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8 A fool will pass for such through one mistake, While a philosopher will pass for such, Through said mistakes being ventured in the gross And heaped up to a system. I am like, They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth Of delicate features,—paler, near as grave; But then my mother’s smile breaks up the whole, And makes it better sometimes than itself.

So, nine full years, our days were hid with God Among his mountains. I was just thirteen, Still growing like the plants from unseen roots In tongue-tied Springs,—and suddenly awoke To full life and its needs and agonies, With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside A stone-dead father. Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning. His last word was, ‘Love—’ ‘Love, my child, love, love!’—(then he had done with grief) ‘Love, my child.’ Ere I answered he was gone, And none was left to love in all the world.

There, ended childhood: what succeeded next I recollect as, after fevers, men Thread back the passage of delirium, Missing the turn still, baffled by the door; Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives; A weary, wormy darkness, spurred i’ the flank

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Rh With flame, that it should eat and end itself Like some tormented scorpion. Then, at last, I do remember clearly, how there came A stranger with authority, not right, (I thought not) who commanded, caught me up From old Assunta’s neck; how, with a shriek, She let me go,—while I, with ears too full Of my father’s silence, to shriek back a word, In all a child’s astonishment at grief Stared at the wharfage where she stood and moaned, My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned! The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy, Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck, Like one in anger drawing back her skirts Which suppliants catch at. Then the bitter sea Inexorably pushed between us both, And sweeping up the ship with my despair Threw us out as a pasture to the stars.

Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep; Ten nights and days, without the common face Of any day or night; the moon and sun Cut off from the green reconciling earth, To starve into a blind ferocity And glare unnatural; the very sky (Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea As if no human heart should scape alive,) Bedraggled with the desolating salt, Until it seemed no more than holy heaven To which my father went. All new, and strange—

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10 The universe turned stranger, for a child.

Then, land!—then, England! oh, the frosty cliffs Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home Among those mean red houses through the fog? And when I heard my father’s language first From alien lips which had no kiss for mine, I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept,— And some one near me said the child was mad Through much sea-sickness. The train swept us on. Was this my father’s England? the great isle? The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship Of verdure, field from field, as man from man; The skies themselves looked low and positive, As almost you could touch them with a hand, And dared to do it, they were so far off From God’s celestial crystals; all things, blurred And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates Absorb the light here?—not a hill or stone With heart to strike a radiant colour up Or active outline on the indifferent air!

I think I see my father’s sister stand Upon the hall-step of her country-house To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm, Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight As if for taming accidental thoughts From possible pulses; brown hair pricked with grey By frigid use of life, (she was not old, Although my father’s elder by a year)

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Rh A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines; A close mild mouth, a little soured about The ends, through speaking unrequited loves, Or peradventure niggardly half-truths; Eyes of no colour,—once they might have smiled, But never, never have forgot themselves In smiling; cheeks in which was yet a rose Of perished summers, like a rose in a book, Kept more for ruth than pleasure,—if past bloom, Past fading also. She had lived we’ll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all, (But that, she had not lived enough to know) Between the vicar and the county squires, The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes From the empyreal, to assure their souls Against chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss, The apothecary looked on once a year, To prove their soundness of humility. The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats, Because we are of one flesh after all And need one flannel, (with a proper sense Of difference in the quality)—and still The book-club guarded from your modern trick Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease, Preserved her intellectual. She had lived A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage, Accounting that to leap from perch to perch

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12 Was act and joy enough for any bird. Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live In thickets and eat berries! I, alas, A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage, And she was there to meet me. Very kind. Bring the clean water; give out the fresh seed.

She stood upon the steps to welcome me, Calm, in black garb. I clung about her neck,— Young babes, who catch at every shred of wool To draw the new light closer, catch and cling Less blindly. In my ears, my father’s word Hummed ignorantly, as the sea in shells, ‘Love, love, my child,’ She, black there with my grief, Might feel my love—she was his sister once— I clung to her. A moment, she seemed moved, Kissed me with cold lips, suffered me to cling, And drew me feebly through the hall, into The room she sate in. There, with some strange spasm Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands Imperiously, and held me at arm’s length, And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyes Searched through my face,—ay, stabbed it through and through, Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find A wicked murderer in my innocent face, If not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath, She struggled for her ordinary calm,

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Rh And missed it rather,—told me not to shrink, As if she had told me not to lie or swear,— ‘She loved my father, and would love me too As long as I deserved it.’ Very kind.

I understood her meaning afterward; She thought to find my mother in my face, And questioned it for that. For she, my aunt, Had loved my father truly, as she could, And hated, with the gall of gentle souls, My Tuscan mother, who had fooled away A wise man from wise courses, a good man From obvious duties, and, depriving her, His sister, of the household precedence, Had wronged his tenants, robbed his native land, And made him mad, alike by life and death, In love and sorrow. She had pored for years What sort of woman could be suitable To her sort of hate, to entertain it with; And so, her very curiosity Became hate too, and all the idealism She ever used in life, was used for hate, Till hate, so nourished, did exceed at last The love from which it grew, in strength and heat, And wrinkled her smooth conscience with a sense Of disputable virtue (say not, sin) When Christian doctrine was enforced at church.

And thus my father’s sister was to me My mother’s hater. From that day, she did

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14 Her duty to me, (I appreciate it In her own word as spoken to herself) Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out, But measured always. She was generous, bland, More courteous than was tender, gave me still The first place,—as if fearful that God’s saints Would look down suddenly and say, ‘Herein You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.’ Alas, a mother never is afraid Of speaking angrily to any child, Since love, she knows, is justified of love.

