<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116059" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Sixth Book</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE English have a scornful insular way<br>Of calling the French light. The levity<br>Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;<br>For say a foolish thing but oft enough,<br>(And here's the secret of a hundred creeds,–<br>Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,<br>By re-iteration chiefly) the same thing<br>Shall pass at least for absolutely wise,<br>And not with fools exclusively. And so,<br>We say the French are light, as if we said<br>The cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk:<br>Say rather, cats are milked, and milch cows mew,<br>For what is lightness but inconsequence,<br>Vague fluctuation 'twixt effect and cause,<br>Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light,<br>That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eye<br>Winks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itself<br>To a wafer on the white speck on a wall<br>A hundred paces off? Even so direct,<br>So sternly undivertible of aim,<br>Is this French people.<br> All idealists<br>Too absolute and earnest, with them all<br>The idea of a knife cuts real flesh;<br>And still, devouring the safe interval<br>Which Nature placed between the thought and act,<br>They threaten conflagration to the world<br>And rush with most unscrupulous logic on<br>Impossible practice. Set your orators<br>To blow upon them with loud windy mouths<br>Through watchword phrases, jest or sentiment,<br>Which drive our burley brutal English mobs<br>Like so much chaff, whichever way they blow,–<br>This light French people will not thus be driven.<br>They turn indeed; but then they turn upon<br>Some central pivot of their thought and choice,<br>And veer out by the force of holding fast.<br>–That's hard to understand, for Englishmen<br>Unused to abstract questions, and untrained<br>To trace the involutions, valve by valve,<br>In each orbed bulb-root of a general truth,<br>And mark what subtly fine integument<br>Divides opposed compartments. Freedom's self<br>Comes concrete to us, to be understood,<br>Fixed in a feudal form incarnately<br>To suit our ways of thought and reverence,<br>The special form, with us, being still the thing.<br>With us, I say, though I'm of Italy<br>My mother's birth and grave, by father's grave<br>And memory; let it be,–a poet's heart<br>Can swell to a pair of nationalities,<br>However ill-lodged in a woman's breast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so I am strong to love this noble France,<br>This poet of the nations, who dream on<br>And wails on (while the household goes to wreck)<br>For ever, after some ideal good,–<br>Some equal poise of sex, some unvowed love<br>Inviolate, some spontaneous brotherhood,<br>Some wealth, that leaves none poor and finds none tired,<br>Some freedom of the many, that respects<br>The wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams!<br>Sublime, to dream so; natural, to wake:<br>And sad, to use such lofty scaffoldings,<br>Erected for the building of a church,<br>To build instead, a brothel . . or a prison–<br>May God save France!<br> However she have sighed<br>Her great soul up into a great man's face,<br>To flush his temples out so gloriously<br>That few dare carp at Cæsar for being bald,<br>What then?–this Cæsar represents, not reigns,<br>And is not despot, though twice absolute;<br>This Head has all the people for a heart;<br>This purple's lined with the democracy,–<br>Now let him see to it! for a rent within<br>Must leave irreparable rags without.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A serious riddle: find such anywhere<br>Except in France; and when it's found in France,<br>Be sure to read it rightly. So, I mused<br>Up and down, up and down, the terraced streets,<br>The glittering Boulevards, the white colonnades<br>Of fair fantastic Paris who wears boughs<br>Like plumes, as if a man made them,–tossing up<br>Her fountains in the sunshine from the squares,<br>As dice i' the game of beauty, sure to win;<br>Or as she blew the down-balls of her dreams,<br>And only waited for their falling back,<br>To breathe up more, and count her festive hours.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The city swims in verdure, beautiful<br>As Venice on the waters, the sea-swan.<br>What bosky gardens, dropped in close-walled courts,<br>As plums in ladies' laps, who start and laugh:<br>What miles of streets that run on after trees,<br>Still carrying the necessary shops,<br>Those open caskets, with the jewels seen!<br>And trade is art, and art's philosophy,<br>In Paris. There's a silk, for instance, there,<br>As worth an artist's study for the folds,<br>As that bronze opposite! nay, the bronze has faults;<br>Art's here too artful,–conscious as a maid,<br>Who leans to mark her shadow on the wall<br>Until she lose a 'vantage in her step.<br>Yet Art walks forward, and knows where to walk:<br>The artists also, are idealists,<br>Too absolute for nature, logical<br>To austerity in the application of<br>The special theory; not a soul content<br>To paint a crooked pollard and an ass,<br>As the English will, because they find it so,<br>And like it somehow.–Ah, the old Tuileries<br>Is pulling its high cap down on its eyes,<br>Confounded, conscience-stricken, and amazed<br>By the apparition of a new fair face<br>In those devouring mirrors. Through the grate,<br>Within the gardens, what a heap of babes,<br>Swept up like leaves beneath the chestnut-trees,<br>From every street and alley of the town,<br>By the ghosts perhaps that blow too bleak this way<br>A-looking for their heads! Dear pretty babes,<br>I'll wish them luck to have their ball-play out<br>Before the next change comes.–And further on,<br>What statues, posed upon their columns fine,<br>As if to stand a moment were a feat,<br>Against that blue! What squares! what breathing-room<br>For a nation that funs fast,–ay, runs against<br>The dentist's teeth at the corner, in pale rows,<br>Which grin at progress in an epigram.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I walked the day out, listening to the chink<br>Of the first Napoleon's dry bones, as they lay<br>In his second grave beneath the golden dome<br>That caps all Paris like a bubble. 'Shall<br>These dry bones live,' thought Louis Philippe once,<br>And lived to know. Herein is argument<br>For kings and politicians, but still more<br>For poets, who bear buckets to the well,<br>Of ampler draught.<br> These crowds are very good<br>For meditation, (when we are very strong)<br>Though love of beauty makes us timorous,<br>And draws us backward from the coarse town-sights<br>To count the daisies upon dappled fields,<br>And hear the streams bleat on among the hills<br>In innocent and indolent repose;<br>While still with silken elegiac thoughts<br>We wind out from us the distracting world,<br>And die into the chrysalis of a man,<br>And leave the best that may, to come of us<br>In some brown moth. Be, rather, bold, and bear<br>To look into the swarthiest face of things,<br>For God's sake who has made them.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Seven days' work;<br>The last day shutting 'twixt its dawn and eve,<br>The whole work bettered, of the previous six!<br>Since God collected and resumed in man<br>The firmaments, the strata, and the lights,<br>Fish, fowl, and beast, and insect,–all their trains<br>Of various life caught back upon His arm,<br>Reorganised, and constituted MAN,<br>The microcosm, the adding up of works;<br>Within whose fluttering nostrils, then at last,<br>Consummating Himself, the Maker sighed,<br>As some strong winner at the foot race sighs<br>Touching the goal.