<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116057" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Fourth Book</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THEY met still sooner. 'Twas a year from thence<br>When Lucy Gresham, the sick semptress girl,<br>Who sewed by Marian's chair so still and quick,<br>And leant her head upon the back to cough<br>More freely when, the mistress turning round,<br>The others took occasion to laugh out,–<br>Gave up a last. Among the workers, spoke<br>A bold girl with black eyebrows and red lips,–<br>'You know the news? Who's dying, do you think?<br>Our Lucy Gresham. I expected it<br>As little as Nell Hart's wedding. Blush not, Nell,<br>Thy curls be red enough without thy cheeks;<br>And, some day, there'll be found a man to dote<br>On red curls.–Lucy Gresham swooned last night,<br>Dropped sudden in the street while going home;<br>And now the baker says, who took her up<br>And laid her by her grandmother in bed,<br>He'll give her a week to die in. Pass the silk.<br>Let's hope he gave her a loaf too, within reach,<br>For otherwise they'll starve before they die,<br>That funny pair of bedfellows! Miss Bell,<br>I'll thank you for the scissors. The old crone<br>Is paralytic–that's the reason why<br>Our Lucy's thread went faster than her breath,<br>Which went too quick, we all know. Marian Erle!<br>Why, Marian Erle, you're not the fool to cry?<br>Your tears spoil Lady Waldemar's new dress,<br>You piece of pity!'<br> Marian rose up straight,<br>And, breaking through the talk and through the work,<br>Went outward, in the face of their surprise,<br>To Lucy's home, to nurse her back to life<br>Or down to death. She knew by such an act,<br>All place and grace were forfeit in the house,<br>Whose mistress would supply the missing hand<br>With necessary, not inhuman haste,<br>And take no blame. But pity, too, had dues:<br>She could not leave a solitary soul<br>To founder in the dark, while she sate still<br>And lavished stitches on a lady's hem<br>As if no other work were paramount.<br>'Why, God,' thought Marian, 'has a missing hand<br>This moment; Lucy wants a drink, perhaps.<br>Let others miss me! never miss me, God!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So Marian sat by Lucy's bed, content<br>With duty, and was strong, for recompense,<br>To hold the lamp of human love arm-high<br>To catch the death-strained eyes and comfort them,<br>Until the angels, on the luminous side<br>Of death, had got theirs ready. And she said,<br>When Lucy thanked her sometimes, called her kind,<br>It touched her strangely. 'Marian Erle called kind!<br>What, Marian, beaten and sold, who could not die!<br>'Tis verily good fortune to be kind.<br>Ah, you,' she said, 'who are born to such a grace,<br>Be sorry for the unlicensed class, the poor,<br>Reduced to think the best good fortune means<br>That others, simply, should be kind to them.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From sleep to sleep while Lucy slid away<br>So gently, like a light upon a hill,<br>Of which none names the moment when it goes,<br>Though all see when 'tis gone,–a man came in<br>And stood beside the bed. The old idiot wretch<br>Screamed feebly, like a baby overlain,<br>'Sir, sir, you won't mistake me for the corpse?<br>Don't look at me, sir! never bury me!<br>Although I lie here, I'm alive as you,<br>Except my legs and arms,–I eat and drink,<br>And understand,–(that you're the gentleman<br>Who fits the funerals up, Heaven speed you, sir,)<br>And certainly I should be livelier still<br>If Lucy here . . sir, Lucy is the corpse . .<br>Had worked more properly to buy me wine:<br>But Lucy, sir, was always slow at work,<br>I shan't lose much by Lucy. Marian Erle,<br>Speak up and show the gentleman the corpse.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then a voice said, 'Marian Erle.' She rose;<br>It was the hour for angels–there, stood hers!<br>She scarcely marvelled to see Romney Leigh.<br>As light November snows to empty nests,<br>As grass to graves, as moss to mildewed stones,<br>As July suns to ruins, through the rents,<br>As ministering spirits to mourners, through a loss,<br>As Heaven itself to men, through pangs of death,<br>He came uncalled wherever grief had come.<br>'And so,' said Marian Erle, 'we meet anew,'<br>And added softly, 'so, we shall not part.'<br>He was not angry that she had left the house<br>Wherein he placed her. Well–she had feared it might<br>Have vexed him. Also, when he found her set<br>On keeping, though the dead was out of sight,<br>That half-dead, half-live body left behind<br>With cankerous heart and flesh,–which took your best<br>And cursed you for the little good it did,<br>(Could any leave the bedrid wretch alone,<br>So joyless, she was thankless even to God,<br>Much less to you?) he did not say 'twas well<br>Yet Marian thought he did not take it ill,–<br>Since day by day he came, and, every day,<br>She felt within his utterance and his eyes<br>A closer, tenderer presence of the soul,<br>Until at last he said, 'We shall not part.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On that same day, was Marian's work complete:<br>She had smoothed the empty bed, and swept the floor<br>Of coffin sawdust, set the chairs anew<br>The dead had ended gossip in, and stood<br>In that poor room so cold and orderly,<br>The door-key in her hand, prepared to go<br>As they had, howbeit not their way. He spoke.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Dear Marian, of one clay God made us all,<br>And though men push and poke and paddle in't<br>(As children play at fashioning dirt-pies)<br>And call their fancies by the name of facts,<br>Assuming difference, lordship, privilege,<br>When all's plain dirt,–they come back to it at last;<br>The first grave-digger proves it with a spade,<br>And pats all even. Need we wait for this,<br>You, Marian, and I, Romney?'<br> She at that,<br>Looked blindly in his face, as when one looks<br>Through drying autumn-rains to find the sky.<br>He went on speaking.<br> 'Marian, I being born<br>What men call noble, and you, issued from<br>The noble people,–though the tyrannous sword<br>Which pierced Christ's heart, has cleft the world in twain<br>'Twixt class and class, opposing rich to poor,–<br>Shall we keep parted? Not so. Let us lean<br>And strain together rather, each to each,<br>Compress the red lips of this gaping wound,<br>As far as two souls can,–ay, lean and league,<br>I, from my superabundance,–from your want,<br>You,–joining in a protest 'gainst the wrong<br>On both sides!'–<br> All the rest, he held her hand<br>In speaking, which confused the sense of much;<br>Her heart, against his words, beat out so thick<br>They might as well be written on the dust<br>Where some poor bird, escaping from hawk's beak,<br>Has dropped, and beats its shuddering wings,–the lines<br>Are rubbed so,–yet 'twas something like to this,<br>–'That they two, standing at the two extremes<br>Of social classes, had received one seal,<br>Been dedicate and drawn beyond themselves<br>To mercy and ministration,–he, indeed,<br>Through what he knew, and she, through what she felt,<br>He, by man's conscience, she, by woman's heart,<br>Relinquishing their several 'vantage posts<br>Of wealthy case and honourable toil,<br>To work with God at love. And, since God willed<br>That, putting out his hand to touch this ark,<br>He found a woman's hand there, he'd accept<br>The sign too, hold the tender fingers fast,<br>And say, 'My fellow-worker, be my wife!