<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116060" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Seventh Book</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">'THE woman's motive? shall we daub ourselves<br>With finding roots for nettles? 'tis soft clay<br>And easily explored. She had the means,<br>The moneys, by the lady's liberal grace,<br>In trust for that Australian scheme and me,<br>Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,<br>And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,<br>She served me (after all it was not strange,;<br>'Twas only what my mother would have done)<br>A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Well, after. There are nettles everywhere,<br>But smooth green grasses are more common still;<br>The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;<br>A miller's wife at Clichy took me in<br>And spent her pity on me,–made me calm<br>And merely very reasonably sad.<br>She found me a servant's place in Paris where<br>I tried to take the cast-off life again,<br>And stood as quiet as a beaten ass<br>Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up<br>To let them charge him with another pack.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,<br>Was easy with me, less for kindness than<br>Because she led, herself, an easy time<br>Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,<br>Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.<br>She felt so pretty and so pleased all day<br>She could not take the trouble to be cross,<br>But sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,<br>Would tap me softly with her slender foot<br>Still restless with the last night's dancing in't,<br>And say 'Fie, pale-face! are you English girls<br>'All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?<br>'And first-communion colours on your cheeks,<br>'Worn past the time for't? little fool, be gay!'<br>At which she vanished, like a fairy, through<br>A gap of silver laughter.<br> 'Came an hour<br>When all went otherwise. She did not speak,<br>But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes<br>As if a viper with a pair of tongs,<br>Too far for any touch, yet near enough<br>To view the writhing creature,–then at last,<br>'Stand still there, in the holy Virgin's name,<br>'Thou Marian; thou'rt no reputable girl,<br>'Although sufficient dull for twenty saints!<br>'I think thou mock'st me and my house,' she said;<br>'Confess thou'lt be a mother in a month,<br>'Thou mask of saintship.'<br> 'Could I answer her?<br>The light broke in so. It meant that then, that?<br>I had not thought of that, in all my thoughts,<br>Through all the cold, dumb aching of my brow,<br>Through all the heaving of impatient life<br>Which threw me on death at intervals, through all<br>The upbreak of the fountains of my heart<br>The rains had swelled too large: it could mean that?<br>Did God make mothers out of victims, then,<br>And set such pure amens to hideous deeds?<br>Why not? He overblows an ugly grave<br>With violets which blossom in the spring.<br>And I could be a mother in a month!<br>I hope it was not wicked to be glad.<br>I lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed,<br>To heaven, not her, until I tore my throat.<br>'Confess, confess!' what was there to confess,<br>Except man's cruelty, except my wrong?<br>Except this anguish, or this ecstasy?<br>This shame, or glory? The light woman there<br>Was small to take it in: an acorn-cup<br>Would take the sea in sooner.<br> Good,' she cried;<br>'Unmarried and a mother, and she laughs!<br>'These unchaste girls are always impudent.<br>'Get out, intriguer! leave my house, and trot:<br>'I wonder you should look me in the face,<br>'With such a filthy secret.'<br> 'Then I rolled<br>My scanty bundle up, and went my way,<br>Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot<br>With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth<br>Beyond those doors, 'Twas natural, of course,<br>She should not ask me where I meant to sleep;<br>I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,<br>Like others of my sort; the bed was laid<br>For us. By any woman, womanly,<br>Had thought of him who should be in a month,<br>The sinless babe that should be in a month,<br>And if by chance he might be warmer housed<br>Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I broke on Marian there. 'Yet she herself,<br>A wife, I think, had scandals of her own,<br>A lover, not her husband.'<br> 'Ay,' she said<br>'But gold and meal are measured otherwise;<br>I learnt so much at school,' said Marian Erle.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O crooked world,' I cried, 'ridiculous<br>If not so lamentable! It's the way<br>With these light women of a thrifty vice,<br>My Marian,–always hard upon the rent<br>In any sister's virtue! while they keep<br>Their chastity so darned with perfidy,<br>That, though a rag itself, it looks as well<br>Across a street, in balcony or coach,<br>As any stronger stuff might. For my part,<br>I'd rather take the wind-side of the stews<br>Than touch such women with my finger-end<br>They top the poor street-walker by their lie,<br>And look the better for being so much worse<br>The devil's most devilish when respectable.<br>But you, dear, and your story.'<br> 'All the rest<br>Is here,' she said, and sighed upon the child.<br>'I found a mistress-sempstress who was kind<br>And let me sew in peace among her girls;<br>And what was better than to draw the threads<br>All day and half the night, for him, and him?<br>And so I lived for him, and so he lives,<br>And so I know, by this time, God lives too.'<br>She smiled beyond the sun, and ended so,<br>And all my soul rose up to take her part<br>Against the world's successes, virtues, fames.<br>'Come with me, sweetest sister,' I returned,<br>'And sit within my house, and do me good<br>From henceforth, thou and thine! ye are my own<br>From henceforth. I am lonely in the world,<br>And thou art lonely, and the child is half<br>An orphan. Come, and, henceforth, thou and I<br>Being still together, will not miss a friend,<br>Nor he a father, since two mothers shall<br>Make that up to him. I am journeying south,<br>And, in my Tuscan home I'll find a niche,<br>And set thee there, my saint, the child and thee,<br>And burn the lights of love before thy face,<br>And ever at thy sweet look cross myself<br>From mixing with the world's prosperities;<br>That so, in gravity and holy calm,<br>We too may live on toward the truer life.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She looked me in the face and answered not,<br>Nor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks,<br>But took the sleeping child and held it out<br>To meet my kiss, as if requiting me<br>And trusting me at once. And thus, at once,<br>I carried him and her to where I lived;<br>She's there now, in the little room, asleep,<br>I hear the soft child-breathing through the door;<br>And all three of us, at to-morrow's break,<br>Pass onward, homeward, to our Italy.<br>Oh, Romney Leigh, I have your debts to pay,<br>And I'll be just and pay them.<br> But yourself!<br>To pay your debts is scarcely difficult;<br>To buy your life is nearly impossible,<br>Being sold away to Lamia. My head aches;<br>I cannot see my road along this dark;<br>Nor can I creep and grope, as fits the dark,<br>For these foot-catching robes of womanhood:<br>A man might walk a little . . but I!–He loves<br>The Lamia-woman,–and I, write to him<br>What stops his marriage, and destroys his peace,–<br>Or what, perhaps, shall simply trouble him,<br>Until she only need to touch his sleeve<br>With just a finger's tremulous white flame,<br>Saying, 'Ah,–Aurora Leigh! a pretty tale,<br>'A very pretty poet! I can guess<br>'The motive'–then, to catch his eyes in hers,<br>And vow she does not wonder,–and they two<br>To break in laughter, as the sea along<br>A melancholy coast, and float up higher,<br>In such a laugh, their fatal weeds of love!