<br> Humanity is great;<br>And, if I would not rather pore upon<br>An ounce of common, ugly, human dust,<br>An artisan's palm, or a peasant's brow,<br>Unsmooth, ignoble, save to me and God,<br>Than track old Nilus to his silver roots,<br>And wait on all the changes of the moon<br>Among the mountain-peaks of Thessaly,<br>(Until her magic crystal round itself<br>For many a witch to see in)–set it down<br>As weakness,–strength by no means. How is this<br>That men of science, osteologists<br>And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect<br>For nature,–count nought common or unclean,<br>Spend raptures upon perfect specimens<br>Of indurated veins, distorted joints,<br>Or beautiful new cases of curved spine:<br>While we, we are shocked at nature's falling off,<br>We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains,<br>We will not, when she sneezes, look at her,<br>Not even to say 'God bless her'? That's our wrong;<br>For that, she will not trust us often with<br>Her larger sense of beauty and desire,<br>But tethers us to a lily or a rose<br>And bids us diet on the dew inside,–<br>Left ignorant that the hungry beggar-boy<br>(Who stares unseen against our absent eyes,<br>And wonders at the gods that we must be,<br>To pass so careless for the oranges!)<br>Bears yet a breastful of a fellow-world<br>To this world, undisparaged, undespoiled,<br>And (while we scorn him for a flower or two,<br>As being, Heaven help us, less poetical)<br>Contains, himself, both flowers and firmaments<br>And surging seas and aspectable stars,<br>And all that we would push him out of sight<br>In order to see nearer. Let us pray<br>God's grace to keep God's image in repute;<br>That so, the poet and philanthropist<br>(Even I and Romney) may stand side by side,<br>Because we both stand face to face with men<br>Contemplating the people in the rough,–<br>Yet each so follow a vocation,–his<br>And mine.<br> I walked on, musing with myself<br>On life and art, and whether, after all,<br>A larger metaphysics might not help<br>Our physics, a completer poetry<br>Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants,<br>More fully than the special outside plans,<br>Phalansteries, material institutes<br>The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries<br>Preferred by modern thinkers, as they thought<br>The bread of man indeed made all his life,<br>And washing seven times in the 'People's Baths'<br>Were sovereign for a people's leprosy,–<br>Still leaving out the essential prophet's word<br>That comes in power. On which, we thunder down,<br>We prophets, poets,–Virtue's in the word!<br>The maker burnt the darkness up with His,<br>To inaugurate the use of vocal life;<br>And, plant a poet's word even, deep enough<br>In any man's breast, looking presently<br>For offshoots, you have done more for the man,<br>Than if you dressed him in a broad-cloth coat<br>And warmed his Sunday potage at your fire.<br>Yet Romney leaves me . . .<br> God! what face is that?<br>O Romney, O Marian!<br> Walking on the quays<br>And pulling thoughts to pieces leisurely,<br>As if I caught at grasses in a field,<br>And bit them slow between my absent lips,<br>And shred them with my hands . .<br> What face is that?<br>What a face, what a look, what a likeness! Full on mine<br>The sudden blow of it came down, till all<br>My blood swam, my eyes dazzled. Then I sprang–</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If was as if a meditative man<br>Were dreaming out a summer afternoon<br>And watching gnats a-prick upon a pond,<br>When something floats up suddenly, out there,<br>Turns over . . a dead face, known once alive–<br>So old, so new! It would be dreadful now<br>To lose the sight and keep the doubt of this.<br>He plunges–ha! he has lost it in the splash.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I plunged–I tore the crowd up, either side,<br>And rushed on,–forward, forward . . after her.<br>Her? whom?<br> A woman sauntered slow, in front,<br>Munching an apple,–she left off amazed<br>As if I had snatched it: that's not she, at least.<br>A man walked arm-linked with a lady veiled,<br>Both heads dropped closer than the need of talk:<br>They started; he forgot her with his face,<br>And she, herself,–and clung to him as if<br>My look were fatal. Such a stream of folk,<br>All with cares and business of their own!<br>I ran the whole quay down against their eyes;<br>No Marian; nowhere Marian. Almost, now,<br>I could call Marian, Marian, with the shriek<br>Of desperate creatures calling for the Dead.<br>Where is she, was she? was she anywhere?<br>I stood still, breathless, gazing, straining out<br>In every uncertain distance, till, at last,<br>A gentleman abstracted as myself<br>Came full against me, then resolved the clash<br>In voluble excuses,–obviously<br>Some learned member of the Institute<br>Upon his way there, walking, for his health,<br>While meditating on the last 'Discourse;'<br>Pinching the empty air 'twixt finger and thumb,<br>From which the snuff being ousted by that shock,<br>Defiled his snow-white waistcoat, duly pricked<br>At the button-hole with honourable red;<br>'Madame, your pardon,'–there, he swerved from me<br>A metre, as confounded as he had heard<br>That Dumas would be chosen to fill up<br>The next chair vacant, by his 'men in us,'<br>Since when was genius found respectable?<br>It passes in its place, indeed,–which means<br>The seventh floor back, or else the hospital;<br>Revolving pistols are ingenious things,<br>But prudent men (Academicians are)<br>Scare keep them in the cupboard, next the prunes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so, abandoned to a bitter mirth,<br>I loitered to my inn. O world, O world,<br>O jurists, rhymers, dreamers, what you please,<br>We play a weary game of hide and seek!<br>We shape a figure of our fantasy,<br>Call nothing something, and run after it<br>And lose it, lose ourselves too in the search,<br>Till clash against us, comes a somebody<br>Who also has lost something and is lost,<br>Philosopher against philanthropist,<br>Academician against poet, man<br>Against woman, against the living, the dead,–<br>Then home, with a bad headache and worse jest!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To change the water for my heliotropes<br>And yellow roses. Paris has such flowers,<br>But England, also. 'Twas a yellow rose,<br>By that south window of the little house,<br>My cousin Romney gathered with his hand<br>On all my birthdays for me, save the last;<br>And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,<br>For roses to stay after.<br> Now, my maps<br>I must not linger here from Italy<br>Till the last nightingale is tired of song,<br>And the last fire-fly dies off in the maize.<br>My soul's in haste to leap into the sun<br>And scorch and seethe itself to a finer mood,<br>Which here, in this chill north, is apt to stand<br>Too stiffly in former moulds.<br> That face persists.<br>It floats up, it turns over in my mind,<br>As like to Marian, as one dead is like<br>That same alive. In very deed a face<br>And not a fancy, though it vanished so;<br>The small fair face between the darks of hair,<br>I used to liken, when I saw her first,<br>To a point of moonlit water down a well:<br>The low brow, the frank space between the eyes,<br>Which always had the brown pathetic look<br>Of a dumb creature who had been beaten once,<br>And never since was easy with the world.<br>Ah, ah–now I remember perfectly<br>Those eyes to-day,–how overlarge they seemed<br>As if some patient passionate despair<br>(Like a coal dropt and forgot on tapestry,<br>Which slowly burns a widening circle out)<br>Had burnt them larger, larger. And those eyes,<br>To-day, I do remember, saw me too,<br>As I saw them, with conscious lids astrain<br>In recognition. Now, a fantasy,<br>A simple shade or image of the brain,<br>Is merely passive, does not retro-act,<br>Is seen, but sees not.