<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116062" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Ninth Book</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">EVEN thus. I pause to write it out at length,<br>The letter of the Lady Waldemar.–</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I prayed your cousin Leigh to take you this,<br>He says he'll do it. After years of love,<br>Or what is called so,–when a woman frets<br>And fools upon one string of a man's name,<br>And fingers it for ever till it breaks,–<br>He may perhaps do for her such thing,<br>And she accept it without detriment<br>Although she should not love him any more<br>And I, who do not love him, nor love you,<br>Nor you, Aurora,–choose you shall repent<br>Your most ungracious letter, and confess,<br>Constrained by his convictions, (he's convinced)<br>You've wronged me foully. Are you made so ill,<br>You woman–to impute such ill to me?<br>We both had mothers,–lay in their bosom once.<br>Why, after all, I thank you, Aurora Leigh,<br>For proving to myself that there are things<br>I would not do, . . not for my life . . nor him . .<br>Though something I have somewhat overdone,–<br>For instance, when I went to see the gods<br>One morning, on Olympus, with a step<br>That shook the thunder in a certain cloud,<br>Committing myself vilely. Could I think,<br>The Muse I pulled my heart out from my breast<br>To soften, had herself a sort of heart,<br>And loved my mortal? He, at least, loved her;<br>I heard him say so; 'twas my recompence,<br>When, watching at his bedside fourteen days,<br>He broke out ever like a flame at whiles<br>Between the heats of fever . . . 'Is it thou?<br>'Breathe closer, sweetest mouth!' and when at last<br>The fever gone, the wasted face extinct<br>As if it irked him much to know me there,<br>He said, Twas kind, 'twas good, 'twas womanly,'<br>(And fifty praises to excuse one love)<br>'But was the picture safe he had ventured for?'<br>And then, half wandering . . 'I have loved her well,<br>Although she could not love me.'–'Say instead,'<br>I answered, 'that she loves you.'–'Twas my turn<br>To rave: (I would have married him so changed,<br>Although the world had jeered me properly<br>For taking up with Cupid at his worst,<br>The silver quiver worn off on his hair.)<br>'No, no,' he murmured, 'no, she loves me not;<br>'Aurora Leigh does better: bring her book<br>'And read it softly, Lady Waldemar,<br>'Until I thank your friendship more for that,<br>'Than even for harder service.' So I read<br>Your book, Aurora, for an hour, that day:<br>I kept its pauses, marked its emphasis;<br>My voice, empaled upon rhyme's golden hooks,<br>Not once would writhe, nor quiver, nor revolt;<br>I read on calmly,–calmly shut it up,<br>Observing, 'There's some merit in the book.<br>'And yet the merit in't is thrown away<br>'As chances still with women, if we write<br>'Or write not: we want string to tie our flowers,<br>'So drop them as we walk, which serves to show<br>'The way we went. Good morning, Mister Leigh;<br>'You'll find another reader the next time.<br>'A woman who does better than to love,<br>'I hate; she will do nothing very well:<br>'Male poets are preferable, tiring less<br>'And teaching more.' I triumphed o'er you both,<br>And left him.<br> ' When I saw him afterward,<br>I had read your shameful letter, and my heart.<br>He came with health recovered, strong though pale<br>Lord Howe and he, a courteous pair of friends,<br>To say what men dare say to women, when<br>Their debtors. But I stopped them with a word;<br>And proved I had never trodden such a road,<br>To carry so much dirt upon my shoe.<br>Then, putting into it something of disdain,<br>I asked forsooth his pardon, and my own,<br>For having done no better than to love,<br>And that, not wisely,–though 'twas long ago,<br>And though 'twas altered perfectly since then.<br>I told him, as I tell you now, Miss Leigh,<br>And proved I took some trouble for his sake<br>(Because I know he did not love the girl)<br>To spoil my hands with working in the stream<br>Of that poor bubbling nature,–till she went,<br>Consigned to one I trusted, my own maid,<br>Who once had lived full five months in my house,<br>(Dressed hair superbly) with lavish purse<br>To carry to Australia where she had left<br>A husband, said she. If the creature lied,<br>The mission failed, we all do fail and lie<br>More or less–and I'm sorry–which is all<br>Expected from us when we fail the most,<br>And go to church to own it. What I meant,<br>Was just the best for him, and me, and her . .<br>Best even for Marian!–I am sorry for't,<br>And very sorry. Yet my creature said<br>She saw her stop to speak in Oxford Street<br>To one . . no matter! I had sooner cut<br>My hand off (though 'twere kissed the hour before,<br>And promised a pearl troth-ring for the next)<br>Than crush her silly head with so much wrong.<br>Poor child! I would have mended it with gold,<br>Until it gleamed like St. Sophia's dome<br>When all the faithful troop to morning prayer:<br>But he, he nipped the bud of such a thought<br>With that cold Leigh look which I fancied once,<br>And broke in, 'Henceforth she was called his wife.<br>'His wife required no succour: he was bound<br>'To Florence, to resume this broken bond:<br>'Enough so. Both were happy, he and Howe,<br>'To acquit me of the heaviest charge of all–'<br>–At which I shut my tongue against my fly<br>And struck him; 'Would he carry,–he was just,–<br>'A letter from me to Aurora Leigh,<br>'And ratify from his authentic mouth<br>'My answer to her accusation?'–'Yes,<br>'If such a letter were prepared in time.'<br>–He's just, your cousin,–ay, abhorrently.<br>He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.<br>And so, cold, courteous, a mere gentleman,<br>He bowed, we parted.