<br>Ay, fatal, ay. And who shall answer me,<br>Fate has not hurried tides; and if to-night<br>My letter would not be a night too late,–<br>An arrow shot into a man that's dead,<br>To prove a vain intention? Would I show<br>The new wife vile, to make the husband mad?<br>No, Lamia! shut the shutters, bar the doors<br>From every glimmer on they serpent-skin!<br>I will not let thy hideous secret out<br>To agonise the man I love–I mean<br>The friend I love . . as friends love.<br> It is strange,<br>To-day while Marian told her story, like<br>To absorb most listeners, how I listened chief<br>To a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy's,<br>Nor God's in wrath, . . but one that mixed with mine<br>Long years ago, among the garden-trees,<br>And said to me, to me too, 'Be my wife,<br>Aurora!' It is strange, with what a swell<br>Of yearning passion, as a snow of ghosts<br>Might beat against the impervious doors of heaven,<br>I thought, 'Now, if I had been a woman, such<br>As God made women, to save men by love,–<br>By just my love I might have saved this man,<br>And made a nobler poem for the world<br>Than all I have failed in.' But I failed besides<br>In this; and now he's lost! through me alone!<br>And, by my only fault, his empty house<br>Sucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hell<br>To keep his hearth cold, make his casements creak<br>For ever to the tune of plague and sin–<br>O Romney, O my Romney, O my friend!<br>My cousin and friend! my helper, when I would,<br>My love that might be! mine!<br> Why, how one weeps<br>When one's too weary! Were a witness by,<br>He'd say some folly . . that I loved the man,<br>Who knows? . . and make me laugh again for scorn.<br>At strongest, women are as weak in flesh,<br>As men, at weakest, vilest, are in soul:<br>So, hard for women to keep pace with men!<br>As well give up at once, sit down at once.<br>And weep as I do. Tears, tears! why, we weep?<br>'Tis worth enquiry?–That we've shamed a life,<br>Or lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps?<br>By no means. Simply, that we've walked too far,<br>Or talked too much, or felt the wind i' the east,–<br>And so we weep, as if both body and soul<br>Broke up in water–this way.<br> Poor mixed rags<br>Forsooth we're made of, like those other dolls<br>That lean with pretty faces into fairs.<br>It seems as if I had a man in me,<br>Despising such a woman.<br> Yet indeed.<br>To see a wrong or suffering moves us all<br>To undo it, though we should undo ourselves;<br>Ay, all the more, that we undo ourselves;<br>That's womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved.<br>A natural movement, therefore, on my part,<br>To fill the chair up of my cousin's wife,<br>And save him from a devil's company!<br>We're all so,–made so–'tis our woman's trade<br>To suffer torment for another's ease.<br>The world's male chivalry has perished out,<br>But women are knights-errant to the last;<br>And, if Cervantes had been greater still,<br>He had made his Don a Donna.<br> So it clears,<br>And so we rain our skies blue.<br> Put away<br>This weakness. If, as I have just now said,<br>A man's within me–let him act himself,<br>Ignoring the poor conscious trouble of blood<br>That's called the woman merely. I will write<br>Plain words to England,–if too late, too late,–<br>If ill-accounted, then accounted ill;<br>We'll trust the heavens with something.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Dear Lord Howe,<br>You'll find a story on another leaf<br>That's Marian Erle's,–what noble friend of yours<br>She trusted once, through what flagitious means<br>To what disastrous ends;–the story's true.<br>I found her wandering on the Paris quays,<br>A babe upon her breast,–unnatural<br>Unseasonable outcast on such snows<br>Unthawed to this time. I will tax in this<br>Your friendship, friend,–if that convicted She<br>Be not his wife yet, to denounce the facts<br>To himself,–but, otherwise, to let them pass<br>On tip-toe like escaping murderers,<br>And tell my cousin, merely–Marian lives,<br>Is found, and finds her home with such a friend,<br>Myself, Aurora. Which good news, 'She's found,'<br>Will help to make him merry in his love:<br>I sent it, tell him, for my marriage gift,<br>As good as orange-water for the nerves,<br>Or perfumed gloves for headaches,–though aware<br>That he, except of love, is scarcely sick;<br>I mean the new love this time, . . since last year.<br>Such quick forgetting on the part of men!<br>Is any shrewder trick upon the cards<br>To enrich them? pray instruct me how it's done.<br>First, clubs,–and while you look at clubs, it's spades;<br>That's prodigy. The lightning strikes a man,<br>And when we think to find him dead and charred . .<br>Why, there he is on a sudden, playing pipes<br>Beneath the splintered elm-tree! Crime and shame<br>And all their hoggery trample your smooth world,<br>Nor leave more foot-marks than Apollo's kine,<br>Whose hoofs were muffled by the thieving god<br>In tamarisk-leaves and myrtle. I'm so sad,<br>So weary and sad to-night, I'm somewhat sour,–<br>Forgive me. To be blue and shrew at once,<br>Exceeds all toleration except yours;<br>But yours, I know, is infinite. Farewell.<br>To-morrow we take train for Italy.<br>Speak gently of me to your gracious wife,<br>As one, however far, shall yet be near<br>In loving wishes to your house.'<br> I sign.<br>And now I'll loose my heart upon a page,<br>This–<br> 'Lady Waldemar, I'm very glad<br>I never liked you; which you knew so well,<br>You spared me, in your turn, to like me much.<br>Your liking surely had done worse for me<br>Than has your loathing, though the last appears<br>Sufficiently unscrupulous to hurt,<br>And not afraid of judgment. Now, there's space<br>Between our faces,–I stand off, as if<br>I judged a stranger's portrait and pronounced<br>Indifferently the type was good or bad:<br>What matter to me that the lines are false,<br>I ask you? Did I ever ink my lips<br>By drawing your name through them as a friend's.<br>Or touch your hands as lovers do? thank God<br>I never did: and, since you're proved so vile,<br>Ay, vile, I say,–we'll show it presently,–<br>I'm not obliged to nurse my friend in you,<br>Or wash out my own blots, in counting yours,<br>Or even excuse myself to honest souls<br>Who seek to touch my lip or clasp my palm,–<br>'Alas, but Lady Waldemar came first!'<br>'Tis true, by this time, you may near me so<br>That you're my cousin's wife. You've gambled<br>As Lucifer, and won the morning-star<br>In that case,–and the noble house of Leigh<br>Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:<br>I cannot speak and burn you up between<br>Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,–nor speak<br>And pierce your breast through Romney's, I who live<br>His friend and cousin!–so, you are safe. You two<br>Must grow together like the tares and wheat<br>Till God's great fire.–But make the best of time.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And hide this letter! let it speak no more<br>Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,<br>And set her own love digging her own grave<br>Within her green hope's pretty garden-ground;<br>Ay, sent her forth with some of your sort<br>To a wicked house in France,–from which she fled<br>With curses in her eyes and ears and throat,<br>Her whole soul choked with curses,–mad, in short,<br>And madly scouring up and down for weeks<br>The foreign hedgeless country, lone and lost,–<br>So innocent, male-fiends might slink within<br>Remote hell-corners, seeing her so defiled!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'But you,–you are a woman and more bold.<br>To do you justice, you'd not shrink to face . .<br>We'll say, the unfledged life in the other room,<br>Which, treading down God's corn, you trod in sight<br>Of all the dogs, in reach of all the guns,–<br>Ay, Marian's babe, her poor unfathered child,<br>Her yearling babe!