<br> 'Twas a real face,<br>Perhaps a real Marian.<br> Which being so,<br>I ought to write to Romney, 'Marian's here.<br>Be comforted for Marian.'<br> My pen fell,<br>My hands struck sharp together, as hands do<br>Which hold at nothing. Can I write to him<br>A half truth? can I keep my own soul blind<br>To the other half, . . the worse? What are our souls,<br>If still, to run on straight a sober pace<br>Nor start at every pebble or dead leaf,<br>They must wear blinkers, ignore facts, suppress<br>Six-tenths of the road? Confront the truth, my soul!<br>And oh, as truly as that was Marian's face,<br>The arms of the same Marian clasped a thing<br>. . Not hid so well beneath the scanty shawl,<br>I cannot name it now for what it was.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A child. Small business has a cast-away<br>Like Marian, with that crown of prosperous wives<br>At which the gentlest she grows arrogant<br>And says, 'my child.' Who'll find an emerald ring<br>On a beggar's middle finger, and require<br>More testimony to convict a thief?<br>A child's too costly for so mere a wretch;<br>She filched it somewhere; and it means, with her,<br>Instead of honour, blessing, . . merely shame.<br>I cannot write to Romney, 'Here she is,<br>Here's Marian found! I'll set you on her track:<br>I saw her here, in Paris, . . and her child.<br>She put away your love two years ago,<br>But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then;<br>And, now that you've forgot her utterly<br>As any lost year's annual in whose place<br>You've planted a thick flowering evergreen,<br>I choose, being kind, to write and tell you this<br>To make you wholly easy–she's not dead,<br>But only . . damned.'<br> Stop there: I go too fast;<br>I'm cruel like the rest,–in haste to take<br>The first stir in the arras for a rat,<br>And set my barking, biting thoughts upon't.<br>–A child! what then? Suppose a neighbour's sick<br>And asked her, 'Marian, carry out my child<br>In this spring air,'–I punish her for that?<br>Or say, the child should hold her round the neck<br>For good child-reasons, that he liked it so<br>And would not leave her–she had winning ways–<br>I brand her therefore, that she took the child?<br>Not so.<br> I will not write to Romney Leigh.<br>For now he's happy,–and she may indeed<br>Be guilty,–and the knowledeg of her fault<br>Would draggle his smooth time. But I, whose days<br>Are not so fine they cannot bear the rain,<br>And who, moreover, having seen her face,<br>Must see it again, . . will see it, by my hopes<br>Of one day seeing heaven too. The police<br>Shall track her, hound her, ferret their own soil;<br>We'll dig this Paris to its catacombs<br>But certainly we'll find her, have her out,<br>And save her, if she will or will not–child<br>Or no child,–if a child, then one to save!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The long weeks passed on without consequence.<br>As easy find a footstep on the sand<br>The morning after spring-tied, as the trace<br>Of Marian's feet between the incessant surfs<br>Of this live flood. She may have moved this way,–<br>But so the star-fish does, and crosses out<br>The dent of her small shoe. The foiled police<br>Renounced me; 'Could they find a girl and child,<br>No other signalment but girl and child?<br>No data shown, but noticeable eyes<br>And hair in masses, low upon the brow,<br>As if it were an iron crown and pressed?<br>Friends heighten, and suppose they specify:<br>Why, girls with hair and eyes are everywhere<br>In Paris; they had turned me up in vain<br>No Marian Erle indeed, but certainly<br>Mathildes, Justines, Victoires, . . or, if I sought<br>The English, Betsis, Saras, by the score.<br>They might as well go out into the fields<br>To find a speckled bean, that's somehow specked,<br>And somewhere in the pod.'–They left me so.<br>Shall I leave Marian? have I dreamed a dream?<br>–I thank God I have found her! I must say<br>'Thank, God,' for finding her, although 'tis true<br>I find the world more sad and wicked for't.<br>But she–<br> I'll write about her, presently;<br>My hand's a-tremble as I had just caught up<br>My heart to write with, in the place of it.<br>At least you'd take these letters to be writ<br>At sea, in storm!–wait now . .<br> A simple chance<br>Did all. I could not sleep last night, and tired<br>Of turning on my pillow and harder thoughts<br>Went out at early morning, when the air<br>Is delicate with some last starry touch,<br>To wander through the Market-place of Flowers<br>(The prettiest haunt in Paris), and make sure<br>At worst, that there were roses in the world.<br>So wandering, musing with the artist's eye,<br>That keeps the shade-side of the thing it loves,<br>Half-absent, whole-observing, while the crowd<br>Of young vivacioius and black-braided heads<br>Dipped, quick as finches in a blossomed tree,<br>Among the nosegays, cheapening this and that<br>In such a cheerful twitter of rapid speech,–<br>My heart leapt in me, startled by a voice<br>That slowly, faintly, with long breaths that marked<br>The interval between the wish and word,<br>Inquired in stranger's French, 'Would that be much,<br>That branch of flowering mountain-gorse?'–'So much?<br>Too much for me, then!' turning the face round<br>So close upon me, that I felt the sigh<br>It turned with.<br> 'Marian, Marian!'–face to face–<br>'Marian! I find you. Shall I let you go?'<br>I held her two slight wrists with both my hands;<br>'Ah, Marian, Marian, can I let you go?'<br>–She fluttered from me like a cyclamen,<br>As white, which, taken in a sudden wind,<br>Beats on against the palisade.–'Let pass,'<br>She said at last. 'I will not,' I replied;<br>'I lost my sister Marian many days,<br>And sought her ever in my walks and prayers,<br>And now I find her . . . do we thrown away<br>The bread we worked and prayed for,–crumble it<br>And drop it, . . to do even so by thee<br>Whom still I've hungered after more than bread,<br>My sister Marian?–can I hurt thee, dear?<br>Then why distrust me? Never tremble so.<br>Come with me rather, where we'll talk and live,<br>And none shall vex us. I've a home for you<br>And me and no one else' . . .<br> She shook her head.<br>'A home for you and me and no one else<br>Ill-suits one of us: I prefer to such,<br>A roof of grass on which a flower might spring,<br>Less costly to me than the cheapest here;<br>And yet I could not, at this hour, afford<br>A like home, even. That you offer yours,<br>I thank you. You are good as heaven itself–<br>As good as one I knew before . . Farewell.'<br>I loosed her hands. 'In his name, no farewell!'<br>(She stood as if I held her,) 'for his sake,<br>For his sake, Romney's! by the good he meant,<br>Ay, always! by the love he pressed for once,–<br>And by the grief, reproach, abandonment,<br>He took in change' . .<br> 'He, Romney! who grieved him?<br>Who had the heart for't? what reproach touch'd him?<br>Be merciful,–speak quickly.'<br> 'Therefore come.<br>I answered with authority,–'I think<br>We dare to speak such things, and name such names,<br>In the open squares of Paris!'<br> Not a word<br>She said, but, in a gentle humbled way,<br>(As one who had forgot herself in grief)<br>Turned round and followed closely where I went.<br>As if I led her by a narrow plank<br>Across devouring waters, step by step,–<br>And so in silence we walked on a mile.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then she stopped: her face was white as wax.<br>'We go much further?'<br> 'You are ill,' I asked,<br>'Or tired?'<br> She looked the whiter for her smile.