<br> 'Parted. Face no more,<br>Voice no more, love no more! wiped wholly out,<br>Like some ill scholar's scrawl from heart and slate,–<br>Ay, spit on and so wiped out utterly<br>By some coarse scholar! I have been too coarse,<br>Too human. Have we business, in our rank,<br>With blood i' the veins? I will have henceforth none;<br>Not even keep the colour at my lip.<br>A rose is pink and pretty without blood;<br>Why not a woman? When we've played in vain<br>The game, to adore,–we have resources still,<br>And can play on at leisure, being adored:<br>Here's Smith already swearing at my feet<br>That I'm the typic She. Away with Smith!–<br>Smith smacks of Leigh,–and henceforth, I'll admit<br>No socialist within three crinolines,<br>To live and have his being. But for you,<br>Though insolent your letter and absurd,<br>And though I hate you frankly,–take my Smith!<br>For when you have seen this famous marriage tied,<br>A most unspotted Erle to a noble Leigh,<br>(His love astray on one he should not love)<br>Howbeit–beware, you should not want his love,<br>You'll want some comfort. So I leave you Smith;<br>Take Smith!–he talks Leigh's subjects, somewhat worse;<br>Adopts a thought of Leigh's, and dwindles it;<br>Goes leagues beyond, to be no inch behind;<br>Will mind you of him, as a shoe-string may,<br>Of a man: and women, when they are made like you,<br>Grow tender to a shoe-string, foot-print even,<br>Adore averted shoulders in a glass,<br>And memories of what, present once, was loathed.<br>And yet, you loathed not Romney,–though you've played<br>At 'fox and goose' about him with your soul:<br>Pass over fox, you rub out fox,–ignore<br>A feeling, you eradicate it,–the act's<br>Identical.<br> 'I wish you joy, Miss Leigh.<br>You've made a happy marriage for your friend;<br>And all the honour, well-assorted love,<br>Derives from you who love him, whom he loves!<br>You need not wish me joy to think of it,<br>I have so much. Observe, Aurora Leigh,<br>Your droop of eyelid is the same as his,<br>And, but for you, I might have won his love,<br>And, to you, I have shown my naked heart,–<br>For which three things I hate, hate, hate you. Hush,<br>Suppose a fourth!–I cannot choose but think<br>That, with him, I were virtuouser than you<br>Without him: so I hate you from this gulph<br>And hollow of my soul, which opens out<br>To what, except for you, had been my heaven,<br>And is instead, a place to curse by! LOVE.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">An active kind of curse. I stood there cursed–<br>Confounded. I had seized and caught the sense<br>Of the letter with its twenty stinging snakes,<br>In a moment's sweep of eyesight, and I stood<br>Dazed.–'Ah! not married,'<br> 'You mistake,' he said;<br>'I'm married. Is not Marian Erle my wife?<br>As God sees things, I have a wife and child;<br>And I, as I'm a man who honours God,<br>Am here to claim my child and wife.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I felt it hard to breathe, much less to speak.<br>Nor word of mine was needed. Some one else<br>Was there for answering. 'Romney,' she began,<br>'My great good angel, Romney.'<br> Then at first,<br>I knew that Marian Erle was beautiful.<br>She stood there, still and pallid as a saint,<br>Dilated, like a saint in ecstasy,<br>As if the floating moonshine interposed<br>Betwixt her foot and the earth, and raised her up<br>To float upon it. 'I had left my child,<br>Who sleeps,' she said, 'and, having drawn this way,<br>I heard you speaking, . . friend!–Confirm me now.<br>You take this Marian, such as wicked men<br>Have made her, for your honourable wife?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice.<br>He stretched his arms out toward the thrilling voice,<br>As if to draw it on to his embrace.<br>–'I take her as God made her, and as men<br>Must fail to unmake her, as my honoured wife.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She never raised her eyes, nor took a step,<br>But stood there in her place, and spoke again.<br>–'You take this Marian's child, which is her shame<br>In sight of men and women, for your child,<br>Of whom you will not ever feel ashamed?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The thrilling, tender, proud, pathetic voice.<br>He stepped on toward it, still with outstretched arms,<br>As if to quench upon his breast that voice.<br>–'May God so father me, as I do him<br>And so forsake me as I let him feel<br>He's orphaned haply. Here I take the child<br>To share my cup, to slumber on my knee,<br>To play his loudest gambol at my foot,<br>To hold my finger in the public ways,<br>Till none shall need inquire, 'Whose child is this,'<br>The gesture saying so tenderly, 'My own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She stood a moment silent in her place;<br>Then, turning toward me, very slow and cold–<br>–'And you,–what say you?–will you blame me much,<br>If, careful for that outcast child of mine<br>I catch this hand that's stretched to me and him<br>Nor dare to leave him friendless in the world<br>Where men have stoned me? Have I not the right<br>To take so mere an aftermath from life,<br>Else found so wholly bare? Or is it wrong<br>To let your cousin, for a generous bent,<br>Put out his ungloved fingers among briars<br>To set a tumbling bird's-nest somewhat straight?<br>You will not tell him, though we're innocent<br>We are not harmless? . . and that both our harms<br>Will stick to his good smooth noble life like burrs,<br>Never to drop off though you shake the cloak?<br>You've been my friend: you will not now be his?