–you'd face him when he wakes<br>And opens up his wonderful blue eyes:<br>You'd meet them and not wink perhaps, nor fear<br>God's triumph in them and supreme revenge,<br>So, righting His creation's balance-scale<br>(You pulled as low as Tophet) to the top<br>Of most celestial innocence! For me<br>Who am not as bold, I own those infant eyes<br>Have set me praying.<br> 'While they look at heaven,<br>No need of protestation in my words<br>Against the place you've made them! let them look!<br>They'll do your business with the heavens, be sure:<br>I spare you common curses.<br> 'Ponder this.<br>If haply you're the wife of Romney Leigh,<br>(For which inheritance beyond your birth<br>You sold that poisonous porridge called your soul)<br>I charge you, be his faithful and true wife!<br>Keep warm his hearth and clean his board, and, when<br>He speaks, be quick with your obedience;<br>Still grind your paltry wants and low desires<br>To dust beneath his heel; though, even thus,<br>The ground must hurt him,–it was writ of old,<br>'Ye shall not yoke together ox and ass,'<br>The nobler and ignobler. Ay, but you<br>Shall do your part as well as such ill things<br>Can do aught good. You shall not vex him,–mark,<br>You shall not vex him, . .jar him when he's sad,<br>Or cross him when he's eager. Understand<br>To trick him with apparent sympathies,<br>Nor let him see thee in the face too near<br>And unlearn thy sweet seeming. Pay the price<br>Of lies, by being constrained to lie on still;<br>'Tis easy for they sort: a million more<br>Will scarcely damn thee deeper.<br> 'Doing which,<br>You are very safe from Marian and myself;<br>We'll breathe as softly as the infant here,<br>And stir no dangerous embers. Fail a point,<br>And show our Romney wounded, ill-content,<br>Tormented in his home, . . we open a mouth,<br>And such a noise will follow, the last trump's<br>Will scarcely seem more dreadful, even to you;<br>You'll have no pipers after: Romney will<br>(I know him) push you forth as none of his,<br>All other men declaring it well done;<br>While women, even the worst, your like, will draw<br>Their skirts back, not to brush you in the street;<br>And so I warn you. I'm . . . Aurora Leigh.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The letter written, I felt satisfied.<br>The ashes, smouldering in me, were thrown out<br>By handfuls from me: I had writ my heart<br>And wept my tears, and now was cool and calm;<br>And, going straightway to the neighbouring room,<br>I lifted up the curtains of the bed<br>Where Marian Erle, the babe upon her arm,<br>Both faces leaned together like a pair<br>Of folded innocences, self-complete,<br>Each smiling from the other, smiled and slept.<br>There seemed no sin, no shame, no wrath, no grief.<br>I felt, she too had spoken words that night,<br>But softer certainly, and said to God,–<br>Who laughs in heaven perhaps, that such as I<br>Should make ado for such as she.–'Defiled'<br>I wrote? 'defiled' I thought her? Stoop,<br>Stoop lower, Aurora! get the angels' leave<br>To creep in somewhere, humbly, on your knees,<br>Within this round of sequestration white<br>In which they have wrapt earth's foundlings, heaven's elect!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The next day, we took train to Italy<br>And fled on southward in the roar of steam.<br>The marriage-bells of Romney must be loud,<br>To sound so clear through all! I was not well;<br>And truly, though the truth is like a jest,<br>I could not choose but fancy, half the way,<br>I stood alone i' the belfry, fifty bells<br>Of naked iron, mad with merriment,<br>(As one who laughs and cannot stop himself)<br>All clanking at me, in me, over me,<br>Until I shrieked a shriek I could not hear,<br>And swooned with noise,–but still, along my swoon,<br>Was 'ware the baffled changes backward rang,<br>Prepared, at each emerging sense, to beat<br>And crash it out with clangour. I was weak;<br>I struggled for the posture of my soul<br>In upright consciousness of place and time,<br>But evermore, 'twixt waking and asleep,<br>Slipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marian's eyes<br>A moment, (it is very good for strength<br>To know that some one needs you to be strong)<br>And so recovered what I called myself,<br>For that time.<br> I just knew it when we swept<br>Above the old roofs of Dijon. Lyons dropped<br>A spark into the night, half trodden out<br>Unseen. But presently the winding Rhone<br>Washed out the moonlight large along his banks,<br>Which strained their yielding curves out clear and clean<br>To hold it,–shadow of town and castle just blurred<br>Upon the hurrying river. Such an air<br>Blew thence upon the forehead,–half an air<br>And half a water,–that I leaned and looked;<br>Then, turning back on Marian, smiled to mark<br>That she looked only on her child, who slept,<br>His face towards the moon too.<br> So we passed<br>The liberal open country and the close,<br>And shot through tunnels, like a lightning-wedge<br>By great Thor-hammers driven through the rock,<br>Which, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits,<br>And lets it in at once: the train swept in<br>Athrob with effort, trembling with resolve,<br>The fierce denouncing whistle wailing on<br>And dying off smothered in the shuddering dark,<br>While we, self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressed<br>As other Titans, underneath the pile<br>And nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last,<br>To catch the dawn afloat upon the land!<br>–Hills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywhere,<br>Not crampt in their foundations, pushing wide<br>Rich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn<br>(As if they entertained i' the name of France)<br>While, down their straining sides, streamed manifest<br>A soil as red as Charlemagne's knightly blood,<br>To consecrate the verdure. Some one said,<br>'Marseilles!' And lo, the city of Marseilles,<br>With all her ships behind her, and beyond,<br>The scimitar of ever-shining sea,<br>For right-hand use, bared blue against the sky!<br>That night we spent between the purple heaven<br>And purple water: I think Marian slept;<br>But I, as a dog a-watch for his master's foot,<br>Who cannot sleep or eat before he hears,<br>I sate upon the deck and watched all night,<br>And listened through the stars for Italy.<br>Those marriage-bells I spoke of, sounded far,<br>As some child's go-cart in the street beneath<br>To a dying man who will not pass the day,<br>And knows it, holding by a hand he loves.<br>I, too, sate quiet, satisfied with death,<br>Sate silent: I could hear my own soul speak,<br>And had my friend,–for Nature comes sometimes<br>And says, 'I am ambassador for God.'<br>I felt the wind soft from the land of souls;<br>The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,<br>One straining past another along the shore,<br>The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts<br>Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas<br>And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak<br>They stood: I watched beyond that Tyrian belt<br>Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship,<br>Down all their sides the misty olive-woods<br>Dissolving in the weak congenial moon,<br>And still disclosing some brown convent-tower<br>That seems as if it grew from some brown rock,–<br>Or many a little lighted village, dropt<br>Like a fallen star, upon so high a point,<br>You wonder what can keep it in its place<br>From sliding headlong with the waterfalls<br>Which drop and powder all the myrtle-groves<br>With spray of silver. Thus my Italy<br>Was stealing on us. Genoa broke with day;<br>The Doria's long pale palace striking out,<br>From green hills in advance of the white town,<br>A marble finger dominant to ships,<br>Seen glimmering through the uncertain grey of dawn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But then I did not think, 'my Italy,'<br>I thought, 'my father!' O my father's house,<br>Without his presence!