<br>'There's one at home,' she said, 'has need of me<br>By this time,–and I must not let him wait.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Not even,' I asked, 'to hear of Romney Leigh?'<br>'Not even,' she said, 'to hear of Mister Leigh.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'In that case,' I resumed, 'I go with you,<br>And we can talk the same thing there as here.<br>None waits for me: I have my day to spend.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her lips moved in a spasm without a sound,–<br>But then she spoke. 'It shall be as you please;<br>And better so,–'tis shorter seen than told.<br>And though you will not find me worth your pains,<br>That even, may be worth some pains to know,<br>For one as good as you are.'<br> Then she led<br>The way, and I, as by a narrow plank<br>Across devouring waters, followed her,<br>Stepping by her footsteps, breathing by her breath,<br>And holding her with eyes that would not slip;<br>And so, without a word, we walked a mile,<br>And so, another mile, without a word.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Until the peopled streets being all dismissed,<br>House-rows and groups all scattered like a flock,<br>The market-gardens thickened, and the long<br>White walls beyond, like spiders' outside threads,<br>Stretched, feeling blindly toward the country-fields<br>Through half-built habitations and half-dug<br>Foundations,–intervals of trenchant chalk,<br>That bite betwixt the grassy uneven turfs<br>Where goats (vine tendrils trailing from their mouths)<br>Stood perched on edges of the cellarage<br>Which should be, staring as about to leap<br>To find their coming Bacchus. All the place<br>Seemed less a cultivation than a waste:<br>Men work here, only,–scarce begin to live:<br>All's sad, the country struggling with the town,<br>Like an untamed hawk upon a strong man's fist,<br>That beats its wings and tries to get away,<br>And cannot choose be satisfied so soon<br>To hop through court-yards with its right foot tied,<br>The vintage plains and pastoral hills in sight!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We stopped beside a house too high and slim<br>To stand there by itself, but waiting till<br>Five others, two on this side, three on that,<br>Should grow up from the sullen second floor<br>They pause at now, to build it to a row.<br>The upper windows partly were unglazed<br>Meantime,–a meagre, unripe house: a line<br>Of rigid poplars elbowed it behind,<br>And just in front, beyond the lime and bricks<br>That wronged the grass between it and the road,<br>A great acacia, with its slender trunk<br>And overpoise of multitudinous leaves,<br>(In which a hundred fields might spill their dew<br>And intense verdure, yet find room enough)<br>Stood reconciling all the place with green.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I follwoed up the stair upon her step.<br>She hurried upward, shot across a face,<br>A woman's on the landing,–'How now, now!<br>Is no one to have holidays but you?<br>You said an hour, and stay three hours, I think,<br>And Julie waiting for your betters here!<br>Why if he had waked, he might have waked for me.'<br>–Just murmuring an excusing word she passed<br>And shut the rest out with the chamber-door,<br>Myself shut in beside her.<br> 'Twas a room<br>Scarce large than a grave, and near as bare;<br>Two stools, a pallet-bed; I saw the room;<br>A mouse could find no sort of shelter in't,<br>Much less a greater secret; curtainless,–<br>The window fixed you with its torturing eye,<br>Defying you to take a step apart.<br>If peradventure you would hide a thing.<br>I saw the whole room, I and Marian there<br>Alone.<br> Alone? She threw her bonnet off,<br>Then sighing as 'twere sighing the last time,<br>Approached the bed, and drew a shawl away:<br>You could not peel a fruit you fear to bruise<br>More calmly and more carefully than so,–<br>Nor would you find within, a rosier flushed<br>Pomegranate–<br> There he lay, upon his back,<br>The yearling creature, warm and moist with life<br>To the bottom of his dimples,–to the ends<br>Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;<br>For since he had been covered over-much<br>To keep him from the light glare, both his cheeks<br>Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose<br>The shepherd's heart blood ebbed away into,<br>The faster for his love. And love was here<br>As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth,<br>Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;<br>The little naked feet drawn up the way<br>Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft<br>And tender,–to the little holdfast hands,<br>Which, closing on a finger into sleep,<br>Had kept the mould of't.<br> While we stood there dumb,–<br>For oh, that it should take such innocence<br>To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb;<br>The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,<br>And staring out at us with all their blue,<br>As half perplexed between the angelhood<br>He had been away to visit in his sleep,<br>And our most mortal presence,–gradually<br>He saw his mother's face, accepting it<br>In change for heaven itself, with such a smile<br>As might have well been learnt there,–never moved,<br>But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy,<br>So happy (half with her and half with heaven)<br>He could not have the trouble to be stirred,<br>But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said:<br>As red and still indeed as any rose,<br>That blows in all the silence of its leaves,<br>Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She leaned above him (drinking him as wine)<br>In that extremity of love, 'twill pass<br>For agony or rapture, seeing that love<br>Includes the whole of nature, rounding it<br>To love . . no more,–since more can never be<br>Than just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self,<br>And drowning in the transport of the sight,<br>Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes,<br>One gaze, she stood! then, slowly as he smiled,<br>She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware,<br>And drawing from his countenance to hers<br>A fainter red, as if she watched a flame<br>And stood in it a-glow. 'How beautiful!'<br>Said she.<br> I answered, trying to be cold.<br>(Must sin have compensations, was my thought,<br>As if it were a holy thing like grief?<br>And is a woman to be fooled aside<br>From putting vice down, with that woman's toy,<br>A baby?)––'Ay! the child is well enough,'<br>I answered. 'If his mother's palms are clean,<br>They need be glad, of course, in clasping such:<br>But if not,–I would rather lay my hand,<br>Were I she,–on God's brazen altar-bars<br>Red-hot with burning sacrificial lambs,<br>Than touch the sacred curls of such a child.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks,<br>As one who would not be afraid of fire;<br>And then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,–<br>'My lamb, my lamb! although, through such as thou,<br>The most unclean got courage and approach<br>To God, once,–now they cannot, even with men,<br>Find grace enough for pity and gentle words.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'My Marian,' I made answer, grave and sad,<br>'The priest who stole a lamb to offer him,<br>Was still a thief. And if a woman steals<br>(Through God's own barrier-hedges of true love,<br>Which fence out licence in securing love)<br>A child like this, that smiles so in her face,<br>She is no mother, but a kidnapper,<br>And he's a dismal orphan . . not a son;<br>Whom all her kisses cannot feed so full<br>He will not miss herafter a pure home<br>To live in, a pure heart to lean against,<br>A pure good mother's name and memory<br>To hope by when the world grows thick and bad,<br>And he feels out for virtue.'