<br>You've known him, that he's worthy of a friend;<br>And you're his cousin, lady, after all,<br>And therefore more than free to take his part,<br>Explaining, since the nest is surely spoilt,<br>And Marian what you know her,–though a wife,<br>The world would hardly understand her case<br>Of being just hurt and honest; while for him,<br>'Twould ever twit him with his bastard child<br>And married Harlot. Speak, while yet there's time:<br>You would not stand and let a good man's dog<br>Turn round and rend him, because his, and reared<br>Of a generous breed,–and will you let his act,<br>Because it's generous? Speak. I'm bound to you,<br>And I'll be bound by only you, in this.'<br>The thrilling, solemn voice, so passionless,<br>Sustained, yet low, without a rise or fall,<br>As one who had authority to speak,<br>And not as Marian.<br> I looked up to feel<br>If God stood near me and beheld his heaven<br>As blue as Aaron's priestly robe appeared<br>To Aaron when he took it off to die.<br>And then I spoke–'Accept the gift, I say,<br>My sister Marian, and be satisfied.<br>The hand that gives has still a soul behind<br>Which will not let it quail for having given,<br>Though foolish worldlings talk they know not what,<br>Of what they know not. Romney's strong enough<br>For this: do you be strong to know he's strong:<br>He stands on Right's side; never flinch for him,<br>As if he stood on the other. You'll be bound<br>By me? I am a woman of repute;<br>No fly-blow gossip ever specked my life;<br>My name is clean and open as this hand,<br>Whose glove there's not a man dares blab about<br>As if he had touched it freely:–here's my hand<br>To clasp your hand, my Marian, owned as pure!<br>As pure,–I'm a woman and a Leigh!–<br>And, as I'm both, I'll witness to the world<br>That Romney Leigh is honoured in his choice,<br>Who chooses Marian for his honoured wife.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light;<br>Her smile was wonderful for rapture. 'Thanks,<br>My great Aurora.' Forward then she sprang,<br>And dropping her impassioned spaniel head<br>With all its brown abandonment of curls<br>On Romney's feet, we heard the kisses drawn<br>Through sobs upon the foot, upon the ground–<br>'O Romney! O my angel! O unchanged,<br>Though, since we've parted, I have passed the grave!<br>But Death itself could only better thee, ,<br>Not change thee!–Thee I do not thank at all:<br>I but thank God who made thee what thou art,<br>So wholly godlike.'<br> When he tried in vain<br>To raise her to his embrace, escaping thence<br>As any leaping fawn from a huntsman's grasp,<br>She bounded off and 'lighted beyond reach,<br>Before him with a staglike majesty<br>Of soft, serene defiance,–as she knew<br>He could not touch her, so was tolerant<br>He had cared to try. She stood there with her great<br>Drowned eyes, and dripping cheeks, and strange sweet smile<br>That lived through all, as if one held a light<br>Across a waste of waters,–shook her head<br>To keep some thoughts down deeper in her soul,–<br>Then, white and tranquil as a summer-cloud<br>Which, having rained itself to a tardy peace,<br>Stands still in heaven as if it ruled the day,<br>Spoke out again–'Although, my generous friend,<br>Since last we met and parted, you're unchanged,<br>And, having promised faith to Marian Erle,<br>Maintain it, as she were not changed at all;<br>And though that's worthy, though that's full of balm<br>To any conscious spirit of a girl<br>Who once has loved you as I loved you once,–<br>Yet still it will not make her . . if she's dead,<br>And gone away where none can give or take<br>In marriage,–able to revive, return<br>And wed you,–will, it Romney? Here's the point;<br>O friend, we'll see it plainer: you and I<br>Must never, never, never join hands so.<br>Nay, let me say it,–for I said it first<br>To God, and placed it, rounded to an oath,<br>Far, far above the moon there, at His feet,<br>As surely as I wept just now at yours,–<br>We never, never, never join hands so.<br>And now, be patient with me; do not think<br>I'm speaking from a false humility.<br>The truth is, I am grown so proud with grief,<br>And He has said so often through his nights<br>And through his mornings, 'Weep a little still,<br>'Thou foolish Marian, because women must,<br>'But do not blush at all except for sin,'–<br>That I, who felt myself unworthy once<br>Of virtuous Romney and his high-born race,<br>Have come to learn, . . a woman poor or rich,<br>Despised or honoured, is a human soul;<br>And what her soul is,–that, she is herself,<br>Although she should be spit upon of men,<br>As is the pavement of the churches here,<br>Still good enough to pray in. And, being chaste<br>And honest, and inclined to do the right,<br>And love the truth, and live my life out green<br>And smooth beneath his steps, I should not fear<br>To make him, thus, a less uneasy time<br>Than many a happier woman. Very proud<br>You see me. Pardon, that I set a trap<br>To hear a confirmation in your voice . .<br>Both yours and yours. It is so good to know<br>'Twas really God who said the same before:<br>For thus it is in heaven, that first God speaks,<br>And then his angels. Oh, it does me good,<br>It wipes me clean and sweet from devil's dirt,<br>That Romney Leigh should think me worthy still<br>Of being his true and honourable wife!<br>Henceforth I need not say, on leaving earth,<br>I had no glory in it. For the rest,<br>The reason's ready (master, angel, friend,<br>Be patient with me) wherefore you and I<br>Can never, never, never join hands so.<br>I know you'll not be angry like a man<br>(For you are none) when I shall tell the truth,–<br>Which is, I do not love you, Romney Leigh,<br>I do not love you. Ah well! catch my hands,<br>Miss Leigh, and burn into my eyes with yours,–<br>I swear I do not love him. Did I once?