere," whose female figures characterize the roles of women not only in the domestic realm but also in Arthur's kingdom (and, by extension, Victoria's empire).

He decides that she will be "apt to catch at" a "young and active" man like him, "for there's nought / That's more unsteadfast, than a woman's thought" (2476-78).