<br> 'Oh,' she smiled<br>With bitter patience, 'the child takes his chance,–<br>Not much worse off in being fatherless<br>Than I was fathered. He will say, belike,<br>His mother was the saddest creature born;<br>He'll say his mother lived so contrary<br>To joy, that even the kindest, seeing her,<br>Grew sometimes almost cruel: he'll not say<br>She flew contrarious in the face of God<br>With bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child,–<br>My flower of earth, my only flower on earth,<br>My sweet, my beauty!' . . Up she snatched the child,<br>And breaking on him in a storm of tears,<br>Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots,<br>Until he took it for a game, and stretched<br>His feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings,<br>And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh:<br>'Mine, mine,' she said; 'I have as sure a right<br>As any glad pround mother in the world,<br>Who sets her darling down to cut his teeth<br>Upon her church-ring. If she talks of law,<br>I talk of law! I claim my mother-dues<br>By law,–the law which now is paramount;<br>The common law, by which the poor and weak<br>Are trodden underfoot by vicious men,<br>And loathed for ever after by the good.<br>Let pass! I did not filch . . I found the child.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'You found him, Marian?'<br> 'Ay, I found him where<br>I found my curse,–in the gutter with my shame!<br>What have you, any of you, to say to that,<br>Who all are happy, and sit safe and high,<br>And never spoke before to arraign my right<br>To grief itself? What, what, . . being beaten down<br>By hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch,<br>Half-dead, whole mangled . . when a girl, at last,<br>Breathes, sees . . and finds, there, bedded in her flesh,<br>Because of the overcoming shock perhaps,<br>Some coin of price! . . and when a good man comes<br>(That's God! the best men are not quite as good)<br>And says, 'I dropped the coin there: take it, you,<br>And keep it,–it shall pay you for the loss,–<br>You all put up your finger–'See the thief!<br>'Observe that precious thing she has come to filch!<br>'How bad those girls are!' Oh, my flower, my pet,<br>I dare forget I have you in my arms,<br>And fly off to be angry with the world,<br>And fright you, hurt you with my tempers, till<br>You double up your lip? Ah, that indeed<br>Is bad: a naughty mother!'<br> 'You mistake,'<br>I interrupted. 'If I loved you not,<br>I should not, Marian, certainly be here.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Alas,' she said, 'you are so very good;<br>And yet I wish, indeed, you had never come<br>To make me sob until I vex the child.<br>It is not wholesome for these pleasure-plats<br>To be so early watered by our brine.<br>And then, who knows? he may not like me now<br>As well, perhaps, as ere he saw me fret,–<br>One's ugly fretting! he has eyes the same<br>As angels, but he cannot see as deep,<br>And so I've kept for ever in his sight<br>A sort of smile to please him, as you place<br>A green thing from the garden in a cup,<br>To make believe it grows there. Look, my sweet,<br>My cowslip-ball! we've done with that cross face,<br>And here's the face come back you used to like.<br>And, ah! he laughs! he likes me. Ah, Miss Leigh,<br>You're great and pure; but were you purer still,–<br>As if you had walked, we'll say, no otherwhere<br>Than up and down the new Jerusalem,<br>And held your trailing lutestring up yourself<br>From brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some<br>Small speck as little as a needle prick,<br>White stitched on white,–the child would keep to me,<br>Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,<br>And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,<br>As we do, when God says it's time to die<br>And bids us go up higher. Leave us then;<br>We two are happy. Does he push me off?<br>He's satisfied with me, as I with him.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'So soft to one, so hard to others! Nay.'<br>I cried, more angry that she melted me,<br>'We make henceforth a cushion of our faults<br>To sit and practise easy virtues on?<br>I thought a child was given to sanctify<br>A woman,–set her in the sight of all<br>The clear-eyed heavens, a chosen minister<br>To do their business and lead spirits up<br>The difficult blue heights. A woman lives,<br>Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good<br>Through being a mother? . . . then she's none although<br>She damps her baby's cheeks by kissing them,<br>As we kill roses.'<br> 'Kill! O Christ,' she said,<br>And turned her wild sad face from side to side<br>With most despairing wonder in it–'What,<br>What have you in your souls against me then,<br>All of you? am I wicked, do you think?<br>God knows me, trusts me with a child! but you,<br>You think me really wicked?'<br> 'Complaisant,'<br>I answered softly, 'to a wrong you've done,<br>Because of certain profits,–which is wrong<br>Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left<br>The pure place and the noble heart, to take<br>The hand of a seducer' . .<br> 'Whom? whose hand?<br>I took the hand of' . .<br> Springing up erect,<br>And lifting up the child at full arm's length,<br>As if to bear him like an oriflamme<br>Unconquerable to armies of reproach,–<br>'By him,' she said, 'my child's head and its curls,<br>By those blue eyes no woman born could dare<br>A perjury on, I make my mother's oath,<br>That if I left that Heart, to lighten it,<br>The blood of mine was still, except for grief!<br>No cleaner maid than I was, took a step<br>To a sadder cup,–no matron-mother now<br>Looks backwards to her early maidenhood<br>Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily:<br>And if I lie so, . . if, being fouled in will<br>And paltered with in soul by devil's lust,<br>I dare to bid this angel take my part, . .<br>Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven,<br>Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak:<br>He clears me therefore. What, 'seduced' 's your word?<br>Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France?<br>Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws,<br>Seduce it into carrion? So with me.<br>I was not ever as you say, seduced,<br>But simply murdered.'<br> There she paused, and sighed,<br>With such a sigh as drops from agony<br>To exhaustion,–sighing while she let the babe<br>Slide down upon her bosom from her arms,<br>And all her face's light fell after him,<br>Like a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank,<br>And sate upon the bedside with the child.<br>But I, convicted, broken utterly,<br>With woman's passion clung about her waist,<br>And kissed her hair and eyes,–'I have been wrong,<br>Sweet Marian' . . (weeping in a tender rage)<br>'Sweet holy Marian! And now, Marian, now,<br>I'll use your oath although my lips are hard,<br>And by the child, my Marian, by the child,<br>I'll swear his mother shall be innocent<br>Before my conscience, as in the open Book<br>Of Him who reads for judgment. Innocent,<br>My sister! let the night be ne'er so dark,<br>The moon is surely somewhere in the sky:<br>So surely is your whiteness to be found<br>Through all dark facts. But pardon, pardon me,<br>And smile a little, Marian,–for the child,<br>If not for me, my sister.'<br> The poor lip<br>Just motioned for the smile and let it go.<br>And then, with scarce a stirring of the mouth,<br>As if a statue spoke that could not breathe,<br>But spoke on calm between its marble lips,–<br>'I'm glad, I'm very glad you clear me so.