<br>'Tis said that women have been bruised to death,<br>And yet, if once they loved, that love of theirs<br>Could never be drained out with all their blood:<br>I've heard such things and pondered. Did I indeed<br>Love once? or did I only worship? Yes,<br>Perhaps, O friend, I set you up so high<br>Above all actual good or hope of good,<br>Or fear of evil, all that could be mine,<br>I haply set you above love itself,<br>And out of reach of these poor woman's arms,<br>Angelic Romney. What was in my thought?<br>To be your slave, your help, your toy, your tool.<br>To be your love . . I never thought of that.<br>To give you love . . still less. I gave you love?<br>I think I did not give you anything;<br>I was but only yours,–upon my knees,<br>All yours, in soul and body, in head and heart,–<br>A creature you had taken from the ground,<br>Still crumbling through your fingers to your feet<br>To join the dust she came from. Did I love,<br>Or did I worship? judge, Aurora Leigh!<br>But, if indeed I loved, 'twas long ago,–<br>So long! before the sun and moon were made,<br>Before the hells were open,–ah, before<br>I heard my child cry in the desert night,<br>And knew he had no father. It may be,<br>I'm not as strong as other women are,<br>Who, torn and crushed, are not undone from love.<br>It may be, I am colder than the dead,<br>Who, being dead, love always. But for me<br>Once killed, . . this ghost of Marian loves no more,<br>No more . . except the child! . . no more at all.<br>I told your cousin, sir, that I was dead;<br>And now, she thinks I'll get up from my grave,<br>And wear my chin-cloth for a wedding-veil,<br>And glide along the churchyard like a bride,<br>While all the dead keep whispering through the withes,<br>'You would be better in your place with us,<br>'You pitiful corruption!' At the thought,<br>The damps break out on me like leprosy,<br>Although I'm clean. Ay, clean as Marian Erle:<br>As Marian Leigh, I know, I were not clean:<br>I have not so much life that I should love,<br>. . Except the child. Ah God! I could not bear<br>To see my darling on a good man's knees,<br>And know by such a look, or such a sigh,<br>Or such a silence, that he thought sometimes,<br>'This child was fathered by some cursed wretch' . .<br>For, Romney,–angels are less tender-wise<br>Than God and mothers: even you would think<br>What we think never. He is ours, the child;<br>And we would sooner vex a soul in heaven<br>By coupling with it the dead body's thought,<br>It left behind it in a last month's grave,<br>Than, in my child, see other than . . my child.<br>We only, never call him fatherless<br>Who has God and his mother. O my babe,<br>My pretty, pretty blossom, an ill-wind<br>Once blew upon my breast! can any think<br>I'd have another,–one called happier,<br>A fathered child, with father's love and race<br>That's worn as bold and open as a smile,<br>To vex my darling when he's asked his name<br>And has no answer? What! a happier child<br>Than mine, my best,–who laughed so loud to-night<br>He could not sleep for pastime? Nay, I swear<br>By life and love, that, if I lived like some,<br>And loved like . . some . . ay, loved you, Romney Leigh,<br>As some love (eyes that have wept so much, see clear),<br>I've room for no more children in my arms;<br>My kisses are all melted on one mouth;<br>I would not push my darling to a stool<br>To dandle babies. Here's a hand, shall keep<br>For ever clean without a marriage-ring,<br>To tend my boy, until he cease to need<br>One steadying finger of it, and desert<br>(Not miss) his mother's lap, to sit with men.<br>And when I miss him (not he me) I'll come<br>And say, 'Now give me some of Romney's work,<br>To help your outcast orphans of the world,<br>And comfort grief with grief.' For you, meantime,<br>Most noble Romney, wed a noble wife,<br>And open on each other your great souls,–<br>I need not farther bless you. If I dared<br>But strain and touch her in her upper sphere,<br>And say, 'Come down to Romney–pay my debt!<br>I should be joyful with the stream of joy<br>Sent through me. But the moon is in my face . .<br>I dare not,–though I guess the name he loves;<br>I'm learned with my studies of old days,<br>Remembering how he crushed his under-lip<br>When some one came and spoke, or did not come.<br>Aurora, I could touch her with my hand,<br>And fly, because I dare not.'<br> She was gone.<br>He smiled so sternly that I spoke in haste.<br>'Forgive her–she sees clearly for herself:<br>Her instinct's holy.'<br> 'I forgive?' he said,<br>'I only marvel how she sees so sure,<br>While others' . . there he paused,–then hoarse, abrupt,–<br>'Aurora, you forgive us, her and me?<br>For her, the thing she sees, poor loyal child,<br>If once corrected by the thing I know,<br>Had been unspoken; since she loves you well,<br>Has leave to love you:–while for me, alas,<br>If once or twice I let my heart escape<br>This night, . . remember, where hearts slip and fall<br>They break beside: we're parting,–parting,–ah,<br>You do not love, that you should surely know<br>What that word means. Forgive, be tolerant;<br>It had not been, but that I felt myself<br>So safe in impuissance and despair,<br>I could not hurt you though I tossed my arms<br>And sighed my soul out. The most utter wretch<br>Will choose his postures when he comes to die,<br>However in the presence of a queen:<br>And you'll forgive me some unseemly spasms<br>Which meant no more than dying. Do you think<br>I had ever come here in my perfect mind,<br>Unless I had come here, in my settled mind,<br>Bound Marian's, bound to keep the bond, and give<br>My name, my house, my hand, the things I could,<br>To Marian! For even I could give as much;<br>Even I, affronting her exalted soul<br>By a supposition that she wanted these,<br>Could act the husband's coat and hat set up<br>To creak i' the wind and drive the world-crows off<br>From pecking in her garden. Straw can fill<br>A hole to keep out vermin. Now, at last,<br>I own heaven's angels round her life suffice<br>To fight the rats of our society,<br>Without this Romney: I can see it at last;<br>And here is ended my pretension which<br>The most pretended. Over-proud of course,<br>Even so!