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She told the tale with simple, rustic turns,–<br>Strong leaps of meaning in her sudden eyes<br>That took the gaps of any imperfect phrase<br>Of the unschooled speaker: I have rather writ<br>The thing I understood so, than the thing<br>I heard so. And I cannot render right<br>Her quick gesticulation, wild yet soft,<br>Self-startled from the habitual mood she used,<br>Half sad, half languid,–like dumb creatures (now<br>A rustling bird, and now a wandering deer,<br>Or squirrel against the oak-gloom flashing up<br>His sidelong burnished head, in just her way<br>Of savage spontaneity,) that stir<br>Abruptly the green silence of the woods,<br>And make it stranger, holier, more profound;<br>As Nature's general heart confessed itself<br>Of life, and then fell backward on repose.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I kissed the lips that ended.–'So indeed<br>He loves you, Marian?'<br> 'Loves me!' She looked up<br>With a child's wonder when you ask him first<br>Who made the sun–a puzzled blush, that grew,<br>Then broke off in a rapid radiant smile<br>Of sure solution. 'Loves me! he loves all,–<br>And me, of course. He had not asked me else<br>To work with him for ever, and be his wife.'<br>Her words reproved me. This perhaps was love–<br>To have its hands too full of gifts to give,<br>For putting out a hand to take a gift;<br>To love so much, the perfect round of love<br>Includes, in strictly conclusion, the being loved;<br>As Eden-dew went up and fell again,<br>Enough for watering Eden. Obviously<br>She had not thought about his love at all:<br>The cataracts of her soul had poured themselves<br>And risen self-crowned in rainbow; would she ask<br>Who crowned her?–it sufficed that she was crowned.<br>With women of my class, 'tis otherwise:<br>We haggle for the small change of our gold,<br>And so much love, accord, for so much love,<br>Rialto-prices. Are we therefore wrong?<br>If marriage be a contract, look to it then,<br>Contracting parties should be equal, just;<br>Bit if, a simple fealty on one side,<br>A mere religion,–right to give, is all,<br>And certain brides of Europe duly ask<br>To mount the pile, as Indian widows do,<br>The spices of their tender youth heaped up,<br>The jewels of their gracious virtues worn,<br>More gems, more glory,–to consume entire<br>For a living husband! as the man's alive,<br>Not dead,–the woman's duty, by so much,<br>Advanced in England, beyond Hindostan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I sate there, musing, till she touched my hand<br>With hers, as softly as a strange white bird<br>She feared to startle in touching. 'You are kind.<br>But are you, peradventure, vexed at heart<br>Because your cousin takes me for a wife?<br>I know I am not worthy–nay, in truth,<br>I'm glad on't, since, for that, he chooses me.<br>He likes the poor things of the world the best;<br>I would not therefore, if I could, be rich,<br>It pleasures him to stoop for buttercups;<br>I would not be a rose upon the wall<br>A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,<br>To say to a courtier, 'Pluck that rose for me,<br>'It's prettier than the rest.' O Romeny Leigh!<br>I'd rather far be trodden by his foot,<br>Than like in a great queen's bosom'<br> Out of breath<br>She paused.<br> 'Sweet Marian, do you disavow<br>The roses with that face?'<br> She dropt her head<br>As if the wind had caught that flower of her,<br>And bent it in the garden,–then looked up<br>With grave assurance. 'Well, you think me bold!<br>But so we all are, when we're praying to God.<br>And if I'm bold–yet, lady, credit me,<br>That, since I know myself for what I am<br>Much fitter for his handmaid than his wife,<br>I'll prove the handmaid and the wife at once,<br>Serve tenderly, and love obediently,<br>And be a worthier mate, perhaps, than some<br>Who are wooed in silk among their learned books;<br>While I shall set myself to read his eyes,<br>Till such grow plainer to me than the French<br>To wisest ladies. Do you think I'll miss<br>A letter, in the spelling of his mind?'<br>No more than they do, when they sit and write<br>Their flying words with flickering wild-fowl tails,<br>Nor ever pause to ask how many t s,<br>Should that be a y or i –they know't so well:<br>I've seen them writing, when I brought a dress<br>And waited,–floating out their soft white hands<br>On shining paper. But they're hard sometimes,<br>For all those hands!–we've used out many nights,<br>And worn the yellow daylight into shreds<br>Which flapped and shivered down our aching eyes<br>Till night appeared more tolerable, just<br>That pretty ladies might look beautiful,<br>Who said at last . . 'You're lazy in that house!<br>'You're slow in sending home the work,–I count<br>'I've waited near an hour for't.' Pardon me–<br>I do not blame them, madam, nor misprize;<br>They are fair and gracious; ay, but not like you,<br>Since none but you has Mister Leigh's own blood<br>Both noble and gentle,–and without it . . well,<br>They are fair, I said; so fair, it scarce seems strange<br>That, flashing out in any looking-glass<br>The wonder of their glorious brows and breasts,<br>They are charmed so, they forget to look behind<br>And mark how pale we've grown, we pitiful<br>Remainders of the world. And so, perhaps,<br>If Mister Leigh had chosen a wife from these,<br>She might . . although he's better than her best,<br>And dearly she would know it . . steal a thought<br>Which should be all his, an eye-glance from his face,<br>To plunge into the mirror opposite,<br>In search of her own beauty's pearl: while I . .<br>Ah, dearest lady, serge will outweigh silk<br>For winter-wear, when bodies feel a-cold,<br>And I'll be a true wife to your cousin Leigh.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before I answered, he was there himself.<br>I think he had been standing in the room,<br>And listened probably to half her talk,<br>Arrested, turned to stone,–as white as stone.<br>Will tender sayings make men look so white?<br>He loves her then profoundly.<br> 'You are here,<br>Aurora? Here I meet you!'–We clasped hands.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Even so, dear Romney. Lady Waldemar<br>Has sent me in haste to find a cousin of mine<br>Who shall be.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Lady Waldemar is good.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Here's one, at least, who is good,' I sighed and touched<br>Poor Marian's happy head, as, doglike, she<br>Most passionately patient, waited on,<br>A-tremble for her turn of greeting words;<br>'I've sat a full hour with your Marian Erle,<br>And learnt the thing by heart,–and, from my heart,<br>Am therefore competent to give you thanks<br>For such a cousin.'<br> 'You accept at last<br>A gift from me, Aurora, without scorn?<br>At last I please you?'–How his voice was changed!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'You cannot please a woman against her will,<br>And once you vexed me. Shall we speak of that?<br>We'll say, then, you were noble in it all,<br>And I not ignorant–let it pass. And now,<br>You please me, Romney, when you please yourself;<br>So, please you, be fanatical in love,<br>And I'm well pleased. Ah, cousin! at the old hall,<br>Among the gallery portraits of our Leighs,<br>We shall not find a sweeter signory<br>Than this pure forehead's.'<br> Not a word he said.<br>How arrogant men are!