<br>I should be sorry that you set me down<br>With harlots, or with even a better name<br>Which misbecomes his mother. For the rest<br>I am not on a level with your love,<br>Nor ever was, you know,–but now am worse,<br>Because that world of yours has dealt with me<br>As when the hard sea bites and chews a stone<br>And changes the first form of it. I've marked<br>A shore of pebbles bitten to one shape<br>From all the various life of madrepores;<br>And so, that little stone, called Marian Erle,<br>Picked up and dropped by you and another friend,<br>Was ground and tortured by the incessant sea<br>And bruised from what she was,–changed! death's a change,<br>And she, I said, was murdered; Marian's dead.<br>What can you do with people when they are dead,<br>But, if you are pious, sing a hymn and go;<br>Or, if you are tender, heave a sigh and go,<br>But go by all means,–and permit the grass<br>To keep its green feud up 'twixt them and you?<br>Then leave me,–let me rest. I'm dead, I say.<br>And if, to save the child from death as well,<br>The mother in me has survived the rest,<br>Why, that's God's miracle you must not tax,–<br>I'm not less dead for that: I'm nothing more<br>But just a mother. Only for the child,<br>I'm warm, and cold, and hungry, and afraid,<br>And smell the flowers a little, and see the sun,<br>And speak still, and am silent,–just for him!<br>I pray you therefore to mistake me not<br>And treat me haply, as I were alive;<br>For though you ran a pin into my soul,<br>I think it would not hurt nor trouble me.<br>Here's proof, dear lady,–in the market-place<br>But now, you promised me to say a word<br>About . . a friend, who once, long years ago,<br>Took God's place toward me, when He draws and loves<br>And does not thunder, . . whom at last I left,<br>As all of us leave God. You thought perhaps<br>I seemed to care for hearing of that friend?<br>Now, judge me! we have sate here half an hour<br>And talked together of the child and me,<br>And I not asked as much as 'What's the thing<br>You had to tell me of the friend . . the friend?'<br>He's sad, I think you said,–he's sick perhaps?<br>It's nought to Marian if he's sad or sick.<br>Another would have crawled beside your foot<br>And prayed your words out. Why, a beast, a dog,<br>A starved cat, if he had fed it once with milk,<br>Would show less hardness. But I'm dead, you see,<br>And that explains it.'<br> Poor, poor thing, she spoke<br>And shook her head, as white and calm as frost<br>On days too cold for raining any more,<br>But still with such a face, so much alive,<br>I could not choose but take it on my arm<br>And stroke the placid patience of its cheeks,–<br>Then told my story out, of Romney Leigh,<br>How, having lost her, sought her, missed her still,<br>He, broken-hearted for himself and her,<br>Had drawn the curtains of the world awhile<br>As if he had done with morning. There I stopped,<br>For when she gasped, and pressed me with her eyes,<br>'And now . . how is it with him? tell me now,'–<br>I felt the shame of compensated grief,<br>And chose my words with scruple–slowly stepped<br>Upon the slippery stones set here and there<br>Across the sliding water. 'Certainly,<br>As evening empties morning into night,<br>Another morning takes the evening up<br>With healthful, providential interchange;<br>And, though he thought still of her–'<br> 'Yes, she knew,<br>She understood: she had supposed indeed<br>That, as one stops a hole upon a flute,<br>At which a new note comes and shapes the tune,<br>Excluding her would bring a worthier in,<br>And, long ere this, that Lady Waldemar<br>He loved so' . .<br> 'Loved,' I started,–'loved her so!<br>Now tell me' . .<br> 'I will tell you,' she replied:<br>'But since we're taking oaths, you'll promise first<br>That he in England, he, shall never learn<br>In what a dreadful trap his creature here,<br>Round whose unworthy neck he had meant to tie<br>The honourable ribbon of his name,<br>Fell unaware and came to butchery:<br>Because,–I know him,–as he takes to heart<br>The grief of every stranger, he's not like<br>To banish mine as far as I should choose<br>In wishing him most happy. Now he leaves<br>To think of me, perverse, who went my way,<br>Unkind, and left him,–but if once he knew . .<br>Ah, then, the sharp nail of my cruel wrong<br>Would fasten me for ever in his sight,<br>Like some poor curious bird, through each spread wing<br>Nailed high up over a fierce hunter's fire<br>To spoil the dinner of all tenderer folk<br>Come in by chance. Nay, since your Marian's dead,<br>You shall not hang her up, but dig a hole<br>And bury her in silence! ring no bells.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I answered gaily, though my whole voice wept,<br>'We'll ring the joy-bells, not the funeral-bells,<br>Because we have her back, dead or alive.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She never answered that, but shook her head;<br>Then low and calm, as one who, safe in heaven,<br>Shall tell a story of his lower life,<br>Unmoved by shame or anger,–so she spoke.<br>She told me she had loved upon her knees<br>As others pray, more perfectly absorbed<br>In the act and inspiration. She felt his,<br>For just his uses, not her own at all,–<br>His stool, to sit on or put up his foot,<br>His cup, to fill with wine or vinegar,<br>Whichever drink might please him at the chance,<br>For that should please her always: let him write<br>His name upon her . . it seemed natural;<br>It was most precious, standing on his shelf,<br>To wait until he chose to lift his hand.<br>Well, well,–I saw her then, and must have seen<br>How bright her life went floating on her love,<br>Like wicks the housewives send afloat on oil<br>Which feeds them to a flame that lasts the night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To do good seemed so much his business,<br>That, having done it, she was fain to think,<br>Must fill up his capacity for joy.<br>At first she never mooted with herself<br>If he was happy, since he made her so,<br>Or if he loved her, being so much beloved:<br>Who thinks of asking if the sun is light,<br>Observing that it lightens? Who's so bold,<br>To question God of his felicity?<br>Still less. And thus she took for granted first,<br>What first of all she should have put to proof,<br>And sinned against him so, but only so.<br>'What could you hope,' she said, 'of such as she?<br>You take a kid you like, and turn it out<br>In some fair garden: though the creature's fond<br>And gentle, it will leap upon the beds<br>And break your tulips, bite your tender trees;<br>The wonder would be if such innocence<br>Spoiled less. A garden is no place for kids.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, by degrees, when he who had chosen her<br>Brought in his courteous and benignant friends<br>To spend their goodness on her, which she took<br>So very gladly, as a part of his,–<br>By slow degrees it broke on her slow sense,<br>That she, too, in that Eden of delight<br>Was out of place, and, like the silly kid,<br>Still did most mischief where she meant most love.<br>A thought enough to make a woman mad<br>(No beast in this, but she may well go mad),<br>That, saying, 'I am thine to love and use;'<br>May blow the plague in her protesting breath<br>To the very man for whom she claims to die,–<br>That, clinging round his neck, she pulls him down<br>And drowns him,–and that, lavishing her soul<br>She hales perdition on him. 'So, being mad,'<br>Said Marian . .<br> 'Ah–who stirred such thoughts, you ask?<br>Whose fault it was, that she should have such thoughts?<br>None's fault, none's fault. The light comes, and we see:<br>But if it were not truly for our eyes,<br>There would be nothing seen, for all the light.<br>And so with Marian. If she saw at last,<br>The sense was in her,–Lady Waldemar<br>Had spoken all in vain else.'