And I, I was a good child on the whole, A meek and manageable child. Why not? I did not live, to have the faults of life: There seemed more true life in my father’s grave Than in all England. Since that threw me off Who fain would cleave, (his latest will, they say, Consigned me to his land) I only thought Of lying quiet there where I was thrown Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her To prick me to a pattern with her pin, Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf, And dry out from my drowned anatomy The last sea-salt left in me. So it was. I broke the copious curls upon my head In braids, because she liked smooth ordered hair. I left off saying my sweet Tuscan words Which still at any stirring of the heart

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Rh Came up to float across the English phrase, As lilies, (Bene . . or che ch’è) because She liked my father’s child to speak his tongue. I learnt the collects and the catechism, The creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice, The Articles. . the Tracts against the times, (By no means Buonaventure’s ‘Prick of Love,’) And various popular synopses of Inhuman doctrines never taught by John, Because she liked instructed piety. I learnt my complement of classic French (Kept pure of Balzac and neologism,) And German also, since she liked a range Of liberal education,—tongues, not books. I learnt a little algebra, a little Of the mathematics,—brushed with extreme flounce The circle of the sciences, because She misliked women who are frivolous. I learnt the royal genealogies Of Oviedo, the internal laws Of the Burmese Empire,. . by how many feet Mount Chimborazo outsoars Himmeleh, What navigable river joins itself To Lara, and what census of the year five Was taken at Klagenfurt,—because she liked A general insight into useful facts. I learnt much music,—such as would have been As quite impossible in Johnson’day As still it might be wished—fine sleights of hand And unimagined fingering, shuffling off

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16 The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes To a noisy Tophet; and I drew. . costumes From French engravings, nereids neatly draped, With smirks of simmering godship,—I washed in From nature, landscapes, (rather say, washed out.) I danced the polka and Cellarius, Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax, Because she liked accomplishments in girls. I read a score of books on womanhood To prove, if women do not think at all, They may teach thinking, (to a maiden aunt Or else the author)—books demonstrating Their right of comprehending husband’s talk When not too deep, and even of answering With pretty ‘may it please you,’ or ‘so it is,’— Their rapid insight and fine aptitude, Particular worth and general missionariness, As long as they keep quiet by the fire And never say ‘no’ when the world says ‘ay,’ For that is fatal,—their angelic reach Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn, And fatten household sinners—their, in brief, Potential faculty in everything Of abdicating power in it: she owned She liked a woman to be womanly, And English women, she thanked God and sighed, (Some people always sigh in thanking God) Were models to the universe. And last I learnt cross-stitch, because she did not like To see me wear the night with empty hands,

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Rh A-doing nothing. So, my shepherdess Was something after all, (the pastoral saints Be praised for’t) leaning lovelorn with pink eyes To match her shoes, when I mistook the silks; Her head uncrushed by that round weight of hat So strangely similar to the tortoise-shell Which slew the tragic poet. By the way, The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, To put on when you’re weary—or a stool To tumble over and vex you. . ‘curse that stool!’ Or else at best, a cushion where you lean And sleep, and dream of something we are not, But would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this. . that, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps. In looking down Those years of education, (to return) I wondered if Brinvilliers suffered more In the water torture,. . flood succeeding flood To drench the incapable throat and split the veins. . Than I did. Certain of your feebler souls Go out in such a process; many pine To a sick, inodorous light; my own endured: I had relations in the Unseen, and drew The elemental nutriment and heat From nature, as earth feels the sun at nights, Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark.

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18 I kept the life, thrust on me, on the outside Of the inner life, with all its ample room For heart and lungs, for will and intellect, Inviolable by conventions. God, I thank thee for that grace of thine! At first, I felt no life which was not patience,—did The thing she bade me, without heed to a thing Beyond it, sate in just the chair she placed, With back against the window, to exclude The sight of the great lime-tree on the lawn, Which seemed to have come on purpose from the woods To bring the house a message,—ay, and walked Demurely in her carpeted low rooms, As if I should not, harkening my own steps, Misdoubt I was alive. I read her books, Was civil to her cousin, Romney Leigh, Gave ear to her vicar, tea to her visitors, And heard them whisper, when I changed a cup, (I blushed for joy at that!)—‘The Italian child, For all her blue eyes and her quiet ways, Thrives ill in England; she is paler yet Than when we came the last time; she will die.’

‘Will die.’ My cousin, Romney Leigh, blushed too, With sudden anger, and approaching me Said low between his teeth—‘You’re wicked now? You wish to die and leave the world a-dusk For others, with your naughty light blown out?’

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Rh I looked into his face defyingly. He might have known, that, being what I was, ’Twas natural to like to get away As far as dead folk can; and then indeed Some people make no trouble when they die. He turned and went abruptly, slammed the door And shut his dog out. Romney, Romney Leigh. I have not named my cousin hitherto, And yet I used him as a sort of friend; My elder by few years, but cold and shy And absent. . tender when he thought of it, Which scarcely was imperative, grave betimes, As well as early master of Leigh Hall, Whereof the nightmare sate upon his youth Repressing all its seasonable delights, And agonising with a ghastly sense Of universal hideous want and wrong To incriminate possession. When he came From college to the country, very oft He crossed the hills on visits to my aunt, With gifts of blue grapes from the hothouses, A book in one hand,—mere statistics, (if I chanced to lift the cover) count of all The goats whose beards are sprouting down toward hell, Against God’s separating judgment-hour. And she, she almost loved him,—even allowed That sometimes he should seem to sigh my way; It made him easier to be pitiful, And sighing was his gift. So, undisturbed

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20 At whiles she let him shut my music up And push my needles down, and lead me out To see in that south angle of the house The figs grow black as if by a Tuscan rock, On some light pretext. She would turn her head At other moments, go to fetch a thing, And leave me breath enough to speak with him, For his sake; it was simple. Sometimes too He would have saved me utterly, it seemed, He stood and looked so. Once, he stood so near He dropped a sudden hand upon my head Bent down on woman’s work, as soft as rain— But then I rose and shook it off as fire, The stranger’s touch that took my father’s place, Yet dared seem soft. I used him for a friend Before I ever knew him for a friend. ’Twas better, ’twas worse also, afterward: We came so close, we saw our differences Too intimately. Always Romney Leigh Was looking for the worms, I for the gods. A godlike nature his; the gods look down, Incurious of themselves; and certainly ’Tis well I should remember, how, those days I was a worm too, and he looked on me.