–Even philanthropists,<br>Who try to take a wife up in the way<br>They put down a subscription-cheque,–if once<br>She turns and says, 'I will not tax you so,<br>Most charitable sir,'–feel ill at ease,<br>As though she had wronged them somehow. I suppose<br>We women should remember what we are,<br>And not throw back an obolus inscribed<br>With Cæsar's image, lightly. I resumed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'It strikes me, some of those sublime Vandykes<br>Were not too proud, to make good saints in heaven;<br>And, if so, then they're not too proud to-day<br>To bow down (now the ruffs are off their necks)<br>And own this good, true, noble Marian, . . yours,<br>And mine, I'll say!–For poets (bear the word)<br>Half-poets even, are still whole democrats,–<br>Oh, not that we're disloyal to the high,<br>But loyal to the low, and cognisant<br>Of the less scrutable majesties. For me,<br>I comprehend your choice–I justify<br>Your right in choosing.'<br> 'No, no, no' he sighed,<br>With a sort of melancholy impatient scorn,<br>As some grown man, who never had a child,<br>Puts by some child who plays at being a man;<br>–'You did not, do not, cannot comprehend<br>My choice, my ends, my motives, nor myself:<br>No matter now–we'll let it pass, you say.<br>I thank you for your generous cousinship<br>Which helps this present; I accept for her<br>Your favourable thoughts. We're fallen on days,<br>We two, who are not poets, when to wed<br>Requires less mutual love than common love,<br>For two together to bear out at once<br>Upon the loveless many. Work in pairs,<br>In galley-couplings or in marriage-rings,<br>The difference lies in the honour, not the work,–<br>And such we're bound to, I and she. But love,<br>(You poets are benighted in this age;<br>The hour's too late for catching even moths,<br>You've gnats instead,) love!–love's fool-paradise<br>Is out of date, like Adam's. Set a swan<br>To swim the Trenton, rather than true love<br>To float its fabulous plumage safely down<br>The cataracts of this loud transition-time,–<br>Whose roar, for ever, henceforth, in my ears,<br>Must keep me deaf to music.'<br> There, I turned<br>And kissed poor Marian, out of discontent.<br>The man had baffled, chafed me, till I flung<br>For refuge to the woman,–as, sometimes,<br>Impatient of some crowded room's close smell,<br>You throw a window open, and lean out<br>To breathe a long breath, in the dewy night,<br>And cool your angry forehead. She, at least,<br>Was not built up, as walls are, brick by brick;<br>Each fancy squared, each feeling ranged by line,<br>The very heat of burning youth applied<br>To indurate forms and systems! excellent bricks,<br>A well-built wall,–which stops you on the road,<br>And, into which, you cannot see an inch<br>Although you beat your head against it–pshaw!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Adieu,' I said, 'for this time, cousins both:<br>And, cousin Romney, pardon me the word,<br>Be happy!–oh, in some esoteric sense<br>Of course!–I mean no harm in wishing well.<br>Adieu, my Marian:–may she come to me,<br>Dear Romney, and be married from my house?<br>It is not part of your philosophy<br>To keep your bird upon the blackthorn?'<br> 'Ay,'<br>He answered, 'but it is:–I take my wife<br>Directly from the people,–and she comes,<br>As Austria's daughter to imperial France,<br>Betwixt her eagles, blinking not her race,<br>From Margaret's Court at garret-height, to meet<br>And wed me at St. James's, nor put off<br>Her gown of serge for that. The things we do,<br>We do: we'll wear no mask, as if we blushed.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Dear Romney, you're the poet,' I replied,–<br>But felt my smile too mournful for my word,<br>And turned and went. Ay, masks, I thought,–beware<br>Of tragic masks, we tie before the glass,<br>Uplifted on the cothurn half a yard<br>Above the natural stature! we would play<br>Heroic parts to ourselves,–and end, perhaps,<br>As impotently as Athenian wives<br>Who shrieked in fits at the Eumenides.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His foot pursued me down the stair. 'At least,<br>You'll suffer me to walk with you beyond<br>These hideous streets, these graves, where men alive,<br>Packed close with earthworms, burr unconsciously<br>About the plague that slew them; let me go.<br>The very women pelt their souls in mud<br>At any woman who walks here alone.<br>How came you here alone?–you are ignorant.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We had a strange and melancholy walk:<br>The night came drizzling downward in dark rain;<br>And, as we walked, the colour of the time,<br>The act, the presence, my hand upon his arm,<br>His voice in my ear, and mine to my own sense,<br>Appeared unnatural. We talked modern books,<br>And daily papers; Spanish marriage-schemes,<br>And English climate–was't so cold last year?<br>And will the wind change by to-morrow morn?<br>Can Guizot stand? is London full? is trade<br>Competitive? has Dickens turned his hinge<br>A-pinch upon the fingers of the great?<br>And are potatoes to grow mythical<br>Like moly? will the apple die out too?<br>Which way is the wind to-night? south-east? due east?<br>We talked on fast, while every common word<br>Seemed tangled with the thunder at one end,<br>And ready to pull down upon our heads<br>A terror out of sight. And yet to pause<br>Were surelier mortal: we tore greedily up<br>All silence, all the innocent breathing -points,<br>As if, like pale conspirators in haste,<br>We tore up papers where our signatures<br>Imperilled us to an ugly shame or death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I cannot tell you why it was. 'Tis plain<br>We had not loved nor hated: wherefore dread<br>To spill gunpowder on ground safe from fire?<br>Perhaps we had lived too closely, to diverge<br>So absolutely: leave two clocks, they say,<br>Wound up to different hours, upon one shelf,<br>And slowly, through the interior wheels of each,<br>The blind mechanic motion sets itself<br>A-throb, to feel out for the mutual time.<br>It was not so with us, indeed. While he<br>Struck midnight, I kept striking six at dawn,<br>While he marked judgment, I, redemption-day;<br>And such exception to a general law,<br>Imperious upon inert matter even,<br>Might make us, each to either insecure,<br>A beckoning mystery, or a troubling fear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind me, when we parted at the door,<br>How strange his good-night sounded,–like good-night<br>Beside a deathbed, where the morrow's sun<br>Is sure to come too late for more good days:–<br>And all that night I thought . . 'Good-night,' said he.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so, a month passed. Let me set it down<br>At once,–I have been wrong, I have been wrong.<br>We are wrong always, when we think too much<br>Of what we think or are; albeit our thoughts<br>Be verily bitter as self-sacrifice,<br>We're no less selfish. If we sleep on rocks<br>Or roses, sleeping past the hour of noon<br>We're lazy. This I write against myself.<br>I had done a duty in the visit paid<br>To Marian, and was ready otherwise<br>To give the witness of my presence and name<br>Whenever she should marry.–Which, I thought<br>Sufficed. I even had cast into the scale<br>An overweight of justice toward the match;<br>The Lady Waldemar had missed her tool,<br>Had broken it in the lock as being too straight<br>For a crooked purpose, while poor Marian Erle<br>Missed nothing in my accents or my acts:<br>I had not been ungenerous on the whole,<br>Nor yet untender; so, enough. I felt<br>Tired, overworked: this marriage somewhat jarred;<br>Or, if it did not, all the bridal noise . .<br>The pricking of the map of life with pins,<br>In schemes of . . 