<br> 'Oh my heart,<br>O prophet in my heart,' I cried aloud,<br>'Then Lady Waldemar spoke!'<br> 'Did she speak,'<br>Mused Marian softly, 'or did she only sign?<br>Or did she put a word into her face<br>And look, and so impress you with the word?<br>Or leave it in the foldings of her gown,<br>Like rosemary smells, a movement will shake out<br>When no one's conscious? who shall say, or guess?<br>One thing alone was certain–from the day<br>The gracious lady paid a visit first,<br>She, Marian, saw things different,–felt distrust<br>Of all that sheltering roof of circumstance<br>Her hopes were building into with clay nests:<br>Her heart was restless, pacing up and down<br>And fluttering, like dumb creatures before storms,<br>Not knowing wherefore she was ill at ease.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And still the lady came,' said Marian Erle,<br>'Much oftener than he knew it, Mister Leigh.<br>She bade me never tell him she had come,<br>She liked to love me better than he knew,<br>So very kind was Lady Waldemar:<br>And every time she brought with her more light,<br>And every light made sorrow clearer . . Well,<br>Ah, well! we cannot give her blame for that;<br>'Twould be the same thing if an angel came,<br>Whose right should prove our wrong. And every time<br>The lady came, she looked more beautiful<br>And spoke more like a flute among green trees,<br>Until at last, as one, whose heart being sad<br>On hearing lovely music, suddenly<br>Dissolves in weeping, I brake out in tears<br>Before her . . asked her counsel . . 'had I erred<br>'In being too happy? would she set me straight?<br>'For she, being wise and good and born above<br>'The flats I had never climbed from, could perceive<br>'If such as I, might grow upon the hills;<br>'And whether such poor herb sufficed to grow,<br>'For Romney Leigh to break his fast upon't,–<br>'Or would he pine on such, or haply starve?'<br>She wrapt me in her generous arms at once,<br>And let me dream a moment how it feels<br>To have a real mother, like some girls:<br>But when I looked, her face was younger . . ay,<br>Youth's too bright not to be a little hard,<br>And beauty keeps itself still uppermost,<br>That's true!–Though Lady Waldemar was kind,<br>She hurt me, hurt, as if the morning-sun<br>Should smite us on the eyelids when we sleep,<br>And wake us up with headache. Ay, and soon<br>Was light enough to make my heart ache too:<br>She told me truths I asked for, . . 'twas my fault, . .<br>'That Romney could not love me, if he would,<br>'As men call loving; there are bloods that flow<br>'Together, like some rivers, and not mix,<br>'Through contraries of nature. He indeed<br>'Was set to wed me, to espouse my class,<br>'Act out a rash opinion,–and, once wed,<br>'So just a man and gentle, could not choose<br>'But make my life as smooth as marriage-ring,<br>'Bespeak me mildly, keep me a cheerful house,<br>'With servants, brooches, all the flowers I liked,<br>'And pretty dresses, silk the whole year round' . .<br>At which I stopped her,–'This for me. And now<br>'For him.'–She murmured,–truth grew difficult;<br>She owned, Twas plain a man like Romney Leigh<br>'Required a wife more level to himself.<br>'If day by day he had to bend his height<br>'To pick up sympathies, opinions, thoughts,<br>'And interchange the common talk of life<br>'Which helps a man to live as well as talk,<br>'His days were heavily taxed. Who buys a staff<br>'To fit the hand, that reaches but the knee?<br>'He'd feel it bitter to be forced to miss<br>'The perfect joy of married suited pairs,<br>'Who, bursting through the separating hedge<br>'Of personal dues with that sweet eglantine<br>'Of equal love, keep saying, 'So we think,<br>It strikes us,–that's our fancy.–When I asked<br>If earnest will, devoted love, employed<br>In youth like mine, would fail to raise me up,–<br>As two strong arms will always raise a child<br>To a fruit hung overhead? she sighed and sighed . .<br>'That could not be,' she feared. 'You take a pink,<br>'You dig about its roots and water it,<br>'And so improve it to a garden-pink,<br>'But will not change it to a heliotrope,<br>'The kind remains. And then, the harder truth–<br>'This Romney Leigh, so rash to leap a pale,<br>'So bold for conscience, quick for martyrdom,<br>'Would suffer steadily and never flinch,<br>'But suffer surely and keenly, when his class<br>'Turned shoulder on him for a shameful match,<br>'And set him up as nine-pin in their talk<br>'To bowl him down with jestings.'–There, she paused;<br>And when I used the pause in doubting that<br>We wronged him after all in what we feared–<br>'Suppose such things should never touch him, more<br>'In his high conscience, (if the things should be,)<br>'Than, when the queen sits in an upper room<br>'The horses in the street can spatter her!'–<br>A moment, hope came,–but the lady closed<br>That door and nicked the lock and shut it out,<br>Observing wisely that 'the tender heart<br>'Which made him over-soft to a lower class,<br>'Could scarcely fail to make him sensitive<br>'To a higher,–how they thought and what they felt.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Alas, alas!' said Marian, rocking slow<br>The pretty baby who was near asleep,<br>The eyelids creeping over the blue balls,–<br>'She made it clear, too clear–I saw the whole!<br>And yet who knows if I had seen my way<br>Straight out of it, by looking, though 'twas clear,<br>Unless the generous lady, 'ware of this,<br>Had set her own house all a-fire for me,<br>To light me forwards? Leaning on my face<br>Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will,<br>She told me tenderly, (as when men come<br>To a bedside to tell people they must die)<br>'She knew of knowledge,–aye, of knowledge, knew,<br>'That Romney Leigh had loved her formerly.<br>'And she loved him, she might say, now the chance<br>'Was past . . but that, of course, he never guessed,–<br>'For something came between them . . something thin<br>As a cobweb . . catching every fly of doubt<br>'To hold it buzzing at the window-pane<br>'And help to dim the daylight. Ah, man's pride<br>'Or woman's–which is greatest? most averse<br>'To brushing cobwebs? Well, but she and he<br>'Remained fast friends; it seemed not more than so,<br>'Because he had bound his hands and could not stir:<br>'An honorable man, if somewhat rash;<br>'And she, not even for Romney, would she spill<br>'A blot . . as little even as a tear . .<br>'Upon his marriage-contract,–not to gain<br>'A better joy for two than came by that!<br>'For, though I stood between her heart and heaven,<br>'She loved me wholly.<br> Did I laugh or curse?<br>I think I sat there silent, hearing all,<br>Ay, hearing double,–Marian's tale, at once,<br>And Romney's marriage vow, 'I'll keep to THEE,'<br>Which means that woman-serpent. Is it time<br>For church now?<br> 'Lady Waldemar spoke more,'<br>Continued Marian, 'but, as when a soul<br>Will pass out through the sweetness of a song<br>Beyond it, voyaging the uphill road,–<br>Even so mine wandered from the things I heard,<br>To those I suffered. It was afterward<br>I shaped the resolution to the act.<br>For many hours we talked. What need to talk?<br>The fate was clear and close; it touched my eyes;<br>But still the generous lady tried to keep<br>The case afloat, and would not let it go,<br>And argued, struggled upon Marian's side,<br>Which was not Romney's! though she little knew<br>What ugly monster would take up the end,–<br>What griping death within the drowning death<br>Was ready to complete my sum of death.'<br>I thought,–Perhaps he's sliding now the ring<br>Upon that woman's finger . .