–Places are too much<br>Or else too little, for immortal man;<br>Too little, when love's May o'ergrows the ground,–<br>Too much, when that luxuriant wealth of green<br>Is rustling to our ankles in dead leaves.<br>'Tis only good to be, or here or there,<br>Because we had a dream on such a stone,<br>Or this or that,–but, once being wholly waked,<br>And come back to the stone without the dream,<br>We trip upon't,–alas! and hurt ourselves;<br>Or else it falls on us and grinds us flat,<br>The heaviest grave-stone on this buying earth.<br>–But while I stood and mused, a quiet touch<br>Fell light upon my arm, and, turning round,<br>A pair of moistened eyes convicted mine.<br>'What, Marian! is the babe astir so soon?'<br>'He sleeps,' she answered; 'I have crept up thrice,<br>And seen you sitting, standing, still at watch.<br>I thought it did you good till now, but now' . . .<br>'But now,' I said, 'you leave the child alone.'<br>'And your're alone,' she answered,–and she looked<br>As if I, too, were something. Sweet the help<br>Of one we have helped! Thanks, Marian, for that help.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I found a house, at Florence, on the hill<br>Of Bellosguardo. 'Tis a tower that keeps<br>A post of double-observation o'er<br>The valley of Arno (holding as a hand<br>The outspread city) straight toward Fiesole<br>And Mount Morello and the setting sun,–<br>The Vallombrosan mountains to the right,<br>Which sunrise fills as full as crystal cups<br>Wine-filled, and red to the brim because it's red.<br>No sun could die, nor yet be born, unseen<br>By dwellers at my villa: morn and eve<br>Were magnified before us in the pure<br>Illimitable space and pause of sky,<br>Intense as angels' garments blanched with God,<br>Less blue than radiant. From the outer wall<br>Of the garden, dropped the mystic floating grey<br>Of olive-trees, (with interruptions green<br>From maize and vine) until 'twas caught and torn<br>On that abrupt black line of cypresses<br>Which signed the way to Florence. Beautiful<br>The city lay along the ample vale,<br>Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street;<br>The river trailing like a silver cord<br>Through all, and curling loosely, both before<br>And after, over the whole stretch of land<br>Sown whitely up and down its opposite slopes,<br>With farms and villas.<br> Many weeks had passed,<br>No word was granted.–Last, a letter came<br>From Vincent Carrington:–'My Dear Miss Leigh,<br>You've been as silent as a poet should,<br>When any other man is sure to speak.<br>If sick, if vexed, if dumb, a silver-piece<br>Will split a man's tongue,–straight he speaks and says,<br>'Received that cheque.' But you! . . I send you funds<br>To Paris, and you make no sign at all.<br>Remember I'm responsible and wait<br>A sign of you, Miss Leigh.<br> 'Meantime your book<br>Is eloquent as if you were not dumb;<br>And common critics, ordinarily deaf<br>To such fine meanings, and, like deaf men, loth<br>To seem deaf, answering chance-wise, yes or no,<br>'It must be,' or 'it must not,' (most pronounced<br>When least convinced) pronounce for once aright:<br>You'd think they really heard,–and so they do . .<br>The burr of three or four who really hear<br>And praise your book aright: Fame's smallest trump<br>Is a great ear-trumpet for the deaf as posts,<br>No other being effective. Fear not, friend;<br>We think, here, you have written a good book,<br>And you, a woman! It was in you–yes,<br>I felt 'twas in you: yet I doubted half<br>If that od-force of German Reichenbach<br>Which still from female finger-tips burns blue,<br>Could strike out, as our masculine white heats,<br>To quicken a man. Forgive me. All my heart<br>Is quick with yours, since, just a fortnight since,<br>I read your book and loved it.<br> 'Will you love<br>My wife, too? Here's my secret, I might keep<br>A month more from you! but I yield it up<br>Because I know you'll write the sooner for't,–<br>Most women (of your height even) counting love<br>Life's only serious business. Who's my wife<br>That shall be in a month? you ask? nor guess?<br>Remember what a pair of topaz eyes<br>You once detected, turned against the wall,<br>That morning, in my London painting-room;<br>The face half-sketched, and slurred; the eyes alone!<br>But you . . you caught them up with yours, and said<br>'Kate Ward's eyes, surely.'–Now, I own the truth,<br>I had thrown them there to keep them safe from Jove;<br>They would so naughtily find out their way<br>To both the heads of both my Danaës,<br>Where just it made me mad to look at them.<br>Such eyes! I could not paint or think of eyes<br>But those,–and so I flung them into paint<br>And turned them to the wall's care. Ay, but now<br>I've let them out, my Kate's! I've painted her,<br>(I'll change my style, and leave mythologies)<br>The whole sweet face; it looks upon my soul<br>Like a face on water, to beget itself,<br>A half-length portrait, in a hanging cloak<br>Like one you wore once; 'tis a little frayed;<br>I pressed, too, for the nude harmonious arm–<br>But she . . she'd have her way, and have her cloak;<br>She said she could be like you only so,<br>And would not miss the fortune. Ah, my friend,<br>You'll write and say she shall not miss your love<br>Through meeting mine? in faith, she would not change:<br>She has your books by heart, more than my words,<br>And quotes you up against me till I'm pushed<br>Where, three months since, her eyes were! nay, in fact,<br>Nought satisfied her but to make me paint<br>Your last book folded in her dimpled hands,<br>Instead of my brown palette, as I wished,<br>(And, grant me, the presentment had been newer)<br>She'd grant me nothing: I've compounded for<br>The naming of the wedding-day next month,<br>And gladly too. 'Tis pretty, to remark<br>How women can love women of your sort,<br>And tie their hearts with love-knots to your feet,<br>Grow insolent about you against men,<br>And put us down by putting up the lip,<br>As if a man,–there are such, let us own.<br>Who write not ill,–remains a man, poor wretch,<br>While you–! Write far worse than Aurora Leigh,<br>And there'll be women who believe of you<br>(Besides my Kate) that if you walked on sand<br>You would not leave a foot-print.<br> 'Are you put<br>To wonder by my marriage, like poor Leigh?<br>'Kate Ward!' he said. 'Kate Ward!' he said anew.<br>'I thought . . .' he said, and stopped,–'I did not think . . .'<br>And then he dropped to silence.<br> 'Ah, he's changed<br>I had not seen him, you're aware, for long,<br>But went of course. I have not touched on this<br>Through all this letter,–conscious of your heart,<br>And writing lightlier for the heavy fact,<br>As clocks are voluble with lead.<br> 'How weak<br>To say I'm sorry. Dear Leigh, dearest Leigh!<br>In those old days of Shropshire,–pardon me,–<br>When he and you fought many a field of gold<br>On what you should do, or you should not do,<br>Make bread of verses, (it just came to that)<br>I thought you'd one day draw a silken peace<br>Through a gold ring. I thought so. Foolishly,<br>The event proved,–for you went more opposite<br>To each other, month by month, and year by year,<br>Until this happened. God knows best, we say,<br>But hoarsely. When the fever took him first,<br>Just after I had writ to you in France,<br>They tell me Lady Waldemar mixed drinks<br>And counted grains, like any salaried nurse,<br>Excepting that she wept too. Then Lord Howe,<br>You're right about Lord Howe! Lord Howe's a trump;<br>And yet, with such in his hand, a man like Leigh<br>May lose, as he does. There's an end to all,–<br>Yes, even this letter, through the second sheet<br>May find you doubtful. Write a word for Kate:<br>Even now she reads my letters like a wife,<br>And if she sees her name, I'll see her smile,<br>And share the luck. So, bless you, friend of two!