A little by his act perhaps, yet more By something in me, surely not my will,

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Rh I did not die. But slowly, as one in swoon, To whom life creeps back in the form of death With a sense of separation, a blind pain Of blank obstruction, and a roar i’ the ears Of visionary chariots which retreat As earth grows clearer. . slowly, by degrees, I woke, rose up. . where was I? in the world; For uses, therefore, I must count worth while.

I had a little chamber in the house, As green as any privet-hedge a bird Might choose to build in, though the nest itself Could show but dead-brown sticks and straws; the walls Were green, the carpet was pure green, the straight Small bed was curtained greenly, and the folds Hung green about the window, which let in The out-door world with all its greenery. You could not push your head out and escape A dash of dawn-dew from the honeysuckle, But so you were baptised into the grace And privilege of seeing. . . First, the lime, (I had enough, there, of the lime, be sure,— My morning-dream was often hummed away By the bees in it;) past the lime, the lawn, Which, after sweeping broadly round the house, Went trickling through the shrubberies in a stream Of tender turf, and wore and lost itself Among the acacias, over which, you saw The irregular line of elms by the deep lane

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22 Which stopped the grounds and dammed the overflow Of arbutus and laurel. Out of sight The lane was; sunk so deep, no foreign tramp Nor drover of wild ponies out of Wales Could guess if lady’s hall or tenant’s lodge Dispensed such odours,—though his stick well-crook’d Might reach the lowest trail of blossoming briar Which dipped upon the wall. Behind the elms, And through their tops, you saw the folded hills Striped up and down with hedges, (burley oaks Projecting from the lines to show themselves) Through which my cousin Romney’s chimneys smoked As still as when a silent mouth in frost Breathes—showing where the woodlands hid Leigh Hall; While far above, a jut of table-land, A promontory without water, stretched,— You could not catch it if the days were thick, Or took it for a cloud; but, otherwise The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve And use it for an anvil till he had filled The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts, And proved he need not rest so early:—then, When all his setting trouble was resolved To a trance of passive glory, you might see In apparition on the golden sky (Alas, my Giotto’s background!) the sheep run Along the fine clear outline, small as mice That run along a witch’s scarlet thread.

Not a grand nature. Not my chestnut-woods

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Rh Of Vallombrosa, cleaving by the spurs To the precipices. Not my headlong leaps Of waters, that cry out for joy or fear In leaping through the palpitating pines, Like a white soul tossed out to eternity With thrills of time upon it. Not indeed My multitudinous mountains, sitting in The magic circle, with the mutual touch Electric, panting from their full deep hearts Beneath the influent heavens, and waiting for Communion and commission. Italy Is one thing, England one. On English ground You understand the letter. . ere the fall, How Adam lived in a garden. All the fields Are tied up fast with hedges, nosegay-like; The hills are crumpled plains—the plains, parterres— The trees, round, woolly, ready to be clipped; And if you seek for any wilderness You find, at best, a park. A nature tamed And grown domestic like a barn-door fowl, Which does not awe you with its claws and beak, Nor tempt you to an eyrie too high up, But which, in cackling, sets you thinking of Your eggs to-morrow at breakfast, in the pause Of finer meditation. Rather say A sweet familiar nature, stealing in As a dog might, or child, to touch your hand Or pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so

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24 Of presence and affection, excellent For inner uses, from the things without.

I could not be unthankful, I who was Entreated thus and holpen. In the room I speak of, ere the house was well awake, And also after it was well asleep, I sat alone, and drew the blessing in Of all that nature. With a gradual step, A stir among the leaves, a breath, a ray, It came in softly, while the angels made A place for it beside me. The moon came, And swept my chamber clean of foolish thoughts The sun came, saying, ‘Shall I lift this light Against the lime-tree, and you will not look? I make the birds sing—listen! . . but, for you, God never hears your voice, excepting when You lie upon the bed at nights and weep.’

Then, something moved me. Then, I wakened up More slowly than I verily write now, But wholly, at last, I wakened, opened wide The window and my soul, and let the airs And out-door sights sweep gradual gospels in, Regenerating what I was. O Life, How oft we throw it off and think,—‘Enough, Enough of life in so much!—here's a cause For rupture;—herein we must break with Life, Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged, Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!'

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Rh —And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes And think all ended.—Then, Life calls to us, In some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, Above us, or below us, or around. . . Perhaps we name it Nature’s voice, or Love’s, Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed So own our compensations than our griefs: Still, Life’s voice!—still, we make our peace with Life.

And I, so young then, was not sullen. Soon I used to get up early, just to sit And watch the morning quicken in the grey, And hear the silence open like a flower, Leaf after leaf,—and stroke with listless hand The woodbine through the window, till at last I came to do it with a sort of love, At foolish unaware: whereat I smiled,— A melancholy smile, to catch myself Smiling for joy. Capacity for joy Admits temptation. It seemed, next, worth while To dodge the sharp sword set against my life; To slip down stairs through all the sleepy house, As mute as any dream there, and escape As a soul from the body, out of doors,— Glide through the shrubberies, drop into the lane, And wander on the hills an hour or two, Then back again before the house should stir.

Or else I sat on in my chamber green,

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26 And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed My prayers without the vicar; read my books, Without considering whether they were fit To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits. . so much help By so much reading. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth— ’Tis then we get the right good from a book.

I read much. What my father taught before From many a volume, Love re-emphasised Upon the self-same pages: Theophrast Grew tender with the memory of his eyes, And Ælian made mine wet. The trick of Greek And Latin, he had taught me, as he would Have taught me wrestling or the game of fives If such he had known,—most like a shipwrecked man Who heaps his single platter with goats’ cheese And scarlet berries; or like any man Who loves but one, and so gives all at once, Because he has it, rather than because He counts it worthy. Thus, my father gave; And thus, as did the women formerly By young Achilles, when they pinned the veil Across the boy’s audacious front, and swept With tuneful laughs the silver-fretted rocks, He wrapt his little daughter in his large

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Rh Man’s doublet, careless did it fit or no.