–but not so stupid . . blind . . that I,<br>Whom thus the great Taskmaster of the world<br>Has set to meditate mistaken work,<br>My dreary face against a dim blank wall<br>Throughout man's natural lifetime,–could pretend<br>Or wish . . O love, I have loved you! O my soul,<br>I have lost you!–but I swear by all yourself,<br>And all you might have been to me these years,<br>If that June-morning had not failed my hope,–<br>I'm not so bestial, to regret that day<br>This night,–this night, which still to you is fair;<br>Nay, not so blind, Aurora. I attest<br>Those stars above us, which I cannot see . . . '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'You cannot.' . .<br> ' That if Heaven itself should stoop,<br>Remit the lots, and give me another chance,<br>I'd say, 'No other!'–I'd record my blank.<br>Aurora never should be wife of mine.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Not see the stars?'<br> Tis worse still, not to see<br>To find your hand, although we're parting, dear.<br>A moment let me hold it, ere we part:<br>And understand my last words–these at last!<br>I would not have you thinking, when I'm gone,<br>That Romney dared to hanker for your love,<br>In thought or vision, if attainable,<br>(Which certainly for me it never was)<br>And wish to use it for a dog to-day,<br>To help the blind man stumbling. God forbid!<br>And now I know he held you in his palm,<br>And kept you open-eyed to all my faults,<br>To save you at last from such a dreary end.<br>Believe me, dear, that if I had known, like Him,<br>What loss was coming on me, I had done<br>As well in this as He has.–Farewell, you,<br>Who are still my light,–farewell! How late it is:<br>I know that, now: you've been too patient, sweet.<br>I will but blow my whistle toward the lane,<br>And some one comes . . the same who brought me here.<br>Get in–Good night.'<br> 'A moment. Heavenly Christ!<br>A moment. Speak once, Romney. 'Tis not true.<br>I hold your hands, I look into your face–<br>You see me?'<br> 'No more than the blessed stars.<br>Be blessed too, Aurora. Ah, my sweet,<br>You tremble. Tender-hearted! Do you mind<br>Of yore, dear, how you used to cheat old John,<br>And let the mice out slyly from his traps,<br>Until he marvelled at the soul in mice<br>Which took the cheese and left the snare? The same<br>Dear soft heart always! 'Twas for this I grieved<br>Howe's letter never reached you. Ah, you had heard<br>Of illness,–not the issue . . not the extent:<br>My life long sick with tossings up and down;<br>The sudden revulsion in the blazing house,–<br>The strain and struggle both of body and soul,<br>Which left fire running in my veins, for blood:<br>Scarce lacked that thunderbolt of the falling beam,<br>Which nicked me on the forehead as I passed<br>The gallery door with a burden. Say heaven's bolt,<br>Not William Erle's; not Marian's father's; tramp<br>And poacher, whom I found for what he was,<br>And, eager for her sake to rescue him,<br>Forth swept from the open highway of the world,<br>Road-dust and all,–till, like a woodland boar<br>Most naturally unwilling to be tamed,<br>He notched me with his tooth. But not a word<br>To Marian! and I do not think, besides,<br>He turned the tilting of the beam my way,–<br>And if he laughed, as many swear, poor wretch,<br>Nor he nor I supposed the hurt so deep.<br>We'll hope his next laugh may be merrier,<br>In a better cause.'<br> 'Blind, Romney?'<br> ' Ah, my friend,<br>You'll learn to say it in a cheerful voice.<br>I, too, at first desponded. To be blind,<br>Turned out of nature, mulcted as a man,<br>Refused the daily largesse of the sun<br>To humble creatures! When the fever's heat<br>Dropped from me, as the flame did from my house,<br>And left me ruined like it, stripped of all<br>The hues and shapes of aspectable life,<br>A mere bare blind stone in the blaze of day,<br>A man, upon the outside of the earth,<br>As dark as ten feet under, in the grave,–<br>Why that seemed hard.'<br> 'No hope?'<br> 'A tear! you weep,<br>Divine Aurora? tears upon my hand!<br>I've seen you weeping for a mouse, a bird,–<br>But, weep for me, Aurora? Yes, there's hope.<br>Not hope of sight,–I could be learned, dear,<br>And tell you in what Greek and Latin name<br>The visual nerve is withered to the root,<br>Though the outer eyes appear indifferent,<br>Unspotted in their crystals. But there's hope.<br>The spirit, from behind this dethroned sense,<br>Sees, waits in patience till the walls break up<br>From which the bas-relief and fresco have dropt.<br>There's hope. The man here, once so arrogant<br>And restless, so ambitious, for his part,<br>Of dealing with statistically packed<br>Disorders, (from a pattern on his nail,)<br>And packing such things quite another way,–<br>Is now contented. From his personal loss<br>He has come to hope for others when they lose,<br>And wear a gladder faith in what we gain . .<br>Through bitter experience, compensation sweet,<br>Like that tear, sweetest. I am quiet now,–<br>As tender surely for the suffering world,<br>But quiet,–sitting at the wall to learn,<br>Content, henceforth, to do the thing I can:<br>For, though as powerless, said I, as a stone,<br>A stone can still give shelter to a worm,<br>And it is worth while being a stone for that:<br>There's hope, Aurora.'<br> ' Is there hope for me?<br>For me?–and is there room beneath the stone<br>For such a worm?–And if I came and said . .<br>What all this weeping scarce will let me say,<br>And yet what women cannot say at all,<br>But weeping bitterly . . (the pride keeps up,<br>Until the heart breaks under it) . . I love,–<br>I love you, Romney' . . .<br> 'Silence!' he exclaimed,<br>'A woman's pity sometimes makes her mad.