<br>I will not ask you what your feeling is<br>At Florence with my pictures. I can hear<br>Your heart a-flutter over the snow-hills;<br>And, just to pace the Pitti with you once,<br>I'd give a half-hour of to-morrow's walk<br>With Kate . . I think so. Vincent Carrington.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The noon was hot; the air scorched like the sun,<br>And was shut out. The closed persiani threw<br>Their long-scored shadows on my villa-floor,<br>And interlined the golden atmosphere<br>Straight, still,–across the pictures on the wall<br>The statuette on the console, (of young Love<br>And Psyche made one marble by a kiss)<br>The low couch where I leaned, the table near,<br>The vase of lilies, Marian pulled last night,<br>(Each green leaf and each white leaf ruled in black<br>As if for writing some new text of fate)<br>And the open letter, rested on my knee,–<br>But there, the lines swerved, trembled, though I sate<br>Untroubled . . plainly, . . reading it again<br>And three times. Well, he's married; that is clear.<br>No wonder that he's married, nor much more<br>That Vincent's therefore, 'sorry.' Why, of course,<br>The lady nursed him when he was not well,<br>Mixed drinks,–unless nepenthe was the drink,<br>'Twas scarce worth telling. But a man in love<br>Will see the whole sex in his mistress' hood,<br>The prettier for its lining of fair rose;<br>Although he catches back, and says at last,<br>'I'm sorry.' Sorry. Lady Waldemar<br>At prettiest, under the said hood, preserved<br>From such a light as I could hold to her face<br>To flare its ugly wrinkles out to shame,–<br>Is scarce a wife for Romney, as friends judge,<br>Aurora Leigh, or Vincent Carrington,–<br>That's plain. And if he's 'conscious of my heart' . .<br>Perhaps it's natural, though the phrase is strong;<br>(One's apt to use strong phrases, being in love)<br>And even that stuff of 'fields of gold,' 'gold rings,'<br>And what he 'thought,' poor Vincent! what he 'thought,'<br>May never mean enough to ruffle me.<br>–Why, this room stifles. Better burn than choke;<br>Best have air, air, although it comes with fire,<br>Throw open blinds and windows to the noon<br>And take a blister on my brow instead<br>Of this dead weight! best, perfectly be stunned<br>By those insufferable cicale, sick<br>And hoarse with rapture of the summer-heat,<br>That sing like poets, till their hearts break, . . sing<br>Till men say, 'It's too tedious.'<br> Books succeed,<br>And lives fail. Do I feel it so, at last?<br>Kate loves a worn-out cloak for being like mine,<br>While I live self-despised for being myself,<br>And yearn toward some one else, who yearns away<br>From what he is, in his turn. Strain a step<br>For ever, yet gain no step? Are we such,<br>We cannot, with our admirations even,<br>Our tip-toe aspirations, touch a thing<br>That's higher than we? is all a dismal flat,<br>And God alone above each,–as the sun<br>O'er level lagunes, to make them shine and stink,–<br>Laying stress upon us with immediate flame,<br>While we respond with our miasmal fog,<br>And call it mounting higher, because we grow<br>More highly fatal?<br> Tush, Aurora Leigh!<br>You wear your sackcloth looped in Cæsar's way.<br>And brag your failings as mankind's. Be still.<br>There is what's higher in this very world,<br>Than you can live, or catch at. Stand aside,<br>And look at others–instance little Kate!<br>She'll make a perfect wife for Carrington.<br>She always has been looking round the earth<br>For something good and green to alight upon<br>And nestle into, with those soft-winged eyes<br>Subsiding now beneath his manly hand<br>'Twixt trembling lids of inexpressive joy:<br>I will not scorn her, after all, too much,<br>That so much she should love me. A wise man<br>Can pluck a leaf, and find a lecture in't;<br>And I, too, . . God has made me,–I've a heart<br>That's capable of worship, love, and loss;<br>We say the same of Shakspeare's. I'll be meek,<br>And learn to reverence, even this poor myself.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The book, too–pass it. 'A good book,' says he,<br>'And you a woman,' I had laughed at that,<br>But long since. I'm a woman,–it is true;<br>Alas, and woe to us, when we feel it most!<br>Then, least care have we for the crowns and goals,<br>And compliments on writing our good books.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The book has some truth in it, I believe:<br>And truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.<br>I know we talk our Phædons to the end<br>Through all the dismal faces that we make,<br>O'er-wrinkled with dishonouring agony<br>From any mortal drug. I have written truth,<br>And I a woman; feebly, partially,<br>Inaptly in presentation, Romney'll add,<br>Because a woman. For the truth itself,<br>That's neither man's nor woman's, but just God's;<br>None else has reason to be proud of truth:<br>Himself will see it sifted, disenthralled,<br>And kept upon the height and in the light,<br>As far as, and no farther, than 'tis truth;<br>For,–now He has left off calling firmaments<br>And strata, flowers and creatures, very good,–<br>He says it still of truth, which is His own.<br>Truth, so far, in my book;–the truth which draws<br>Through all things upwards; that a twofold world<br>Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things<br>And spiritual,–who separates those two<br>In art, in morals, or the social drift,<br>Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,<br>Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,<br>Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,<br>Is wrong, in short, at all points. We divide<br>This apple of life, and cut it through the pips,–<br>The perfect round which fitted Venus' hand<br>Has perished utterly as if we ate<br>Both halves. Without the spiritual, observe,<br>The natural's impossible;–no form,<br>No motion! Without sensuous, spiritual<br>Is inappreciable;–no beauty or power!<br>And in this twofold sphere the twofold man<br>(And still the artist is intensely a man)<br>Holds firmly by the natural, to reach<br>The spiritual beyond it,–fixes still<br>The type with mortal vision, to pierce through,<br>With eyes immortal, to the antetype<br>Some call the ideal,–better called the real,<br>And certain to be called so presently,<br>When things shall have their names. Look long enough<br>On any peasant's face here, coarse and lined.<br>You'll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay,<br>As perfect-featured as he yearns at Rome<br>From marble pale with beauty; then persist,<br>And, if your apprehension's competent,<br>You'll find some fairer angel at his back,<br>As much exceeding him, as he the boor,<br>And pushing him with empyreal disdain<br>For ever out of sight. Ay, Carrington<br>Is glad of such a creed! an artist must,<br>Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone<br>With just his hand, and finds it suddenly<br>A-piece with and conterminous to his soul.<br>Why else do these things move him, leaf or stone?<br>The bird's not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot;<br>Nor yet the horse, before a quarry, a-graze:<br>But man, the two-fold creature, apprehends<br>The two-fold manner, in and outwardly,<br>And nothing in the world comes single to him.<br>A mere itself,–cup, column, or candlestick,<br>All patterns of what shall be in the Mount;<br>The whole temporal show related royally,<br>And build up to eterne significance<br>Through the open arms of God. 'There's nothing great<br>Nor small,' has said a poet of our day,<br>(Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve<br>And not be thrown out by the matin's bell)<br>And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing's small!