'Here we'll go,' and 'There we'll stay,'<br>And 'Everywhere we'll prosper in our love,'<br>Was scarce my business. Let them order it;<br>Who else should care? I threw myself aside,<br>As one who had done her work and shuts her eyes<br>To rest the better.<br> I, who should have known,<br>Forereckoned mischief! Where we disavow<br>Being keeper to our brother, we're his Cain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I might have held that poor child to my heart<br>A little longer! 'twould have hurt me much<br>To have hastened by its beats the marriage day,<br>And kept her safe meantime from tampering hands,<br>Or, peradventure, traps? What drew me back<br>From telling Romney plainly, the designs<br>Of Lady Waldemar, as spoken out<br>To me . . me? had I any right, ay, right,<br>With womanly compassion and reserve<br>To break the fall of woman's impudence?–<br>To stand by calmly, knowing what I knew,<br>And hear him call her good?<br> Distrust that word.<br>'There is none good save God,' said Jesus Christ.<br>If He once, in the first creation-week,<br>Called creatures good,–for ever afterward,<br>The Devil only has done it, and his heirs.<br>The knaves who win so, and the fools who lose;<br>The world's grown dangerous. In the middle age,<br>I think they called malignant fays and imps<br>Good people. A good neighbour, even in this<br>Is fatal sometimes,–cuts your morning up<br>To mince-meat of the very smallest talk,<br>Then helps to sugar her bohea at night<br>With her reputation. I have known good wives,<br>As chaste, or nearly so, as Potiphar's;<br>And good, good mothers, who would use a child<br>To better an intrigue; good friends, beside.<br>(Very good) who hung succinctly round your neck<br>And sucked your breath, as cats are fabled to do<br>By sleeping infants. And we all have known<br>Good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes;<br>Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state;<br>Good patriots, who for a theory, risked a cause<br>Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax;<br>Good popes, who brought all good to jeopardy;<br>Good Christians, who sate still in easy chairs,<br>And damned the general world for standing up.–<br>Now, may the good God pardon all good men!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How bitterly I speak,–how certainly<br>The innocent white milk in us is turned,<br>By much persistent shining of the sun!<br>Shake up the sweetest in us long enough<br>With men, it drips to foolish curd, too sour<br>To feed the most untender of Christ's lambs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I should have thought . . .a woman of the world<br>Like her I'm meaning,–centre to herself,<br>Who has wheeled on her own pivot half a life<br>In isolated self-love and self-will,<br>As a windmill seen at distance radiating<br>Its delicate white vans against the sky,<br>So soft and soundless, simply beautiful,–<br>Seen nearer . . what a roar and tear it makes,<br>How it grinds and bruises! . . if she loves at last,<br>Her love's a re-adjustment of self-love,<br>No more; a need felt of another's use<br>To her one advantage,–as the mill wants grain,<br>The fire wants fuel, the very wolf wants prey;<br>And none of these is more unscrupulous<br>Than such a charming woman when she loves.<br>She'll not be thwarted by an obstacle<br>So trifling as . . her soul is, . . much less yours!–<br>Is God a consideration?–she loves you,<br>Not God; she will not flinch for him indeed:<br>She did not for the Marchioness of Perth,<br>When wanting tickets for the birthnight ball.<br>She loves you, sir, with passion, to lunacy;<br>She loves you like her diamonds . . almost.<br> Well,<br>A month passed so, and then the notice came;<br>On such a day the marriage at the church.<br>I was not backward.<br> Half St. Giles in frieze<br>Was bidden to meet St. James in cloth of gold,<br>And, after contract at the altar, pass<br>To eat a marriage-feast on Hampstead Heath.<br>Of course the people came in uncompelled,<br>Lame, blind, and worse–sick, sorrowful, and worse,<br>The humours of the peccant social wound<br>All pressed out, poured out upon Pimlico.<br>Exasperating the unaccustomed air<br>With hideous interfusion: you'd suppose<br>A finished generation, dead of plague,<br>Swept outward from their graves into the sun,<br>The moil of death upon them. What a sight!<br>A holiday of miserable men<br>Is sadder than a burial-day of kings.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They clogged the streets, they oozed into the church<br>In a dark slow stream, like blood. To see that sight,<br>The noble ladies stood up in their pews,<br>Some pale for fear, a few as red for hate,<br>Some simply curious , some just insolent,<br>And some in wondering scorn,–'What next? what next?'<br>These crushed their delicate rose-lips from the smile<br>That misbecame them in a holy place,<br>With broidered hems of perfumed handkerchiefs;<br>Those passed the salts with confidence of eyes<br>And simultaneous shiver of moiré silk;<br>While all the aisles, alive and black with heads,<br>Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street,<br>As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole<br>With shuddering involutions, swaying slow<br>From right to left, and then from left to right,<br>In pants and pauses. What an ugly crest<br>Of faces, rose upon you everywhere,<br>From that crammed mass! you did not usually<br>See faces like them in the open day:<br>They hide in cellars, not to make you mad<br>As Romney Leigh is.–Faces?–O my God,<br>We call those, faces? men's and women's . . ay,<br>And children's;–babies, hanging like a rag<br>Forgotten on their mother's neck,–poor mouths.<br>Wiped clean of mother's milk by mother's blow<br>Before they are taught her cursing. Faces . . phew,<br>We'll call them vices festering to despairs,<br>Or sorrows petrifying to vices: not<br>A finger-touch of God left whole on them;<br>All ruined, lost–the countenance worn out<br>As the garments, the will dissolute as the acts,<br>The passions loose and draggling in the dirt<br>To trip the foot up at the first free step!–<br>Those, faces! 'twas as if you had stirred up hell<br>To heave its lowest dreg-fiends uppermost<br>In fiery swirls of slime,–such strangled fronts,<br>Such obdurate jaws were thrown up constantly,<br>To twit you with your race, corrupt your blood,<br>And grind to devilish colors all your dreams<br>Henceforth, . . though, haply, you should drop asleep<br>By clink of silver waters, in a muse<br>On Raffael's mild Madonna of the Bird.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I've waked and slept through many nights and days<br>Since then,–but still that day will catch my breath<br>Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed,<br>In which the fibrous years have taken root<br>So deeply, that they quiver to their tops<br>Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My cousin met me with his eyes and hand,<br>And then, with just a word, . . that 'Marian Erle<br>Was coming with her bridesmaids presently,'<br>Made haste to place me by the altar-stair,<br>Where he and other noble gentlemen<br>And high-born ladies, waited for the bride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We waited. It was early: there was time<br>For greeting, and the morning's compliment;<br>And gradually a ripple of women's talk<br>Arose and fell, and tossed about a spray<br>Of English s s, soft as a silent hush,<br>And, notwithstanding, quite as audible<br>As louder phrases thrown out by the men.