But, after I had read for memory, I read for hope. The path my father’s foot Had trod me out, which suddenly broke off, (What time he dropped the wallet of the flesh And passed) alone I carried on, and set My child-heart ’gainst the thorny underwood, To reach the grassy shelter of the trees. Ah, babe i’ the wood, without a brother-babe! My own self-pity, like the red-breast bird, Flies back to cover all that past with leaves.

Sublimest danger, over which none weeps, When any young wayfaring soul goes forth Alone, unconscious of the perilous road, The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes, To thrust his own way, he an alien, through The world of books! Ah, you!—you think it fine, You clap hands—‘A fair day!’—you cheer him on, As if the worst, could happen, were to rest Too long beside a fountain. Yet, behold, Behold!—the world of books is still the world; And worldlings in it are less merciful And more puissant. For the wicked there Are winged like angels. Every knife that strikes, Is edged from elemental fire to assail A spiritual life. The beautiful seems right By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong Because of weakness. Power is justified,

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28 Though armed against St. Michael. Many a crown Covers bald foreheads. In the book-world, true, There’s no lack, neither, of God’s saints and kings, That shake the ashes of the grave aside From their calm locks, and undiscomfited Look stedfast truths against Time’s changing mask. True, many a prophet teaches in the roads; True, many a seer pulls down the flaming heavens Upon his own head in strong martyrdom, In order to light men a moment’s space. But stay!—who judges?—who distinguishes ’Twixt Saul and Nahash justly, at first sight, And leaves king Saul precisely at the sin, To serve king David? who discerns at once The sound of the trumpets, when the trumpets blow For Alaric as well as Charlemagne? Who judges prophets, and can tell true seers From conjurors? The child, there? Would you leave That child to wander in a battle-field And push his innocent smile against the guns? Or even in the catacombs,. . his torch Grown ragged in the fluttering air, and all The dark a-mutter round him? not a child!

I read books bad and good—some bad and good At once: good aims not always make good books; Well-tempered spades turn up ill-smelling soils In digging vineyards, even: books, that prove God’s being so definitely, that man’s doubt Grows self-defined the other side the line,

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Rh Made Atheist by suggestion; moral books, Exasperating to license; genial books, Discounting from the human dignity; And merry books, which set you weeping when The sun shines,—ay, and melancholy books, Which make you laugh that any one should weep In this disjointed life, for one wrong more.

The world of books is still the world, I write, And both worlds have God’s providence, thank God, To keep and hearten: with some struggle, indeed, Among the breakers, some hard swimming through The deeps—I lost breath in my soul sometimes, And cried ‘God save me if there’s any God.’ But even so, God saved me; and, being dashed From error on to error, every turn Still brought me nearer to the central truth.

I thought so. All this anguish in the thick Of men’s opinions. . press and counterpress Now up, now down, now underfoot, and now Emergent. . all the best of it, perhaps, But throws you back upon a noble trust And use of your own instinct,—merely proves Pure reason stronger than bare inference At strongest. Try it,—fix against heaven’s wall Your scaling ladders of high logic—mount Step by step!—Sight goes faster; that still ray Which strikes out from you, how, you cannot tell, And why, you know not—(did you eliminate,

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30 That such as you, indeed, should analyse?) Goes straight and fast as light, and high as God.

The cygnet finds the water: but the man Is born in ignorance of his element, And feels out blind at first, disorganised By sin i’ the blood,—his spirit-insight dulled And crossed by his sensations. Presently We feel it quicken in the dark sometimes; Then, mark, be reverent, be obedient,— For those dumb motions of imperfect life Are oracles of vital Deity Attesting the Hereafter. Let who says ‘The soul’s a clean white paper,’ rather say, A palimpsest, a prophets holograph Defiled, erased and covered by a monk’s,— The apocalypse, by a Longus! poring on Which obscene text, we may discern perhaps Some fair, fine trace of what was written once, Some upstroke of an alpha and omega Expressing the old scripture. Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,

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Rh The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! At last, because the time was ripe, I chanced upon the poets. As the earth Plunges in fury, when the internal fires Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat The marts and temples, the triumphal gates And towers of observation, clears herself To elemental freedom—thus, my soul, At poetry’s divine first finger touch, Let go conventions and sprang up surprised, Convicted of the great eternities Before two worlds. What’s this, Aurora Leigh, You write so of the poets, and not laugh? Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark, Exaggerators of the sun and moon, And soothsayers in a tea-cup? I write so Of the only truth-tellers, now left to God,— The only speakers of essential truth, Opposed to relative, comparative, And temporal truths; the only holders by His sun-skirts, through conventional grey glooms; The only teachers who instruct mankind, From just a shadow on a charnel-wall, To find man’s veritable stature out,

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32 Erect, sublime,—the measure of a man, And that’s the measure of an angel, says The apostle. Ay, and while your common men Build pyramids, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine, And dust the flaunty carpets of the world For kings to walk on, or our senators, The poet suddenly will catch them up With his voice like a thunder. . ‘This is soul, This is life, this word is being said in heaven, Here’s God down on us! what are you about?’ How all those workers start amid their work, Look round, look up, and feel, a moment’s space, That carpet-dusting, though a pretty trade, Is not the imperative labour after all.

My own best poets, am I one with you, That thus I love you,—or but one through love? Does all this smell of thyme about my feet Conclude my visit to your holy hill In personal presence, or but testify The rustling of your vesture through my dreams With influent odours? When my joy and pain, My thought and aspiration, like the stops Of pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb If not melodious, do you play on me, My pipers,—and if, sooth, you did not blow, Would not sound come? or is the music mine, As a man’s voice or breath is called his own, Inbreathed by the Life-breather? There’s a doubt For cloudy seasons!