<br>No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,<br>But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;<br>No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;<br>No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:<br>And,–glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,–<br>In such a little tremour of the blood<br>The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul<br>Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,<br>And every common bush afire with God:<br>But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,<br>The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,<br>And daub their natural faces unaware<br>More and more, from the first similitude.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Truth so far, in my book! a truth which draws<br>From all things upwards. I, Aurora, still<br>Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life<br>As Jove did Io: and, until that Hand<br>Shall overtake me wholly, and, on my head,<br>Lay down its large, unfluctuating peace,<br>The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down<br>It must be. Art's the witness of what Is<br>Behind this show. If this world's show were all,<br>Then imitation would be all in Art;<br>There, Jove's hand gripes us!–For we stand here, we.<br>If genuine artists, witnessing for God's<br>Complete, consummate, undivided work:<br>–That not a natural flower can grow on earth,<br>Without a flower upon the spiritual side,<br>Substantial, archetypal, all a-glow<br>With blossoming causes,–not so far away,<br>That we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared,<br>May not catch something of the bloom and breath,–<br>Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed<br>Still apprehended, consciously or not,<br>And still transferred to picture, music, verse,<br>For thrilling audient and beholding souls<br>By signs and touches which are known to souls,–<br>How known, they know not,–why, they cannot find,<br>So straight call out on genius, say, 'A man<br>Produced this,'–when much rather they should say,<br>Tis insight, and he saw this.'<br> Thus is Art<br>Self-magnified in magnifying a truth<br>Which, fully recognized, would change the world<br>And shift its morals. If a man could feel,<br>Not one day, in the artist's ecstasy,<br>But every day, feast, fast, or working-day,<br>The spiritual significance burn through<br>The hieroglyphic of material shows,<br>Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings,<br>And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree,<br>And even his very body as a man,–<br>Which now he counts so vile, that all the towns<br>Make offal of their daughters for its use<br>On summer-nights, when God is sad in heaven<br>To think what goes on in his recreant world<br>He made quite other; while that moon he made<br>To shine there, at the first love's covenant,<br>Shines still, convictive as a marriage-ring<br>Before adulterous eyes.<br> How sure it is,<br>That, if we say a true word, instantly<br>We feel 'tis God's, not ours, and pass it on<br>As bread at sacrament, we taste and pass<br>Nor handle for a moment, as indeed<br>We dared to set up any claim to such!<br>And I–my poem;–let my readers talk;<br>I'm closer to it–I can speak as well:<br>I'll say, with Romney, that the book is weak,<br>The range uneven, the points of sight obscure,<br>The music interrupted.<br> Let us go.<br>The end of woman (or of man, I think)<br>Is not a book. Alas, the best of books<br>Is but a word in Art, which soon grows cramped,<br>Stiff, dubious-statured with the weight of years,<br>And drops an accent or digamma down<br>Some cranny of unfathomable time,<br>Beyond the critic's reaching. Art itself,<br>We've called the higher life, still must feel the soul<br>Live past it. For more's felt than is perceived,<br>And more's perceived than can be interpreted,<br>And Love strikes higher with his lambent flame<br>Than Art can pile the faggots.<br> Is it so?<br>When Jove's hand meets us with composing touch,<br>And when, at last, we are hushed and satisfied,–<br>Then, Io does not call it truth, but love?<br>Well, well! my father was an Englishman:<br>My mother's blood in me is not so strong<br>That I should bear this stress of Tuscan noon<br>And keep my wits. The town, there, seems to seethe<br>In this Medæan boil-pot of the sun,<br>And all the patient hills are bubbling round<br>As if a prick would leave them flat. Does heaven<br>Keep far off, not to set us in a blaze?<br>Not so,–let drag your fiery fringes, heaven,<br>And burn us up to quiet! Ah, we know<br>Too much here, not to know what's best for peace;<br>We have too much light here, not to want more fire<br>To purify and end us. We talk, talk,<br>Conclude upon divine philosophies,<br>And get the thanks of men for hopeful books;<br>Whereat we take our own life up, and . . pshaw!<br>Unless we piece it with another's life,<br>(A yard of silk to carry out our lawn)<br>As well suppose my little handkerchief<br>Would cover Samminiato, church and all,<br>If out I threw it past the cypresses,<br>As, in this ragged, narrow life of mine,<br>Contain my own conclusions.<br> But at least<br>We'll shut up the persiani, and sit down,<br>And when my head's done aching, in the cool,<br>Write just a word to Kate and Carrington.<br>May joy be with them! she has chosen well,<br>And he not ill.<br> I should be glad, I think,<br>Except for Romney. Had he married Kate,<br>I surely, surely, should be very glad.<br>This Florence sits upon me easily,<br>With native air and tongue. My graves are calm,<br>And do not too much hurt me. Marian's good,<br>Gentle and loving,–lets me hold the child,<br>Or drags him up the hills to find me flowers<br>And fill those vases, ere I'm quite awake,–<br>The grandiose red tulips, which grow wild,<br>Or else my purple lilies, Dante blew<br>To a larger bubble with his prophet-breath;<br>Or one of those tall flowering reeds which stand<br>In Arno like a sheaf of sceptres, left<br>By some remote dynasty of dead gods,<br>To suck the stream for ages and get green,<br>And blossom wheresoe'er a hand divine<br>Had warmed the place with ichor. Such I've found<br>At early morning, laid across my bed,<br>And woke up pelted with a childish laugh<br>Which even Marian's low precipitous 'hush'<br>Had vainly interposed to put away,–<br>While I, with shut eyes, smile and motion for<br>The dewy kiss that's very sure to come<br>From mouth and cheeks, the whole child's face at once<br>Dissolved on mine,–as if a nosegay burst<br>Its string with the weight of roses overblown,<br>And dropt upon me. Surely I should be glad.<br>The little creature almost loves me now,<br>And calls my name . . 'Alola,' stripping off<br>The r s like thorns, to make it smooth enough<br>To take between his dainty, milk-fed lips,<br>God love him! I should certainly be glad,<br>Except, God help me, that I'm sorrowful,<br>Because of Romney.<br> Romney, Romney! Well,<br>This grows absurd!–too like a tune that runs<br>I' the head, and forces all things in the world,<br>Wind, rain, the creaking gnat or stuttering fly,<br>To sing itself and vex you;–yet perhaps<br>A paltry tune you never fairly liked,<br>Some 'I'd be a butterfly,' or 'C'est l'amour:'<br>We're made so,–not such tyrants to ourselves,<br>We are not slaves to nature. Some of us<br>Are turned, too, overmuch like some poor verse<br>With a trick of ritournelle: the same thing goes<br>And comes back ever.<br> Vincent Carrington<br>Is 'sorry,' and I'm sorry; but he's strong<br>To mount from sorrow to his heaven of love,<br>And when he says at moments, 'Poor, poor Leigh,<br>Who'll never call his own, so true a heart,<br>So fair a face even,'–he must quickly lose<br>The pain of pity in the blush he has made<br>By his very pitying eyes. The snow, for him,<br>Has fallen in May, and finds the whole earth warm,<br>And melts at the first touch of the green grass.<br>But Romney,–he has chosen, after all.