<br>–'Yes really, if we've need to wait in church,<br>We've need to talk there.'–'She? 'Tis Lady Ayr<br>In blue–not purple! that's the dowager.'<br>–'She looks as young.'–'She flirts as young, you mean!<br>Why if you had seen her upon Thursday night,<br>You'd call Miss Norris modest.'–' You again!<br>I waltzed with you three hours back. Up at six,<br>Up still at ten: scarce time to change one's shoes.<br>I feel as white and sulky as a ghost,<br>So pray don't speak to me, Lord Belcher.'–'No,<br>I'll look at you instead, and it's enough<br>While you have that face.' 'In church, my lord! fie, fie!'<br>–'Adair, you stayed for the Division?'–'Lost<br>By one.' 'The devil it is! I'm sorry for't.<br>And if I had not promised Mistress Grove' . .<br>–'You might have kept your word to Liverpool.'<br>'Constituents must remember, after all,<br>We're mortal.'–'We remind them of it.'–'Hark,<br>The bride comes! Here she comes, in a stream of milk!'<br>–'There? Dear, you are asleep still; don't you know<br>The five Miss Granvilles? always dressed in white<br>To show they're ready to be married.'–'Lower!<br>The aunt is at your elbow.'–'Lady Maud,<br>Did Lady Waldemar tell you she had seen<br>This girl of Leigh's?' 'No,–wait! 'twas Mrs. Brookes,<br>Who told me Lady Waldemar told her–<br>No, 'twasn't Mrs. Brookes.'–'She's pretty?'–'Who?<br>Mrs.Brookes? Lady Waldemar?'–'How hot!<br>Pray is't the law to-day we're not to breathe?<br>You're treading on my shawl–I thank you, sir.'<br>–'They say the bride's a mere child, who can't read,<br>But knows the things she shouldn't, with wide-awake<br>Great eyes. I'd go through fire to look at her.'<br>–'You do, I think.'–'and Lady Waldemar<br>(You see her; sitting close to Romney Leigh;<br>How beautiful she looks, a little flushed!)<br>Has taken up the girl, and organised<br>Leigh's folly. Should I have come here, you suppose,<br>Except she'd asked me?'–'She'd have served him more<br>By marrying him herself.'<br> 'Ah–there she comes,<br>The bride, at last!'<br> 'Indeed, no. Past eleven.<br>She puts off her patched petticoat to-day<br>And puts on May-fair manners, so begins<br>By setting us to wait.'–'Yes, yes, this Leigh<br>Was always odd; it's in the blood, I think;<br>His father's uncle's cousin's second son<br>Was, was . . you understand me–and for him,<br>He's stark!–has turned quite lunatic upon<br>This modern question of the poor–the poor:<br>An excellent subject when you're moderate;<br>You've seen Prince Albert's model lodging-house?<br>Does honour to his royal highness. Good:<br>But would he stop his carriage in Cheapside<br>To shake a common fellow by the fist<br>Whose name was . . Shakspeare? no. We draw a line,<br>And if we stand not by our order, we<br>In England, we fall headlong. Here's a sight,–<br>A hideous sight, a most indecent sight,–<br>My wife would come, sir, or I had kept her back.<br>By heaven, sir, when poor Damiens' trunk and limbs<br>Were torn by horses, women of the court<br>Stood by and stared, exactly as to-day<br>On this dismembering of society,<br>With pretty troubled faces.'<br> 'Now, at last.<br>She comes now.'<br> 'Where? who sees? you push me, sir,<br>Beyond the point of what is mannerly.<br>You're standing, madam, on my second flounce–<br>I do beseech you.'<br> 'No–it's not the bride.<br>Half-past eleven. How late! the bridegroom, mark,<br>Gets anxious and goes out.'<br> 'And as I said . .<br>These Leighs! our best blood running in the rut!<br>It's something awful. We had pardoned him<br>A simple misalliance, got up aside<br>For a pair of sky-blue eyes; our House of Lords<br>Has winked at such things, and we've all been young.<br>But here's an inter-marriage reasoned out,<br>A contract (carried boldly to the light,<br>To challenge observation, pioneer<br>Good acts by a great example) 'twixt the extremes<br>Of martyrised society,–on the left,<br>The well-born,–on the right, the merest mob.<br>To treat as equals!–'tis anarchical!<br>It means more than it says–'tis damnable!<br>Why, sir, we can't have even our coffee good,<br>Unless we strain it.'<br> 'Here, Miss Leigh!'<br> 'Lord Howe,<br>You're Romney's friend. What's all this waiting for?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I cannot tell. The bride has lost her head<br>(And way, perhaps!) to prove her sympathy<br>With the bridegroom.'<br> 'What,–you also, disapprove!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Oh I approve of nothing in the world,'<br>He answered; 'not of you, still less of me,<br>Nor even of Romney–though he's worth us both.<br>We're all gone wrong. The tune in us is lost:<br>And whistling in back alleys to the moon,<br>Will never catch it.'<br> Let me draw Lord Howe;<br>A born aristocrat, bred radical,<br>And educated socialist, who still<br>Goes floating, on traditions of his kind,<br>Across the theoretic flood from France,–<br>Though, like a drenched Noah on a rotten deck,<br>Scarce safer for his place there. He, at least,<br>Will never land on Ararat, he knows,<br>To recommence the world on the old plan:<br>Indeed, he thinks, said world had better end;<br>He sympathises rather with the fish<br>Outside, than with the drowned paired beasts within<br>Who cannot couple again or multiply:<br>And that's the sort of Noah he is, Lord Howe.<br>He never could be anything complete,<br>Except a loyal, upright gentleman,<br>A liberal landlord, graceful diner-out,<br>And entertainer more than hospitable,<br>Whom authors dine with and forget the port.<br>Whatever he believes, and it is much,<br>But no-wise certain . . now here and now there, . .<br>He still has sympathies beyond his creed,<br>Diverting him from action. In the House,<br>No party counts upon him, and all praise:<br>All like his books too, (for he has written books)<br>Which, good to lie beside a bishop's chair,<br>So oft outreach themselves with jets of fire<br>At which the foremost of the progressists<br>May warm audacious hands in passing by.<br>–Of stature over-tall, lounging for ease;<br>Light hair, that seems to carry a wind in it,<br>And eyes that, when they look on you, will lean<br>Their whole weight half in indolence, and half<br>In wishing you unmitigated good,<br>Until you know not if to flinch from him<br>Or thank him.–'Tis Lord Howe.<br> 'We're all gone wrong,'<br>Said he, 'and Romney, that dear friend of ours,<br>Is no-wise right. There's one true thing on earth;<br>That's love! He takes it up, and dresses it,<br>And acts a play with it, as Hamlet did,<br>To show what cruel uncles we have been,<br>And how we should be uneasy in our minds,<br>While he, Prince Hamlet, weds a pretty maid<br>(Who keeps us too long waiting, we'll confess)<br>By symbol, to instruct us formally<br>To fill the ditches up 'twixt class and class,<br>And live together in phalansteries.<br>What then?–he's mad, our Hamlet! clap his play,<br>And bind him.'<br> 'Ah, Lord Howe, this spectacle<br>Pulls stronger at us than the Dane's. See there!<br>The crammed aisles heave and strain and steam with life–<br>Dear Heaven, what life!'<br> 'Why , yes,–a poet sees;<br>Which makes him different from a common man.<br>I, too, see somewhat, though I cannot sing;<br>I should have been a poet, only that<br>My mother took fright at the ugly world,<br>And bore me tongue-tied. If you'll grant me now<br>That Romney gives us a fine actor-piece<br>To make us merry on his marriage-morn,–<br>The fable's worse than Hamlet's, I'll concede<br>The terrible people, old and poor and blind,<br>Their eyes eat out with plague and poverty<br>From seeing beautiful and cheerful sights,<br>We'll liken to a brutalized King Lear,<br>Led out,–by no means to clear scores with wrongs–<br>His wrongs are so far back, . . he has forgot;<br>All's past like youth; but just to witness here<br>A simple contract,–he, upon his side,<br>And Regan with her sister Goneril<br>And all the dappled courtiers and court-fools,<br>On their side. Not that any of these would say<br>They're sorry, neither. What is done, is done.