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Rh But the sun was high When first I felt my pulses set themselves For concords; when the rhythmic turbulence Of blood and brain swept outward upon words, As wind upon the alders blanching them By turning up their under-natures till They trembled in dilation. O delight And triumph of the poet,—who would say A man’s mere ‘yes,’ a woman’s common ‘no,’ A little human hope of that or this, And says the word so that it burns you through With a special revelation, shakes the heart Of all the men and women in the world, As if one came back from the dead and spoke, With eyes too happy, a familiar thing Become divine i’ the utterance! while for him The poet, the speaker, he expands with joy; The palpitating angel in his flesh Thrills inly with consenting fellowship To those innumerous spirits who sun themselves Outside of time. O life, O poetry, —Which means life in life! cognisant of life Beyond this blood-beat,—passionate for truth Beyond these senses,—poetry, my life,— My eagle, with both grappling feet still hot From Zeus’s thunder, who has ravished me Away from all the shepherds, sheep, and dogs, And set me in the Olympian roar and round Of luminous faces, for a cup-bearer,

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34 To keep the mouths of all the godheads moist For everlasting laughters,—I, myself, Half drunk across the beaker, with their eyes! How those gods look! Enough so, Ganymede. We shall not bear above a round or two— We drop the golden cup at Heré’s foot And swoon back to the earth,—and find ourselves Face-down among the pine-cones, cold with dew, While the dogs bark, and many a shepherd scoffs, ‘What’s come now to the youth?’ Such ups and downs Have poets. Am I such indeed? The name Is royal, and to sign it like a queen, Is what I dare not,—though some royal blood Would seem to tingle in me now and then, With sense of power and ache,—with imposthumes And manias usual to the race. Howbeit I dare not: ’tis too easy to go mad, And ape a Bourbon in a crown of straws; The thing’s too common. Many fervent souls Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel If steel had offered, in a restless heat Of doing something. Many tender souls Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread, As children, cowslips:—the more pains they take, The work more withers. Young men, ay, and maids, Too often sow their wild oats in tame verse, Before they sit down under their own vine

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Rh And live for use. Alas, near all the birds Will sing at dawn,—and yet we do not take The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.

In those days, though, I never analysed Myself even. All analysis comes late. You catch a sight of Nature, earliest, In full front sun-face, and your eyelids wink And drop before the wonder of’t; you miss The form, through seeing the light. I lived, those days, And wrote because I lived—unlicensed else: My heart beat in my brain. Life’s violent flood Abolished bounds,—and, which my neighbour’s field, Which mine, what mattered? It is so in youth. We play at leap-frog over the god Term; The love within us and the love without Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love, We scarce distinguish. So, with other power. Being acted on and acting seem the same: In that first onrush of life’s chariot-wheels, We know not if the forests move or we.

And so, like most young poets, in a flush Of individual life, I poured myself Along the veins of others, and achieved Mere lifeless imitations of live verse, And made the living answer for the dead, Profaning nature. ‘Touch not, do not taste, Nor handle,’—we’re too legal, who write young: We beat the phorminx till we hurt our thumbs,

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36 As if still ignorant of counterpoint; We call the Muse. . ‘O Muse, benignant Muse!’— As if we had seen her purple-braided head With the eyes in it start between the boughs As often as a stag’s. What make-believe, With so much earnest! what effete results, From virile efforts! what cold wire-drawn odes From such white heats!—bucolics, where the cows Would scare the writer if they splashed the mud In lashing off the flies,—didactics, driven Against the heels of what the master said; And counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumps A babe might blow between two straining cheeks Of bubbled rose, to make his mother laugh; And elegiac griefs, and songs of love, Like cast-off nosegays picked up on the road, The worse for being warm: all these things, writ On happy mornings, with a morning heart, That leaps for love, is active for resolve, Weak for art only. Oft, the ancient forms Will thrill, indeed, in carrying the young blood. The wine-skins, now and then, a little warped, Will crack even, as the new wine gurgles in. Spare the old bottles!—spill not the new wine.

By Keats’s soul, the man who never stepped In gradual progress like another man, But, turning grandly on his central self, Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years And died, not young,—(the life of a long life,

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Rh Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear Upon the world’s cold cheek to make it burn For ever;) by that strong excepted soul, I count it strange, and hard to understand, That nearly all young poets should write old; That Pope was sexagenarian at sixteen, And beardless Byron academical, And so with others. It may be, perhaps, Such have not settled long and deep enough In trance, to attain to clairvoyance,—and still The memory mixes with the vision, spoils, And works it turbid. Or perhaps, again, In order to discover the Muse-Sphinx, The melancholy desert must sweep round, Behind you, as before.— For me, I wrote False poems, like the rest, and thought them true, Because myself was true in writing them. I, peradventure, have writ true ones since With less complacence. But I could not hide My quickening inner life from those at watch. They saw a light at a window now and then, They had not set there. Who had set it there? My father’s sister started when she caught My soul agaze in my eyes. She could not say I had no business with a sort of soul, But plainly she objected,—and demurred, That souls were dangerous things to carry straight

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38 Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.

She said sometimes, ‘Aurora, have you done Your task this morning?—have you read that book? And are you ready for the crochet here?’— As if she said, ‘I know there’s something wrong, I know I have not ground you down enough To flatten and bake you to a wholesome crust For household uses and proprieties, Before the rain has got into my barn And set the grains a-sprouting. What, you’re green With out-door impudence? you almost grow?’ To which I answered, ‘Would she hear my task, And verify my abstract of the book? And should I sit down to the crochet work? Was such her pleasure?’. . Then I sate and teased The patient needle till it spilt the thread, Which oozed off from it in meandering lace From hour to hour. I was not, therefore, sad; My soul was singing at a work apart Behind the wall of sense, as safe from harm As sings the lark when sucked up out of sight, In vortices of glory and blue air.

And so, through forced work and spontaneous work, The inner life informed the outer life, Reduced the irregular blood to settled rhythms, Made cool the forehead with fresh-sprinkling dreams, And, rounding to the spheric soul the thin Pined body, struck a colour up the cheeks,

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Rh Though somewhat faint. I clenched my brows across My blue eyes greatening in the looking-glass, And said, ‘We’ll live, Aurora! we’ll be strong. The dogs are on us—but we will not die.’