<br> She went on:<br>'The lady, failing to prevail her way,<br>Upgathered my torn wishes from the ground<br>And pieced them with her strong benevolence;<br>And, as I thought I could breathe freer air<br>Away from England, going without pause,<br>Without farewell,–just breaking with a jerk<br>The blossomed offshoot from my thorny life,–<br>She promised kindly to provide the means,<br>With instant passage to the colonies<br>And full protection, would commit me straight<br>'To one who once had been her waiting-maid<br>'And had the customs of the world, intent<br>'On changing England for Australia<br>'Herself, to carry out her fortune so.'<br>For which I thanked the Lady Waldemar,<br>As men upon their death-beds thank last friends<br>Who lay the pillow straight: it is not much,<br>And yet 'tis all of which they are capable,<br>This lying smoothly in a bed to die.<br>And so, 'twas fixed;–and so, from day to day,<br>The woman named, came in to visit me.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just then the girl stopped speaking,–sate erect,<br>And stared at me as if I had been a ghost,<br>(Perhaps I looked as white as any ghost),<br>With large-eyed horror. 'Does God make,' she said,<br>'All sorts of creatures really, do you think?<br>Or is it that the Devil slavers them<br>So excellently, that we come to doubt<br>Who's stronger, He who makes, or he who mars?<br>I never liked the woman's face or voice,<br>Or ways: it made me blush to look at her;<br>It made me tremble if she touched my hand;<br>And when she spoke a fondling word I shrank,<br>As if one hated me, who had power to hurt;<br>And, every time she came, my veins ran cold,<br>As somebody were walking on my grave.<br>At last I spoke to Lady Waldemar:<br>'Could such an one be good to trust?' I asked.<br>Whereat the lady stroked my cheek and laughed<br>Her silver-laugh (one must be born to laugh,<br>To put such music in it) 'Foolish girl,<br>'Your scattered wits are gathering wool beyond<br>'The sheep-walk reaches!–leave the thing to me.'<br>And therefore, half in trust, and half in scorn<br>That I had heart still for another fear<br>In such a safe despair, I left the thing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The rest is short. I was obedient:<br>I wrote my letter which delivered him<br>From Marian to his own prosperities,<br>And followed that bad guide. The lady?–hush,–<br>I never blame the lady. Ladies who<br>Sit high, however willing to look down,<br>Will scarce see lower than their dainty feet;<br>And Lady Waldemar saw less than I<br>With what a Devil's daughter I went forth<br>The swine's road, headlong over a precipice,<br>In such a curl of hell-foam caught and choked,<br>No shriek of soul in anguish could pierce through<br>To fetch some help. They say there's help in heaven<br>For all such cries. But if one cries from hell. .<br>What then?–the heavens are deaf upon that side.<br>A woman . . hear me,–let me make it plain,–<br>A woman . . not a monster . . both her breasts<br>Made right to suckle babes . . she took me off,<br>A woman also, young and ignorant,<br>And heavy with my grief, my two poor eyes<br>Near washed away with weeping, till the trees,<br>The blessed unaccustomed trees and fields,<br>Ran either side the train like stranger dogs<br>Unworthy of any notice,–took me off,<br>So dull, so blind, and only half alive,<br>Not seeing by what road, nor by what ship,<br>Nor toward what place, nor to what end of all.–<br>Men carry a corpse thus,–past the doorway, past<br>The garden-gate, the children's playground, up<br>The green lane,–then they leave it in the pit,<br>To sleep and find corruption, cheek to cheek<br>With him who stinks since Friday.<br> 'But suppose;<br>To go down with one's soul into the grave,–<br>To go down half dead, half alive, I say,<br>And wake up with corruption, . . cheek to cheek<br>With him who stinks since Friday! There it is,<br>And that's the horror of't, Miss Leigh.<br> 'You feel?<br>You understand?–no, do not look at me,<br>But understand. The blank, blind, weary way,<br>Which led . . where'er it led . . away at least;<br>The shifted ship . . to Sydney or to France . .<br>Still bound, wherever else, to another land;<br>The swooning sickness on the dismal sea,<br>The foreign shore, the shameful house, the night,<br>The feeble blood, the heavy-headed grief, . .<br>No need to bring their damnable drugged cup,<br>And yet they brought it! Hell's so prodigal<br>Of devil's gifts . . hunts liberally in packs,<br>Will kill no poor small creature of the wilds<br>But fifty red wide throats must smoke at it,<br>As HIS at me . . when waking up at last . .<br>I told you that I waked up in the grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Enough so!–it is plain enough so. True,<br>We wretches cannot tell out all our wrong,<br>Without offence to decent happy folk.<br>I know that we must scrupulously hint<br>With half-words, delicate reserves, the thing<br>Which no one scrupled we should feel in full.<br>Let pass the rest, then; only leave my oath<br>Upon this sleeping child,–man's violence,<br>Not man's seduction, made me what I am,<br>As lost as . . I told him I should be lost.<br>When mothers fail us, can we help ourselves?<br>That's fatal!–And you call it being lost,<br>That down came next day's noon and caught me there,<br>Half gibbering and half raving on the floor,<br>And wondering what had happened up in heaven,<br>That suns should dare to shine when God Himself<br>Was certainly abolished.<br> 'I was mad,–<br>How many weeks, I know not,–many weeks.<br>I think they let me go, when I was mad,<br>They feared my eyes and loosed me, as boys might<br>A mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down<br>I went, by road and village, over tracts<br>Of open foreign country, large and strange,<br>Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines<br>Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton hand<br>Through sunlight and through moonlight evermore<br>Pushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,<br>And resolute to get me, slow and sure;<br>While every roadside Christ upon his cross<br>Hung reddening through his gory wounds at me,<br>And shook his nails in anger, and came down<br>To follow a mile after, wading up<br>The low vines and green wheat, crying 'Take the girl!<br>She's none of mine from henceforth.' Then, I knew,<br>(But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest)<br>The charitable peasants gave me bread<br>And leave to sleep in straw: and twice they tied,<br>At parting, Mary's image round my neck–<br>How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone;<br>A woman has been strangled with less weight:<br>I threw it in a ditch to keep it clean<br>And ease my breath a little, when none looked;<br>I did not need such safeguards:–brutal men<br>Stopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seen<br>My face,–I must have had an awful look.<br>And so I lived: the weeks passed on,–I lived.<br>'Twas living my old tramp-life o'er again,<br>But, this time, in a dream, and hunted round<br>By some prodigious Dream-fear at my back,<br>Which ended, yet: my brain cleared presently,<br>And there I sate, one evening, by the road,<br>I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone,<br>Facing a sunset low upon the flats,<br>As if it were the finish of all time,–<br>The great red stone upon my sepulchre,<br>Which angels were too weak to roll away.</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=116059" data-title="Sixth Book de Elizabeth Barrett Browning" data-description="THE English have a scornful insular way/Of calling the French light. The levity/Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;/For say a foolish thing but oft enough,/(And here's the secret of a hundred creeds,–/Men get opinions as boys learn to spe..."></div> </div> </div>

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