<br>A man's distraction must not cheat his soul<br>To take advantage of it. Yet, 'tis hard–<br>Farewell, Aurora.'<br> 'But I love you, sir:<br>And when a woman says she loves a man,<br>The man must hear her, though he love her not.<br>Which . . hush! . . he has leave to answer in his turn;<br>She will not surely blame him. As for me,<br>You call it pity,–think I'm generous?<br>'Twere somewhat easier, for a woman proud,<br>As I am, and I'm very vilely proud,<br>To let it pass as such, and press on you<br>Love born of pity,–seeing that excellent loves<br>Are born so, often, nor the quicklier die,–<br>And this would set me higher by the head<br>Than now I stand. No matter: let the truth<br>Stand high: Aurora must be humble: no,<br>My love's not pity merely. Obviously<br>I'm not a generous woman, never was.<br>Or else, of old, I had not looked so near<br>To weights and measures, grudging you the power<br>To give, as first I scorned your power to judge<br>For me, Aurora: I would have no gifts<br>Forsooth, but God's,–and I would use them, too,<br>According to my pleasure and my choice,<br>As He and I were equals,–you, below,<br>Excluded from that level of interchange<br>Admitting benefaction. You were wrong<br>In much? you said so. I was wrong in most.<br>Oh, most! You only thought to rescue men<br>By half-means, half-way, seeing half their wants,<br>While thinking nothing of your personal gain.<br>But I who saw the human nature broad,<br>At both sides, comprehending, too, the soul's,<br>And all the high necessities of Art,<br>Betrayed the thing I saw, and wronged my own life<br>For which I pleaded. Passioned to exalt<br>The artist's instinct in me at the cost<br>Of putting down the woman's–I forgot<br>No perfect artist is developed here<br>From any imperfect woman. Flower from root,<br>And spiritual from natural, grade by grade<br>In all our life. A handful of the earth<br>To make God's image! the despised poor earth,<br>The healthy odorous earth,–I missed, with it,<br>The divine Breath that blows the nostrils out<br>To ineffable inflatus: ay, the breath<br>Which love is. Art is much, but love is more.<br>O Art, my Art, thou'rt much, but Love is more!<br>Art symbolises heaven, but Love is God<br>And makes heaven. I, Aurora, fell from mine:<br>I would not be a woman like the rest,<br>A simple woman who believes in love,<br>And owns the right of love because she loves,<br>And, hearing she's beloved, is satisfied<br>With what contents God: I must analyse,<br>Confront, and question; just as if a fly<br>Refused to warm itself in any sun<br>Till such was in leone: I must fret<br>Forsooth, because the month was only May;<br>Be faithless of the kind of proffered love,<br>And captious, lest it miss my dignity,<br>And scornful, that my lover sought a wife<br>To use . . to use! O Romney, O my love,<br>I am changed since then, changed wholly,–for indeed,<br>If now you'd stoop so low to take my love,<br>And use it roughly, without stint or spare,<br>As men use common things with more behind,<br>(And, in this, ever would be more behind)<br>To any mean and ordinary end,–<br>The joy would set me like a star, in heaven,<br>So high up, I should shine because of height<br>And not of virtue. Yet in one respect,<br>Just one, beloved, I am in no wise changed:<br>I love you, loved you . . loved you first and last,<br>And love you on for ever. Now I know<br>I loved you always, Romney. She who died<br>Knew that, and said so; Lady Waldemar<br>Knows that; . . and Marian: I had known the same<br>Except that I was prouder than I knew,<br>And not so honest. Ay, and as I live,<br>I should have died so, crushing in my hand<br>This rose of love, the wasp inside and all,–<br>Ignoring ever to my soul and you<br>Both rose and pain,–except for this great loss,<br>This great despair,–to stand before your face<br>And know I cannot win a look of yours.<br>You think, perhaps, I am not changed from pride,<br>And that I chiefly bear to say such words<br>Because you cannot shame me with your eyes?<br>O calm, grand eyes, extinguished in a storm,<br>Blown out like lights o'er melancholy seas,<br>Though shrieked for by the shipwrecked,–O my Dark,<br>My Cloud,–to go before me every day<br>While I go ever toward the wilderness,–<br>I would that you could see me bare to the soul!–<br>If this be pity, 'tis so for myself,<br>And not for Romney; he can stand alone;<br>A man like him is never overcome:<br>No woman like me, counts him pitiable<br>While saints applaud him. He mistook the world:<br>But I mistook my own heart,–and that slip<br>Was fatal. Romney,–will you leave me here?<br>So wrong, so proud, so weak, so unconsoled,<br>So mere a woman!–and I love you so,–<br>I love you, Romney.'<br> Could I see his face,<br>I wept so? Did I drop against his breast,<br>Or did his arms constrain me? Were my cheeks<br>Hot, overflooded, with my tears, or his?<br>And which of our two large explosive hearts<br>So shook me? That, I know not. There were words<br>That broke in utterance . . melted, in the fire;<br>Embrace, that was convulsion, . . then a kiss . .<br>As long and silent as the ecstatic night,–<br>And deep, deep, shuddering breaths, which meant beyond<br>Whatever could be told by word or kiss.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But what he said . . I have written day by day,<br>With somewhat even writing. Did I think<br>That such a passionate rain would intercept<br>And dash this last page? What he said, indeed,<br>I fain would write it down here like the rest<br>To keep it in my eyes, as in my ears,<br>The heart's sweet scripture, to be read at night<br>When weary, or at morning when afraid,<br>And lean my heaviest oath on when I swear<br>That when all's done, all tried, all counted here,<br>All great arts, and all good philosophies,–<br>This love just puts its hand out in a dream<br>And straight outreaches all things.