Whoever lives true life, will love true love. I learnt to love that England. Very oft, Before the day was born, or otherwise Through secret windings of the afternoons, I threw my hunters off and plunged myself Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag Will take the waters, shivering with the fear And passion of the course. And when, at last Escaped,—so many a green slope built on slope Betwixt me and the enemy’s house behind, I dared to rest, or wander,—like a rest Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,— And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement, (As if God’s finger touched but did not press In making England!) such an up and down Of verdure,—nothing too much up or down, A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb; Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises, Fed full of noises by invisible streams; And open pastures, where you scarcely tell White daisies from white dew,—at intervals The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,— I thought my father’s land was worthy too

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40 Of being my Shakspeare’s. Very oft alone, Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leave To walk the third with Romney and his friend The rising painter, Vincent Carrington, Whom men judge hardly, as bee-bonneted, Because he holds that, paint a body well, You paint a soul by implication, like The grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for if He said. . ‘When I was last in Italy’. . It sounded as an instrument that’s played Too far off for the tune—and yet it’s fine To listen. Often we walked only two, If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me. We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced: We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched— Say rather, scholars upon different tracks, And thinkers disagreed; he, overfull Of what is, and I, haply, overbold For what might be. But then the thrushes sang, And shook my pulses and the elms’ new leaves,— And then I turned, and held my finger up, And bade him mark that, howsoe’er the world Went ill, as he related, certainly The thrushes still sang in it.—At which word His brow would soften,—and he bore with me In melancholy patience, not unkind, While, breaking into voluble ecstasy,

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Rh I flattered all the beauteous country round, As poets use the skies, the clouds, the fields, The happy violets hiding from the roads The primroses run down to, carrying gold,— The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths 'Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all alive With birds and gnats and large white butterflies Which look as if the May-flower had sought life And palpitated forth upon the wind,— Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills, And cattle grazing in the watered vales, And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere, Confused with smell of orchards.'See,' I said, 'And see! is God not with us on the earth? And shall we put Him down by aught we do? Who says there's nothing for the poor and vile Save poverty and wickedness? behold!' And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped, And clapped my hands, and called all very fair.

In the beginning when God called all good, Even then, was evil near us, it is writ. But we, indeed, who call things good and fair, The evil is upon us while we speak; Deliver us from evil, let us pray.

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words 'cousin' and 'friend' are constantly recurring in this poem, the last pages of which have been finished under the hospitality of your roof, my own dearest cousin and friend;—cousin and friend, in a sense of less equality and greater disinterestedness than 'Romney' 's.

Ending, therefore, and preparing once more to quit England, I venture to leave in your hands this book, the most mature of my works, and the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered: that as, through my various efforts in literature and steps in life, you have believed in me, borne with me, and been generous to me, far beyond the common uses of mere relationship or sympathy of mind, so you may kindly accept, in sight of the public, this poor sign of esteem, gratitude, and affection, from

your unforgetting E. B. B.

39,, October 17, 1856.

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 THE FIRST CHANTEY

was the woman to me, darkling I found her;

Haling her dumb from the camp, held her and bound her.

Hot rose her tribe on our track ere I had proved her;

Hearing her laugh in the gloom, greatly I loved her.

Swift through the forest we ran; none stood to guard us,

Few were my people and far; then the flood barred us—

Him we call Son of the Sea, sullen and swollen.

Panting we waited the death, stealer and stolen.

Yet ere they came to my lance laid for the slaughter,

Lightly she leaped to a log lapped in the water; 18


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Rh Holding on high and apart skins that arrayed her,

Called she the God of the Wind that He should aid her.

Life had the tree at that word (Praise we the Giver!)

Otter-like left he the bank for the full river.

Far fell their axes behind, flashing and ringing,

Wonder was on me and fear, yet she was singing!

Low lay the land we had left. Now the blue bound us,

Even the Floor of the Gods level around us.

Whisper there was not, nor word, shadow nor showing,

Till the light stirred on the deep, glowing and growing.

Then did He leap to His place flaring from under,

He the Compeller, the Sun, bared to our wonder.

Nay, not a league from our eyes blinded with gazing,

Cleared He the gate of the world, huge and amazing!


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20 This we beheld (and we live)—the Pit of the Burning!

Then the God spoke to the tree for our returning;

Back to the beach of our flight, fearless and slowly,

Back to our slayers went he: but we were holy.

Men that were hot in that hunt, women that followed,

Babes that were promised our bones, trembled and wallowed:

Over the necks of the Tribe crouching and fawning—

Prophet and priestess we came back from the dawning!


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 THE LAST CHANTEY

' And there was no more sea.'

said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim,

Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:

'Lo! Earth has passed away

On the smoke of Judgment Day.

That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?'

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:

'Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!

But the war is done between us,

In the deep the Lord hath seen us—

Our bones we'll leave the barracout', and God may sink the sea!'

21


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22 Then said the soul of Judas that betrayed Him:

'Lord, hast Thou forgotten Thy covenant with me?

How once a year I go

To cool me on the floe?

And Ye take my day of mercy if Ye take away the sea!'

Then said the soul of the Angel of the Off-shore Wind:

(He that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee):

'I have watch and ward to keep

O'er Thy wonders on the deep,

And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!'

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:

'Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we!

If we worked the ship together

Till she foundered in foul weather,

Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?'


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Rh Then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard:

'Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;

But Thy arm was strong to save,

And it touched us on the wave,

And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the sea.'

Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:

'Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.

There were fourteen score of these,

And they blessed Thee on their knees,

When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea!'

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,

Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:

'Our thumbs are rough and tarred,

And the tune is something hard—

May we lift a Deepsea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?'


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24 Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers—

Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:

'Ho, we revel in our chains

O'er the sorrow that was Spain's;

Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!'

Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn 'speckshioner—

(He that led the flinching in the fleets of fair Dundee):

'Oh, the ice-blink white and near,

And the bowhead breaching clear!

Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?'

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,

Crying: 'Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lea!

Must we sing for evermore

On the windless, glassy floor?

Take back your golden fiddles and we'll beat to open sea!'


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Rh Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him,

And 'stablished his borders unto all eternity,

That such as have no pleasure

For to praise the Lord by measure,

They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea.

Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,

Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;

And the ships shall go abroad

To the Glory of the Lord

Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!


text:
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v. 13- 9. The eared hedgehog said this, coming down from the mountain: whichsoever of these (f.) are produced by digging, of them the poison is most sapless.