<br>And violence is now turned privilege,<br>As cream turns cheese, if buried long enough.<br>What could such lovely ladies have to do<br>With the old man there, in those ill-odorous rags,<br>Except to keep the wind-side of him? Lear<br>Is flat and quiet, as a decent grave;<br>He does not curse his daughters in the least.<br>Be these his daughters? Lear is thinking of<br>His porridge chiefly . . is it getting cold<br>At Hampstead? will the ale be served in pots?<br>Poor Lear, poor daughters? Bravo, Romney's play?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A murmur and a movement drew around;<br>A naked whisper touched us. Something wrong!<br>What's wrong! That black crowd, as an overstrained<br>Cord, quivered in vibrations, and I saw<br>Was that his face I saw? . . his . . Romney Leigh's.<br>Which tossed a sudden horror like a sponge<br>Into all eyes,–while himself stood white upon<br>The topmost altar-stair, and tried to speak,<br>And failed, and lifted higher above his head<br>A letter, . . as a man who drowns and gasps.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'My brothers, bear with me! I am very weak.<br>I meant but only good. Perhaps I meant<br>Too proudly,–and God snatched the circumstance<br>And changed it therefore. There's no marriage–none<br>She leaves me,–she departs,–she disappears,–<br>I lose her. Yet I never forced her 'ay'<br>To have her 'no' so cast into my teeth<br>In manner of an accusation, thus.<br>My friends, you are all dismissed. Go, eat and drink<br>According to the programme,–and farewell!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He ended. There was silence in the church;<br>We heard a baby sucking in its sleep<br>At the farthest end of the aisle. Then spoke a man,<br>'Now, look to it, coves, that all the beef and drink<br>Be not filched from us like the other fun;<br>For beer's spilt easier than a woman is!<br>This gentry is not honest with the poor;<br>They bring us up, to trick us.'–'Go it, Jim,'<br>A woman screamed back,–'I'm a tender soul;<br>I never banged a child at two years old<br>And drew blood from him, but I sobbed for it<br>Next moment,–and I've had a plague of seven.<br>I'm tender; I've no stomach even for beef.<br>Until I know about the girl that's lost,<br>That's killed, mayhap. I did misdoubt, at first,<br>The fine lord meant no good by her, or us.<br>He, maybe, got the upper hand of her<br>By holding up a wedding-ring, and then . .<br>A choking finger on her throat, last night,<br>And just a clever tale to keep us still,<br>As she is, poor lost innocent. 'Disappear!'<br>Who ever disappears except a ghost?<br>And who believes a story of a ghost?<br>I ask you,–would a girl go off, instead<br>Of staying to be married? a fine tale!<br>A wicked man, I say, a wicked man!<br>For my part I would rather starve on gin<br>Than make my dinner on his beef and beer.'–<br>At which a cry rose up–'We'll have our rights.<br>We'll have the girl, the girl! Your ladies there<br>Are married safely and smoothly every day,<br>And she shall not drop through into a trap<br>Because she's poor and of the people: shame!<br>We'll have no tricks played off by gentlefolks;<br>We'll see her righted.<br> Through the rage and roar<br>I heard the broken words which Romney flung<br>Among the turbulent masses, from the ground<br>He held still, with his masterful pale face–<br>As huntsmen throw the ration to the pack,<br>Who, falling on it headlong, dog on dog<br>In heaps of fury, rend it, swallow it up<br>With yelling hound jaws,–his indignant words,<br>His piteous words, his most pathetic words,<br>Whereof I caught the meaning here and there<br>By his gesture . . torn in morsels, yelled across,<br>And so devoured. From end to end, the church<br>Rocked round us like the sea in storm, and then<br>Broke up like the earth in earthquake. Men cried out<br>'Police!'–and women stood and shrieked for God,<br>Or dropt and swooned; or, like a herd of deer,<br>(For whom the black woods suddenly grow alive,<br>Unleashing their wild shadows down the wind<br>To hunt the creatures into corners, back<br>And forward) madly fled, or blindly fell,<br>Trod screeching underneath the feet of those<br>Who fled and screeched.<br> The last sight left to me<br>Was Romney's terrible calm face above<br>The tumult!–the last sound was 'Pull him down!<br>Strike–Kill him!' Stretching my unreasoning arms,<br>As men in dreams, who vainly interpose<br>'Twixt gods and their undoing, with a cry<br>I struggled to precipitate myself<br>Head-foremost to the rescue of my soul<br>In that white face, . . till some one caught me back,<br>And so the world went out,–I felt no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What followed, was told after by Lord Howe,<br>Who bore me senseless from the strangling crowd<br>In church and street, and then returned alone<br>To see the tumult quelled. The men of law<br>Had fallen as thunder on a roaring fire,<br>And made all silent,–while the people's smoke<br>Passed eddying slowly from the emptied aisles.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here's Marian's letter, which a ragged child<br>Brought running, just as Romney at the porch<br>Looked out expectant of the bride. He sent<br>The letter to me by his friend Lord Howe<br>Some two hours after, folded in a sheet<br>On which his well-known hand had left a word.<br>Here's Marian's letter.<br> 'Noble friend, dear saint<br>Be patient with me. Never think me vile,<br>Who might to-morrow morning be your wife<br>But that I loved you more than such a name.<br>Farewell, my Romney. Let me write it once,–<br>My Romney.<br> Tis so pretty a coupled word,<br>I have no heart to pluck it with a blot.<br>We say 'My God' sometimes, upon our knees,<br>Who is not therefore vexed: so bear with it . .<br>And me. I know I'm foolish, weak, and vain;<br>Yet most of all I'm angry with myself<br>For losing your last footstep on the stair,<br>The last time of your coming,–yesterday!<br>The very first time I lost step of yours,<br>(Its sweetness comes the next to what you speak)<br>But yesterday sobs took me by the throat,<br>And cut me off from music.<br> 'Mister Leigh,<br>You'll set me down as wrong in many things.<br>You've praised me, sir, for truth,–and now you'll learn<br>I had not courage to be rightly true.<br>I once began to tell you how she came,<br>The woman . . and you stared upon the floor<br>In one of your fixed thoughts . . which put me out<br>For that day. After, some one spoke of me,<br>So wisely, and of you, so tenderly,<br>Persuading me to silence for your sake . . .<br>Well, well! it seems this moment I was wrong<br>In keeping back from telling you the truth:<br>There might be truth betwixt us two, at least,<br>If nothing else. And yet 'twas dangerous.<br>Suppose a real angel came from heaven<br>To live with men and women! he'd go mad,<br>If no considerate hand should tie a blind<br>Across his piercing eyes. 'Tis thus with you:<br>You see us too much in your heavenly light;<br>I always thought so, angel,–and indeed<br>There's danger that you beat yourself to death<br>Against the edges of this alien world,<br>In some divine and fluttering pity.