<br> What he said,<br>I fain would write. But if an angel spoke<br>In thunder, should we, haply, know much more<br>Than that it thundered? If a cloud came down<br>And wrapt us wholly, could we draw its shape,<br>As if on the outside, and not overcome?<br>And so he spake. His breath against my face<br>Confused his words, yet made them more intense,–<br>As when the sudden finger of the wind<br>Will wipe a row of single city-lamps<br>To a pure white line of flame, more luminous<br>Because of obliteration; more intense<br>The intimate presence carrying in itself<br>Complete communication, as with souls<br>Who, having put the body off, perceive<br>Through simply being. Thus, 'twas granted me<br>To know he loved me to the depth and height<br>Of such large natures, ever competent<br>With grand horizons by the land or sea,<br>To love's grand sunrise. Small spheres hold small fires:<br>But he loved largely, as a man can love<br>Who, baffled in his love, dares live his life,<br>Accept the ends which God loves, for his own,<br>And life a constant aspect.<br> From the day<br>I had brought to England my poor searching face,<br>(An orphan even of my father's grave)<br>He had loved me, watched me, watched his soul in mine,<br>Which in me grew and heightened into love.<br>For he, a boy still, had been told the tale<br>Of how a fairy bride from Italy,<br>With smells of oleanders in her hair,<br>Was coming through the vines to touch his hand;<br>Whereat the blood of boyhood on the palm<br>Made sudden heats. And when at last I came,<br>And lived before him, lived, and rarely smiled,<br>He smiled and loved me for the thing I was,<br>As every child will love the year's first flower,<br>(Not certainly the fairest of the year,<br>But, in which, the complete year seems to blow)<br>The poor sad snowdrop,–growing between drifts,<br>Mysterious medium 'twixt the plant and frost,<br>So faint with winter while so quick with spring,<br>So doubtful if to thaw itself away<br>With that snow near it. Not that Romney Leigh<br>Had loved me coldly. If I thought so once,<br>It was as if I had held my hand in fire<br>And shook for cold. But now I understood<br>For ever, that the very fire and heat<br>Of troubling passion in him, burned him clear,<br>And shaped to dubious order, word and act.<br>That, just because he loved me over all,<br>All wealth, all lands, all social privilege,<br>To which chance made him unexpected heir,–<br>And, just because on all these lesser gifts,<br>Constrained by conscience and the sense of wrong<br>He had stamped with steady hand God's arrow-mark<br>Of dedication to the human need,<br>He thought it should be so too, with his love;<br>He, passionately loving, would bring down<br>His love, his life, his best, (because the best,)<br>His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high<br>Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass<br>The dust of golden lilies on her feet,<br>That she should walk beside him on the rooks<br>In all that clang and hewing out of men,<br>And help the work of help which was his life,<br>And prove he kept back nothing,–not his soul.<br>And when I failed him,–for I failed him, I–<br>And when it seemed he had missed my love,–he thought,<br>'Aurora makes room for a working-noon;'<br>And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope,<br>Took up his life, as if it were for death,<br>(Just capable of one heroic aim,)<br>And threw it in the thickest of the world,–<br>At which men laughed as if he had drowned a dog:<br>Nor wonder,–since Aurora failed him first!<br>The morning and the evening made his day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet!<br>O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy<br>Of darkness! O great mystery of love,–<br>In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason's self<br>Enlarges rapture,–as a pebble dropt<br>In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine!<br>While we two sate together, leaned that night<br>So close, my very garments crept and thrilled<br>With strange electric life; and both my cheeks<br>Grew red, then pale, with touches from my hair<br>In which his breath was; while the golden moon<br>Was hung before our faces as the badge<br>Of some sublime inherited despair,<br>Since ever to be seen by only one,–<br>A voice said, low and rapid as a sigh,<br>Yet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,–<br>'Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see!<br>Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls,<br>Which rul'st for evermore both day and night!<br>I am happy.'<br> I clung closer to his breast,<br>As sword that, after battle, flings to sheathe;<br>And, in that hurtle of united souls,<br>The mystic motions which in common moods<br>Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,<br>And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,<br>And all the starry turbulence of worlds<br>Swing round us in their audient circles, till<br>If that same golden moon were overhead<br>Or if beneath our feet, we did not know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then calm, equal, smooth with weights of joy,<br>His voice rose, as some chief musician's song<br>Amid the old Jewish temple's Selah-pause,<br>And bade me mark how we two met at last<br>Upon this moon-bathed promontory of earth,<br>To give up much on each side, then, take all.<br>'Beloved,' it sang, ' we must be here to work;<br>And men who work, can only work for men,<br>And, not to work in vain, must comprehend<br>Humanity, and, so work humanly,<br>And raise men's bodies still by raising souls,<br>As God did, first.'<br> 'But stand upon the earth,'<br>I said, 'to raise them,–(this is human too;<br>There's nothing high which has not first been low;<br>My humbleness, said One, has made me great!)