10. Tābúva, not tābúva; verily thou art not tābúva; by tābúva [is] the poison sapless.

11. Tastúva, not tastúva; verily thou art not tastúva; by tastúva [is] the poison sapless.

1. An eagle (suparṇá) discovered thee; a hog dug thee with his snout; seek thou to injure, O herb, him that seeks to injure; smite down the witchcraft-maker.

2. Smite down the sorcerers, smite down the witchcraft-maker; then, whoever seeks to injure us, him do thou smite, O herb.

3. Having cut around out of [his] skin a strip (pariçāsá), as it were of a stag, fasten, O gods, upon the witchcraft-maker the witchcraft, like a necklace.

That is, apparently, with a thong cut out of his own skin, like a buck-skin thong. As usual, the mss. vary in a between ṛ́çy- and ríçy-, E. even reading ríṣy-, but the

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245 majority have ṛ́çy-, which is undoubtedly the true text, and should be restored in our edition. Three times, in this hymn (vss. 3, 5, 12), the Anukr. insists on regarding iva as dissyllabic, and therefore reckons the verses as bhurij.

4. Lead thou away the witchcraft back to the witchcraft-maker, grasping its hand; set it straight before (samakṣám) him, that it may smite the witchcraft-maker.

5. Be the witchcrafts for the witchcraft-maker, the curse for him that curses; like an easy chariot let the witchcraft roll back to the witchcraft-maker.

6. If woman, or if man, hath made witchcraft in order to evil, it we conduct unto him, like a horse by a horse-halter.

7. If either thou art god-made, or if made by man, thee, being such, do we lead back, with Indra as ally.

8. O Agni, overpowerer of fighters, overpower the fighters; we take the witchcraft back to the witchcraft-maker by a returner.

9. O practiced piercer (?), pierce him; whoever made [it], him do thou smite; we do not sharpen thee up to slay (vadhá) him who has not made [it].

10. Go as a son to a father; like a constrictor trampled on, bite; go, O witchcraft, back to the witchcraft-maker, as it were treading down [thy] bond.

11. Up, like a she-antelope (eṇī́), a she-elephant (? vāraṇī́), with leaping on, like a hind, let the witchcraft go to its maker.

title: Page:Atharva-Veda samhita.djvu/415


text: Atharva-Veda Samhita/Book V/Hymn 13

title: Atharva-Veda Samhita/Book V/Hymn 13


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 THE MERCHANTMEN

drew merchantmen,

Because of his desire

For peacocks, apes, and ivory,

From Tarshish unto Tyre:

With cedars out of Lebanon

Which Hiram rafted down,

But we be only sailormen

That use in London Town.

We bring no store of ingots,

Of spice or precious stones,

But that we have we gathered

With sweat and aching bones: 26


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Rh In flame beneath the tropics,

In frost upon the floe,

And jeopardy of every wind

That does between them go.

And some we got by purchase,

And some we had by trade,

And some we found by courtesy

Of pike and carronade,

At midnight, 'mid-sea meetings,

For charity to keep,

And light the rolling homeward-bound

That rode a foot too deep.

By sport of bitter weather

We're walty, strained, and scarred

From the kentledge on the kelson

To the slings upon the yard.

Six oceans had their will of us

To carry all away—

Our galley's in the Baltic,

And our boom's in Mossel Bay!


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28 We've floundered off the Texel,

Awash with sodden deals,

We've slipped from Valparaiso

With the Norther at our heels:

We've ratched beyond the Crossets

That tusk the Southern Pole,

And dipped our gunnels under

To the dread Agulhas roll.

Beyond all outer charting

We sailed where none have sailed,

And saw the land-lights burning

On islands none have hailed;

Our hair stood up for wonder,

But, when the night was done,

There danced the deep to windward

Blue-empty 'neath the sun!

Strange consorts rode beside us

And brought us evil luck;

The witch-fire climbed our channels,

And flared on vane and truck:


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Rh Till, through the red tornado,

That lashed us nigh to blind,

We saw The Dutchman plunging,

Full canvas, head to wind!

We've heard the Midnight Leadsman

That calls the black deep down—

Ay, thrice we've heard The Swimmer,

The Thing that may not drown.

On frozen bunt and gasket

The sleet-cloud drave her hosts,

When, manned by more than signed with us

We passed the Isle o' Ghosts!

And north, amid the hummocks,

A biscuit-toss below,

We met the silent shallop

That frighted whalers know;

For, down a cruel ice-lane,

That opened as he sped,

We saw dead Henry Hudson

Steer, North by West, his dead.


text:
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30 So dealt God's waters with us

Beneath the roaring skies,

So walked His signs and marvels

All naked to our eyes:

But we were heading homeward

With trade to lose or make—

Good Lord, they slipped behind us

In the tailing of our wake!

Let go, let go the anchors;

Now shamed at heart are we

To bring so poor a cargo home

That had for gift the sea!

Let go the great bow-anchors—

Ah, fools were we and blind—

The worst we stored with utter toil,

The best we left behind!


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morcar


text:
Page:Headquarters Second Battalion-Ninety-Fourth Field Artillery Daily Journal Entry Reporting the "last American heavy... - NARA - 305395.jpg

CONFIDENTIAL {| 1 NOV 62
 * } DA FORM       1594
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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/More, Hannah


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/More, Henry (1586-1661)


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followed one another.Came a morn I stood upon the brink of twenty years, And looked before and after, as I stood Woman and artist,—either incomplete, Both credulous of completion.There I held The whole creation in my little cup, And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank, ‘Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine, And all these peoples.’ I was glad, that day; The June was in me, with its multitudes Of nightingales all singing in the dark, And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split. I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God! So glad, I could not choose be very wise! And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull My childhood backward in a childish jest To see the face of’t once more, and farewell! In which fantastic mood I bounded forth At early morning,—would not wait so long

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44 As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings, But, brushing a green trail across the lawn With my gown in the dew, took will and way Among the acacias of the shrubberies, To fly my fancies in the open air And keep my birthday, till my aunt awoke To stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on, As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves; ‘The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone, And so with me it must be, unless I prove Unworthy of the grand adversity,— And certainly I would not fail so much. What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it, Before my brows be numb as Dante’s own To all the tender pricking of such leaves? Such leaves? what leaves?’ I pulled the branches down, To choose from. ‘Not the bay! I choose no bay; The fates deny us if we are overbold: Nor myrtle—which means chiefly love; and love Is something awful which one dare not touch So early o’ mornings. This verbena strains The point of passionate fragrance; and hard by, This guelder-rose, at far too slight a beck Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples. Ah—there’s my choice,—that ivy on the wall, That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow

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Rh But thinking of a wreath. Large leaves, smooth leaves, Serrated like my vines, and half as green. I like such ivy; bold to leap a height ’Twas strong to climb! as good to grow on graves As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too, (And that’s not ill) when twisted round a comb.’