<br>I think he had as excellent a sun<br>To see by, as most others, and perhaps<br>Has scarce seen really worse than some of us,<br>When all's said. Let him pass. I'm not too much<br>A woman, not to be a man for once,<br>And bury all my Dead like Alaric,<br>Depositing the treasures of my soul<br>In this drained water-course, and, letting flow<br>The river of life again, with commerce-ships<br>And pleasure-barges, full of silks and songs.<br>Blow winds, and help us.<br> Ah, we mock ourselves<br>With talking of the winds! perhaps as much<br>With other resolutions. How it weighs,<br>This hot, sick air! and how I covet here<br>The Dead's provision on the river's couch,<br>With silver curtains drawn on tinkling rings!<br>Or else their rest in quiet crypts,–laid by<br>From heat and noise!–from those cicale, say,<br>And this more vexing heart-beat.<br> So it is:<br>We covet for the soul, the body's part,<br>To die and rot. Even so, Aurora, ends<br>Our aspiration, who bespoke our place<br>So far in the east. The occidental flats<br>Had fed us fatter, therefore? we have climbed<br>Where herbage ends? we want the beast's part now<br>And tire of the angel's?–Men define a man,<br>The creature who stands front-ward to the stars,<br>The creature who looks inward to himself,<br>The tool-wright, laughing creature. 'Tis enough:<br>We'll say instead, the inconsequent creature, man,–<br>For that's his specialty. What creature else<br>Conceives the circle, and then walks the square?<br>Loves things proved bad, and leaves a thing proved good?<br>You think the bee makes honey half a year,<br>To loathe the comb in winter, and desire<br>The little ant's food rather? But a man–<br>Note men!–they are but women after all,<br>As women are but Auroras!–there are men<br>Born tender, apt to pale at a trodden worm,<br>Who paint for pastime, in their favourite dream,<br>Spruce auto-vestments flowered with crocus-flames:<br>There are, too, who believe in hell, and lie:<br>There are, who waste their souls in working out<br>Life's problem on these sands betwixt two tides,<br>And end,– 'Now give us the beast's part, in death.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alas, long-suffering and most patient God,<br>Thou need'st be surelier God to bear with us<br>Than even to have made us! thou, aspire, aspire<br>From henceforth for me! thou who hast, thyself,<br>Endured this fleshhood, knowing how, as a soaked<br>And sucking vesture, it would drag us down<br>And choke us in the melancholy Deep,<br>Sustain me, that, with thee, I walk these waves,<br>Resisting!–breathe me upward, thou for me<br>Aspiring, who art the way, the truth, the life,–<br>That no truth henceforth seem indifferent,<br>No way to truth laborious, and no life,<br>Not even this life I live, intolerable!<br>The days went by. I took up the old days<br>With all their Tuscan pleasures, worn and spoiled,–<br>Like some lost book we dropt in the long grass<br>On such a happy summer-afternoon<br>When last we read it with a loving friend,<br>And find in autumn, when the friend is gone,<br>The grass cut short, the weather changed, too late,<br>And stare at, as at something wonderful<br>For sorrow,–thinking how two hands, before,<br>Had held up what is left to only one,<br>And how we smiled when such a vehement nail<br>Impressed the tiny dint here, which presents<br>This verse in fire for ever! Tenderly<br>And mournfully I lived. I knew the birds<br>And insects,–which look fathered by the flowers<br>And emulous of their hues: I recognised<br>The moths, with that great overpoise of wings<br>Which makes a mystery of them how at all<br>They can stop flying: butterflies, that bear<br>Upon their blue wings such red embers round,<br>They seem to scorch the blue air into holes<br>Each flight they take: and fire-flies, that suspire<br>In short soft lapses of transported flame<br>Across the tingling Dark, while overhead<br>The constant and inviolable stars<br>Outburn those lights-of-love: melodious owls,<br>(If music had but one note and was sad,<br>'Twould sound just so) and all the silent swirl<br>Of bats, that seem to follow in the air<br>Some grand circumference of a shadowy dome<br>To which we are blind: and then, the nightingale<br>Which pluck our heart across a garden-wall,<br>(When walking in the town) and carry it<br>So high into the bowery almond-trees,<br>We tremble and are afraid, and feel as if<br>The golden flood of moonlight unaware<br>Dissolved the pillars of the steady earth<br>And made it less substantial. An I knew<br>The harmless opal snakes, and large-mouthed frogs,<br>(Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams)<br>And lizards, the green lightnings of the wall,<br>Which, if you sit down still, nor sigh too loud,<br>Will flatter you and take you for a stone,<br>And flash familiarly about your feet<br>With such prodigious eyes in such small heads!–<br>I knew them though they had somewhat dwindled from<br>My childish imagery,–and kept in mind<br>How last I sat among them equally,<br>In fellowship and mateship, as a child<br>Will bear him still toward insect, beast, and bird,<br>Before the Adam in him has foregone<br>All privilege of Eden,–making friends<br>And talk, with such a bird or such a goat,<br>And buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cage<br>To let out the caged cricket on a tree,<br>Saying, 'Oh, my dear grillino, were you cramped<br>And are you happy with the ilex-leaves?<br>And do you love me who have let you go?<br>Say yes in singing, and I'll understand.'<br>But now the creatures all seemed farther off,<br>No longer mine, nor like me; only there,<br>A gulph between us. I could yearn indeed,<br>Like other rich men, for a drop of dew<br>To cool this heat,–a drop of the early dew,<br>The irrecoverable child-innocence<br>(Before the heart took fire and withered life)<br>When childhood might pair equally with birds;<br>But now . . the birds were grown too proud for us!<br>Alas, the very sun forbids the dew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I, I had come back to an empty nest,<br>Which every bird's too wise for. How I heard<br>My father's step on that deserted ground,<br>His voice along that silence, as he told<br>The names of bird and insect, tree and flower,<br>And all the presentations of the stars<br>Across Valdarno, interposing still<br>'My child,' 'my child.' When fathers say 'my child,'<br>'Tis easier to conceive the universe,<br>And life's transitions down the steps of law.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I rode once to the little mountain-house<br>As fast as if to find my father there,<br>But, when in sight of't, within fifty yards,<br>I dropped my horse's bridle on his neck<br>And paused upon his flank. The house's front<br>Was cased with lingots of ripe Indian corn<br>In tesselated order, and device<br>Of golden patterns: not a stone of wall<br>Uncovered,–not an inch of room to grow<br>A vine-leaf. The old porch had disappeared;<br>And, in the open doorway, sate a girl<br>At plaiting straws,-her black hair strained away<br>To a scarlet kerchief caught beneath her chin<br>In Tuscan fashion,–her full ebon eyes,<br>Which looked too heavy to be lifted so,<br>Still dropt and lifted toward the mulberry-tree<br>On which the lads were busy with their staves<br>In shout and laughter, stripping all the boughs<br>As bare as winter, of those summer leaves<br>My father had not changed for all the silk<br>In which the ugly silkworms hide themselves.<br>Enough. My horse recoiled before my heart–<br>I turned the rein abruptly. Back we went<br>As fast, to Florence.<br> That was trial enough<br>Of graves. I would not visit, if I could,<br>My father's or my mother's any more,<br>To see if stone-cutter or lichen beat<br>So early in the race, or throw my flowers,<br>Which could not out-smell heaven or sweeten earth.