<br>As God did, last.'<br> 'And work all silently,<br>And simply,' he returned, 'as God does all;<br>Distort our nature never, for our work,<br>Nor count our right hands stronger for being hoofs.<br>The man most man, with tenderest human hands,<br>Works best for men,–as God in Nazareth.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He paused upon the word, and then resumed;<br>'Fewer programmes; we who have no prescience.<br>Fewer systems; we who are held and do not hold.<br>Less mapping out of masses, to be saved,<br>By nations or by sexes. Fourier's void,<br>And Comte is dwarfed,–and Cabet, puerile.<br>Subsists no law of life outside of life;<br>No perfect manners, without Christian souls:<br>The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver,<br>Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I echoed thoughtfully–'The man, most man,<br>Works best for men: and, if most man indeed,<br>He gets his manhood plainest from his soul:<br>While, obviously, this stringent soul itself<br>Obeys our old rules of development;<br>The Spirit ever witnessing in ours,<br>And Love, the soul of soul, within the soul,<br>Evolving it sublimely. First, God's love.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And next,' he smiled, 'the love of wedded souls,<br>Which still presents that mystery's counterpart.<br>Sweet shadow-rose, upon the water of life,<br>Of such a mystic substance, Sharon gave<br>A name to! human, vital, fructuous rose,<br>Whose calyx holds the multitude of leaves.–<br>Loves filial, loves fraternal, neighbour-loves,<br>And civic, . . all fair petals, all good scents,<br>All reddened, sweetened from one central Heart!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Alas,' I cried, 'it was not long ago,<br>You swore this very social rose smelt ill.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Alas,' he answered, 'is it a rose at all?<br>The filial's thankless, the fraternal's hard,<br>The rest is lost. I do but stand and think,<br>Across dim waters of a troubled life<br>The Flower of Heaven so vainly overhangs,–<br>What perfect counterpart would be in sight,<br>If tanks were clearer. Let us clean the tubes,<br>And wait for rains. O poet, O my love,<br>Since I was too ambitious in my deed,<br>And thought to distance all men in success,<br>Till God came on me, marked the place, and said<br>'III-doer, henceforth keep within this line,<br>'Attempting less than others,'–and I stand<br>And work among Christ's little ones, content,–<br>Come thou, my compensation, my dear sight,<br>My morning-star, my morning! rise and shine,<br>And touch my hills with radiance not their own<br>Shine out for two, Aurora, and fulfil<br>My falling-short that must be! work for two,<br>As I, though thus restrained, for two, shall love!<br>Gaze on, with inscient vision toward the sun,<br>And, from his visceral heat, pluck out the roots<br>Of light beyond him. Art's a service,–mark:<br>A silver key is given to thy clasp,<br>And thou shalt stand unwearied, night and day,<br>And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards,<br>And open, so, that intermediate door<br>Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form<br>And form insensuous, that inferior men<br>May learn to feel on still through thee to those,<br>And bless thy ministration. The world waits<br>For help. Beloved, let us love so well,<br>Our work shall still be better for our love,<br>And still our love be sweeter for our work,<br>And both, commended, for the sake of each,<br>By all true workers and true lovers, born.<br>Now press the clarion on thy woman's lip<br>(Love's holy kiss shall still keep consecrate)<br>And breathe the fine keen breath along the brass,<br>And blow all class-walls level as Jericho's<br>Past Jordan; crying from the top of souls,<br>To souls, that they assemble on earth's flats<br>To get them to some purer eminence<br>Than any hitherto beheld for clouds!<br>What height we know not,–but the way we know,<br>And how by mounting aye, we must attain,<br>And so climb on. It is the hour for souls;<br>That bodies, leavened by the will and love,<br>Be lightened to redemption. The world's old;<br>But the old world waits the hour to be renewed:<br>Toward which, new hearts in individual growth<br>Must quicken, and increase to multitude<br>In new dynasties of the race of men,–<br>Developed whence, shall grow spontaneously<br>New churches, new economies, new laws<br>Admitting freedom, new societies<br>Excluding falsehood. HE shall make all new.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My Romney!–Lifting up my hand in his,<br>As wheeled by Seeing spirits toward the east,<br>He turned instinctively,–where, faint and fair,<br>Along the tingling desert of the sky,<br>Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,<br>Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass<br>The first foundations of that new, near Day<br>Which should be builded out of heaven, to God<br>He stood a moment with erected brows,<br>In silence, as a creature might, who gazed:<br>Stood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyes<br>Upon the thought of perfect noon. And when<br>I saw his soul saw,–'Jasper first,' I said,<br>'And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;<br>The rest in order, . . last, an amethyst.'</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=116062" data-title="Ninth Book de Elizabeth Barrett Browning" data-description="EVEN thus. I pause to write it out at length,/The letter of the Lady Waldemar.–/'I prayed your cousin Leigh to take you this,/He says he'll do it. After years of love,/Or what is called so,–when a woman frets/And fools upon one string of a man..."></div> </div> </div>

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