<br> 'Yes<br>It would be dreadful for a friend of yours,<br>To see all England thrust you out of doors<br>And mock you from the windows. You might say,<br>Or think (that's worse), 'There's some one in the house<br>I miss and love still.' Dreadful!<br> 'Very kind,<br>I pray you mark, was Lady Waldemar.<br>She came to see me nine times, rather ten–<br>So beautiful, she hurts me like the day<br>Let suddenly on sick eyes.<br> 'Most kind of all,<br>Your cousin!–ah, most like you! Ere you came<br>She kissed me mouth to mouth: I felt her soul<br>Dip through her serious lips in holy fire.<br>God help me, but it made me arrogant;<br>I almost told her that you would not lose<br>By taking me to wife: though, ever since,<br>I've pondered much a certain thing she asked . .<br>'He love's you, Marian?' . . in a sort of mild<br>Derisive sadness . . as a mother asks<br>Her babe, 'You'll touch that star, you think?'<br> 'Farewell!<br>I know I never touched it.<br> 'This is worst:<br>Babes grow, and lose the hope of things above;<br>A silver threepence sets them leaping high–<br>But no more stars! mark that.<br> 'I've writ all night,<br>And told you nothing. God, if I could die,<br>And let this letter break off innocent<br>Just here! But no–for your sake . .<br> 'Here's the last:<br>I never could be happy as your wife,<br>I never could be harmless as your friend,<br>I never will look more into your face,<br>Till God says, 'Look!' I charge you, seek me not,<br>Nor vex yourself with lamentable thoughts<br>That peradventure I have come to grief;<br>Be sure I'm well, I'm merry, I'm at ease,<br>But such a long way, long way, long way off,<br>I think you'll find me sooner in my grave;<br>And that's my choice, observe. For what remains,<br>An over-generous friend will care for me,<br>And keep me happy . . happier . .<br> 'There's a blot!<br>This ink runs thick . . we light girls lightly weep . .<br>And keep me happier . . was the thing to say, . .<br>Than as your wife I could be!–O, my star,<br>My saint, my soul! for surely you're my soul,<br>Through whom God touched me! I am not so lost<br>I cannot thank you for the good you did,<br>The tears you stopped, which fell down bitterly,<br>Like these–the times you made me weep for joy<br>At hoping I should learn to write your notes<br>And save the tiring of your eyes, at night;<br>And most for that sweet thrice you kissed my lips<br>And said 'Dear Marian.'<br> Twould be hard to read,<br>This letter, for a reader half as learn'd,<br>But you'll be sure to master it, in spite<br>Of ups and downs. My hand shakes, I am blind,<br>I'm poor at writing, at the best,–and yet<br>I tried to make my g s the way you showed.<br>Farewell–Christ love you.–Say 'Poor Marian' now.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poor Marian!–wanton Marian!–was it so,<br>Or so? For days, her touching, foolish lines<br>We mused on with conjectural fantasy,<br>As if some riddle of a summer-cloud<br>On which some one tries unlike similitudes<br>Of now a spotted Hydra-skin cast off,<br>And now a screen of carven ivory<br>That shuts the heaven's conventual secrets up<br>From mortals over-bold. We sought the sense:<br>She loved him so perhaps, (such words mean love,)<br>That, worked on by some shrewd perfidious tongue,<br>(And then I thought of Lady Waldemar)<br>She left him, not to hurt him; or perhaps<br>She loved one in her class,–or did not love,<br>But mused upon her wild bad tramping life,<br>Until the free blood fluttered at her heart,<br>And black bread eaten by the road-side hedge<br>Seemed sweeter than being put to Romney's school<br>Of philanthropical self-sacrifice,<br>Irrevocably.–Girls are girls, beside,<br>Thought I, and like a wedding by one rule.<br>You seldom catch these birds, except with chaff:<br>They feel it almost an immoral thing<br>To go out and be married in broad day,<br>Unless some winning special flattery should<br>Excuse them to themselves for't, . . 'No one parts<br>Her hair with such a silver line as you,<br>One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown!'<br>Or else . . 'You bite your lip in such a way,<br>It spoils me for the smiling of the rest'–<br>And so on. Then a worthless gaud or two,<br>To keep for love,–a ribbon for the neck,<br>Or some glass pin,–they have their weight with girls.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Romney sought her many days and weeks:<br>He sifted all the refuse of the town,<br>Explored the trains, enquired among the ships,<br>And felt the country through from end to end;<br>No Marian!–Though I hinted what I knew,–<br>A friend of his had reasons of her own<br>For throwing back the match–he would not hear:<br>The lady had been ailing ever since,<br>The shock had harmed her. Something in his tone<br>Repressed me; something in me shamed my doubt<br>To a sigh, repressed too. He went on to say<br>That, putting questions where his Marian lodged,<br>He found she had received for visitors,<br>Besides himself and Lady Waldemar<br>And, that once, me–a dubious woman dressed<br>Beyond us both. The rings upon her hands<br>Had dazed the children when she threw them pence.<br>'She wore her bonnet as the queen might hers,<br>To show the crown,' they said,–'a scarlet crown<br>Of roses that had never been in bud.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Romney told me that,–for now and then<br>He came to tell me how the search advanced,<br>His voice dropped: I bent forward for the rest:<br>The woman had been with her, it appeared,<br>At first from week to week, then day by day,<br>And last, 'twas sure . .<br> I looked upon the ground<br>To escape the anguish of his eyes, and asked<br>As low as when you speak to mourners new<br>Of those they cannot bear yet to call dead,<br>If Marian had as much as named to him<br>A certain Rose, an early friend of hers,<br>A ruined creature.'<br> 'Never.'–Starting up<br>He strode from side to side about the room,<br>Most like some prisoned lion sprung awake,<br>Who has felt the desert sting him through his dreams.<br>'What was I to her, that she should tell me aught?<br>A friend! Was I a friend? I see all clear.<br>Such devils would pull angels out of heaven,<br>Provided they could reach them; 'tis their pride;<br>And that's the odds 'twixt soul and body-plague!<br>The veriest slave who drops in Cairo's street,<br>Cries, 'Stand off from me,' to the passengers;<br>While these blotched souls are eager to infect,<br>And blow their bad breath in a sister's face<br>As if they got some ease by it.'<br> I broke through.<br>'Some natures catch no plagues. I've read of babes<br>Found whole and sleeping by the spotted breast<br>Of one a full day dead. I hold it true,<br>As I'm a woman and know womanhood,<br>That Marian Erle, however lured from place,<br>Deceived in way, keeps pure in aim and heart,<br>As snow that's drifted from the garden-bank<br>To the open road.'<br> 'Twas hard to hear him laugh.<br>'The figure's happy. Well–a dozen carts<br>And trampers will secure you presently<br>A fine white snow-drift. Leave it there, your snow!<br>'Twill pass for soot ere sunset. Pure in aim?<br>She's pure in aim, I grant you,–like myself,<br>Who thought to take the world upon my back<br>To carry it over a chasm of social ill,<br>And end by letting slip through impotence<br>A single soul, a child's weight in a soul,<br>Straight down the pit of hell! yes, I and she<br>Have reason to be proud of our pure aims.'<br>Then softly, as the last repenting drops<br>Of a thunder shower, he added, 'The poor child;<br>Poor Marian! 