<br>They live too far above, that I should look<br>So far below to find them: let me think<br>That rather they are visiting my grave,<br>This life here, (undeveloped yet to life)<br>And that they drop upon me, now and then,<br>For token or for solace, some small weed<br>Least odorous of the growths of paradise,<br>To spare such pungent scents as kill with joy.<br>My old Assunta, too was dead, was dead–<br>O land of all men's past! for me alone,<br>It would not mix its tenses. I was past,<br>It seemed, like others,–only not in heaven.<br>And, many a Tuscan eve, I wandered down<br>The cypress alley, like a restless ghost<br>That tries its feeble ineffectual breath<br>Upon its own charred funeral-brands put out<br>Too soon,–where, black and stiff, stood up the trees<br>Against the broad vermilion of the skies.<br>Such skies!–all clouds abolished in a sweep<br>Of God's skirt, with a dazzle to ghosts and men,<br>As down I went, saluting on the bridge<br>The hem of such, before 'twas caught away<br>Beyond the peaks of Lucca. Underneath,<br>The river, just escaping from the weight<br>Of that intolerable glory, ran<br>In acquiescent shadow murmurously:<br>And up, beside it, streamed the festa-folk<br>With fellow-murmurs from their feet and fans,<br>(With issimo and ino and sweet poise<br>Of vowels in their pleasant scandalous talk)<br>Returning from the grand-duke's dairy-farm<br>Before the trees grew dangerous at eight,<br>(For, 'trust no tree by moonlight,' Tuscans say)<br>To eat their ice at Doni's tenderly,–<br>Each lovely lady close to a cavalier<br>Who holds her dear fan while she feeds her smile<br>On meditative spoonfuls of vanille,<br>He breathing hot protesting vows of love,<br>Enough to thaw her cream, and scorch his beard.<br>'Twas little matter. I could pass them by<br>Indifferently, not fearing to be known.<br>No danger of being wrecked upon a friend,<br>And forced to take an iceberg for an isle!<br>The very English, here, must wait to learn<br>To hang the cobweb of their gossip out<br>And catch a fly. I'm happy. It's sublime,<br>This perfect solitude of foreign lands!<br>To be, as if you had not been till then,<br>And were then, simply that you chose to be:<br>To spring up, not be brought forth from the ground,<br>Like grasshoppers at Athens, and skip thrice<br>Before a woman makes a pounce on you<br>And plants you in her hair!–possess yourself,<br>A new world all alive with creatures new,<br>New sun, new moon, new flowers, new people–ah,<br>And be possessed by none of them! No right<br>In one, to call your name, enquire your where,<br>Or what you think of Mister Some-one's book,<br>Or Mister Other's marriage, or decease,<br>Or how's the headache which you had last week,<br>Or why you look so pale still, since it's gone?<br>–Such most surprising riddance of one's life<br>Comes next one's death; it's disembodiment<br>Without the pang. I marvel, people choose<br>To stand stock-still like fakirs, till the moss<br>Grows on them, and they cry out, self-admired,<br>'How verdant and how virtuous!' Well, I'm glad;<br>Or should be, if grown foreign to myself<br>As surely as to others.<br> Musing so,<br>I walked the narrow unrecognising streets,<br>Where many a palace-front peers gloomily<br>Through stony vizors iron-barred, (prepared<br>Alike, should foe or lover pass that way,<br>For guest or victim) and came wandering out<br>Upon the churches with mild open doors<br>And plaintive wail of vespers, where a few,<br>Those chiefly women, sprinkled round in blots<br>Upon the dusk pavement, knelt and prayed<br>Toward the altar's silver glory. Oft a ray<br>(I liked to sit and watch) would tremble out,<br>Just touch some face more lifted, more in need,<br>Of course a woman's–while I dreamed a tale<br>To fit its fortunes. There was one who looked<br>As if the earth had suddenly grown too large<br>For such a little humpbacked thing as she;<br>The pitiful black kerchief round her neck<br>Sole proof she had had a mother. One, again,<br>Looked sick for love,–seemed praying some soft saint<br>To put more virtue in the new fine scarf<br>She spent a fortnight's meals on, yesterday,<br>That cruel Gigi might return his eyes<br>From Giuliana. There was one, so old,<br>So old, to kneel grew easier than to stand.–<br>So solitary, she accepts at last<br>Our Lady for her gossip, and frets on<br>Against the sinful world which goes its rounds<br>In marrying and being married, just the same<br>As when 'twas almost good and had the right,<br>(Her Gian alive, and she herself eighteen).<br>And yet, now even, if Madonna willed,<br>She'd win a tern in Thursday's lottery,<br>And better all things. Did she dream for nought,<br>That, boiling cabbage for the fast day's soup,<br>It smelt like blessed entrails? such a dream<br>For nought? would sweetest Mary cheat her so,<br>And lose that certain candle, straight and white<br>As any fair grand-duchess in her teens,<br>Which otherwise should flare here in a week?<br>Benigna sis, thou beauteous Queen of heaven!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I sate there musing and imagining<br>Such utterance from such faces: poor blind souls<br>That writhed toward heaven along the devil's trail,–<br>Who knows, I thought, but He may stretch his hand<br>And pick them up? 'tis written in the Book,<br>He heareth the young ravens when they cry;<br>And yet they cry for carrion.–O my God,–<br>And we, who make excuses for the rest,<br>We do it in our measure. Then I knelt,<br>And dropped my head upon the pavement too,<br>And prayed, since I was foolish in desire<br>Like other creatures, craving offal-food,<br>That He would stop his ears to what I said,<br>And only listen to the run and beat<br>Of this poor, passionate, helpless blood–<br> And then<br>I lay and spoke not. But He heard in heaven.<br>So many Tuscan evenings passed the same!<br>I could not lose a sunset on the bridge,<br>And would not miss a vigil in the church,<br>And liked to mingle with the out-door crowd<br>So strange and gay and ignorant of my face,<br>For men you know not, are as good as trees.<br>And only once, at the Santissima,<br>I almost chanced upon a man I knew,<br>Sir Blaise Delorme. He saw me certainly,<br>And somewhat hurried, as he crossed himself,<br>The smoothness of the action,–then half bowed,<br>But only half, and merely to my shade,<br>I slipped so quick behind the porphyry plinth,<br>And left him dubious if 'twas really I,<br>Or peradventure Satan's usual trick<br>To keep a mounting saint uncanonised.<br>But I was safe for that time, and he too;<br>The argent angels in the altar-flare<br>Absorbed his soul next moment. The good man!<br>In England we were scare acquaintances,<br>That here in Florence he should keep my thought<br>Beyond the image on his eye, which came<br>And went: and yet his thought disturbed my life.<br>For, after that, I often sate at home<br>On evenings, watching how they fined themselves<br>With gradual conscience to a perfect night,<br>Until a moon, diminished to a curve,<br>Lay out there, like a sickle for His hand<br>Who cometh down at last to reap the earth.<br>At such times, ended seemed my trade of verse;<br>I feared to jingle bells upon my robe<br>Before the four-faced silent cherubim;<br>With God so near me, could I sing of God?<br>I did not write, nor read, nor even think,<br>But sate absorbed amid the quickening glooms,<br>Most like some passive broken lump of salt<br>Dropt in by chance to a bowl of oenomel,<br>To spoil the drink a little, and lose itself,<br>Dissolving slowly, slowly, until lost.</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=116060" data-title="Seventh Book de Elizabeth Barrett Browning" data-description="'THE woman's motive? shall we daub ourselves/With finding roots for nettles? 'tis soft clay/And easily explored. She had the means,/The moneys, by the lady's liberal grace,/In trust for that Australian scheme and me,/Which so, that she might clutc..."></div> </div> </div>

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