'twas a luckless day for her,<br>When first she chanced on my philanthropy.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He drew a chair beside me, and sate down;<br>And I, instinctively, as women use<br>Before a sweet friend's grief,–when, in his ear,<br>They hum the tune of comfort, though themselves<br>Most ignorant of the special words of such,<br>And quiet so and fortify his brain<br>And give it time and strength for feeling out<br>To reach the availing sense beyond that sound,–<br>Went murmuring to him, what, if written here,<br>Would seem not much, yet fetched him better help<br>Than, peradventure, if it had been more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I've known the pregnant thinkers of this time<br>And stood by breathless, hanging on their lips,<br>When some chromatic sequence of fine thought<br>In learned modulation phrased itself<br>To an unconjectured harmony of truth.<br>And yet I've been more moved, more raised, I say,<br>By a simple word . . a broken easy thing,<br>A three-years infant might say after you,–<br>A look, a sigh, a touch upon the palm,<br>Which meant less than 'I love you' . . than by all<br>The full-voiced rhetoric of those master-mouths.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Ah, dear Aurora,' he began at last,<br>His pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile,<br>'Your printer's devils have not spoilt your heart:<br>That's well. And who knows but, long years ago,<br>When you and I talked, you were somewhat right<br>In being so peevish with me? You, at least,<br>Have ruined no one through your dreams! Instead,<br>You've helped the facile youth to live youth's day<br>With innocent distraction, still perhaps<br>Suggestive of things better than your rhymes.<br>The little shepherd-maiden, eight years old,<br>I've seen upon the mountains of Vaucluse,<br>Asleep i' the sun her head upon her knees,<br>The flocks all scattered,–is more laudable<br>Than any sheep-dog trained imperfectly,<br>Who bites the kids through too much zeal.'<br> 'I look<br>As if I had slept, then?'<br> He was touched at once<br>By something in my face. Indeed 'twas sure<br>That he and I,–despite a year or two<br>Of younger life on my side, and on his,<br>The heaping of the years' work on the days,–<br>The three-hour speeches from the member's seat,<br>The hot committees, in and out the House,<br>The pamphlets, 'Arguments,' 'Collective Views,'<br>Tossed out as straw before sick houses, just<br>To show one's sick and so be trod to dirt,<br>And no more use,–through this world's underground<br>The burrowing, groping effort, whence the arm<br>And heart came bleeding,–sure, that he and I<br>Were, after all, unequally fatigued!<br>That he, in his developed manhood, stood<br>A little sunburnt by the glare of life;<br>While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me,<br>So many seasons I had forgot my Springs;<br>My cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs.<br>And all the youth blood in them had grown white<br>As dew on autumn cyclamens: alone<br>My eyes and forehead answered for my face.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He said . . 'Aurora, you are changed–are ill!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Not so, my cousin,–only not asleep!'<br>I answered, smiling gently. 'Let it be.<br>You scarcely found the poet of Vaucluse<br>As drowsy as the shepherds. What is art,<br>But life upon the larger scale, the higher,<br>When, graduating up in a spiral line<br>Of still expanding and ascending gyres,<br>It pushes toward the intense significance<br>Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?<br>Art's life,–and where we live, we suffer and toil.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He seemed to sift me with his painful eyes.<br>'Alas! You take it gravely; you refuse<br>Your dreamland, right of common, and green rest.<br>You break the mythic turf where danced the nymphs,<br>With crooked ploughs of actual life,–let in<br>The axes to the legendary woods,<br>To pay the head-tax. You are fallen indeed<br>On evil days, you poets, if yourselves<br>Can praise that art of yours no otherwise;<br>And, if you cannot, . .better take a trade<br>And be of use! 'twere cheaper for your youth.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Of use!' I softly echoed, 'there's the point<br>We sweep about for ever in an argument;<br>Like swallows, which the exasperate, dying year<br>Sets spinning in black circles, round and round,<br>Preparing for far flights o'er unknown seas.<br>And we . . where tend we?'<br> 'Where?' he said, and sighed.<br>'The whole creation, from the hour we are born,<br>Perplexes us with questions. Not a stone<br>But cries behind us, every weary step,<br>'Where, where?' I leave stones to reply to stones.<br>Enough for me and for my fleshly heart<br>To harken the invocations of my kind,<br>When men catch hold upon my shuddering nerves<br>And shriek, 'What help? what hope? what bread i' the house,<br>'What fire i' the frost?' There must be some response,<br>Though mine fail utterly. This social Sphinx,<br>Who sits between the sepulchres and stews,<br>Makes mock and mow against the crystal heavens,<br>And bullies God,–exacts a word at least<br>From each man standing on the side of God,<br>However paying a sphinx-price for it.<br>We pay it also if we hold our peace,<br>In pangs and pity. Let me speak and die.<br>Alas! you'll say, I speak and kill, instead.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I pressed in there; 'The best men, doing their best,<br>Know peradventure least of what they do:<br>Men usefullest i' the world, are simply used;<br>The nail that holds the wood, must pierce it first,<br>And He alone who wields the hammer, sees<br>The work advanced by the earliest blow. Take heart.'<br>'Ah, if I could have taken yours!' he said,<br>'But that's past now.' Then rising . . 'I will take<br>At least your kindness and encouragement.<br>I thank you. Dear, be happy. Sing your songs,<br>If that's your way! but sometimes slumber too,<br>Nor tire too much with following, out of breath,<br>The rhymes upon your mountains of Delight.<br>Reflect, if Art be, in truth, the higher life,<br>You need the lower life to stand upon,<br>In order to reach up into that higher:<br>And none can stand a-tiptoe in the place<br>He cannot stand in with two stable feet.<br>Remember then!–for art's sake, hold your life.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We parted so. I held him in respect.<br>I comprehended what he was in heart<br>And sacrificial greatness. Ay, but he<br>Supposed me a thing too small to deign to know;<br>He blew me, plainly, from the crucible,<br>As some intruding, interrupting fly<br>Not worth the pains of his analysis<br>Absorbed on nobler subjects. Hurt a fly!<br>He would not for the world: he's pitiful<br>To flies even. 'Sing,' says he, 'and teaze me still,<br>If that's your way, poor insect.' That's your way!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Barrett+Browning">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</a> from <i>Aurora Leigh</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116057" data-title="Fourth Book de Elizabeth Barrett Browning" data-description="THEY met still sooner. 'Twas a year from thence/When Lucy Gresham, the sick semptress girl,/Who sewed by Marian's chair so still and quick,/And leant her head upon the back to cough/More freely when, the mistress turning round,/The others took occ..."></div> </div> </div>

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