Thus speaking to myself, half singing it, Because some thoughts are fashioned like a bell To ring with once being touched, I drew a wreath Drenched, blinding me with dew, across my brow, And fastening it behind so,. . turning faced . . My public!—Cousin Romney—with a mouth Twice graver than his eyes. I stood there fixed— My arms up, like the caryatid, sole Of some abolished temple, helplessly Persistent in a gesture which derides A former purpose. Yet my blush was flame, As if from flax, not stone. ‘Aurora Leigh, The earliest of Aurora’s!’ Hand stretched out I clasped, as shipwrecked men will clasp a hand, Indifferent to the sort of palm. The tide Had caught me at my pastime, writing down My foolish name too near upon the sea Which drowned me with a blush as foolish. ‘You, My cousin!’ The smile died out in his eyes

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46 And dropped upon his lips, a cold dead weight, For just a moment. . ‘Here’s a book, I found! No name writ on it—poems, by the form; Some Greek upon the margin,—lady’s Greek, Without the accents. Read it? Not a word. I saw at once the thing had witchcraft in’t, Whereof the reading calls up dangerous spirits; I rather bring it to the witch.’ ‘My book! You found it.’. . ‘In the hollow by the stream, That beach leans down into—of which you said, The Oread in it has a Naiad’s heart And pines for waters.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Rather you, My cousin! that I have seen you not too much A witch, a poet, scholar, and the rest, To be a woman also.’ With a glance The smile rose in his eyes again, and touched The ivy on my forehead, light as air. I answered gravely, ‘Poets needs must be Or men or women—more’s the pity.’ ‘Ah, But men, and still less women, happily, Scarce need be poets. Keep to the green wreath, Since even dreaming of the stone and bronze Brings headaches, pretty cousin, and defiles The clean white morning dresses.’

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Rh ‘So you judge! Because I love the beautiful, I must Love pleasure chiefly, and be overcharged For ease and whiteness! Well—you know the world, And only miss your cousin; ’tis not much!— But learn this: I would rather take my part With God’s Dead, who afford to walk in white Yet spread His glory, than keep quiet here, And gather up my feet from even a step, For fear to soil my gown in so much dust. I choose to walk at all risks.—Here, if heads That hold a rhythmic thought, must ache perforce, For my part, I choose headaches,—and today’s My birthday.’ ‘Dear Aurora, choose instead To cure such. You have balsams.’ ‘I perceive!— The headache is too noble for my sex. You think the heartache would sound decenter, Since that’s the woman’s special, proper ache, And altogether tolerable, except To a woman.’ Saying which, I loosed my wreath, And, swinging it beside me as I walked, Half petulant, half playful, as we walked, I sent a sidelong look to find his thought,— As falcon set on falconer’s finger may, With sidelong head, and startled, braving eye, Which means, ‘You’ll see—you’ll see! I’ll soon take flight—

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48 You shall not hinder.’ He, as shaking out His hand and answering ‘Fly then,’ did not speak, Except by such a gesture. Silently We paced, until, just coming into sight Of the house-windows, he abruptly caught At one end of the swinging wreath, and said ‘Aurora!’ There I stopped short, breath and all.

‘Aurora, let’s be serious, and throw by This game of head and heart. Life means, be sure, Both heart and head,—both active, both complete, And both in earnest. Men and women make The world, as head and heart make human life. Work man, work woman, since there’s work to do In this beleaguered earth, for head and heart, And thought can never do the work of love! But work for ends, I mean for uses; not For such sleek fringes (do you call them ends? Still less God’s glory) as we sew ourselves Upon the velvet of those baldaquins Held ’twixt us and the sun. That book of yours, I have not read a page of; but I toss A rose up—it falls calyx down, you see! . . The chances are that, being a woman, young, And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes,. . You write as well. . and ill. . upon the whole, As other women. If as well, what then? If even a little better,. . still what then? We want the Best in art now, or no art. The time is done for facile settings up

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Rh Of minnow gods, nymphs here, and tritons there; The polytheists have gone out in God, That unity of Bests. No best, no God!— And so with art, we say. Give art’s divine, Direct, indubitable, real as grief,— Or leave us to the grief we grow ourselves Divine by overcoming with mere hope And most prosaic patience. You, you are young As Eve with nature’s daybreak on her face; But this same world you are come to, dearest coz, Has done with keeping birthdays, saves her wreaths To hang upon her ruins,—and forgets To rhyme the cry with which she still beats back Those savage, hungry dogs that hunt her down To the empty grave of Christ. The world’s hard pressed; The sweat of labour in the early curse Has (turning acrid in six thousand years) Become the sweat of torture. Who has time, An hour’s time. . think! . . to sit upon a bank And hear the cymbal tinkle in white hands? When Egypt’s slain, I say, let Miriam sing!— Before. . where’s Moses?’ ‘Ah—exactly that! Where’s Moses?—is a Moses to be found?— You’ll seek him vainly in the bulrushes, While I in vain touch cymbals. Yet, concede, Such sounding brass has done some actual good, (The application in a woman’s hand, If that were credible, being scarcely spoilt,) In colonising beehives.’

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Rh ‘There it is!— You play beside a death-bed like a child, Yet measure to yourself a prophet’s place To teach the living. None of all these things, Can women understand. You generalise Oh, nothing!—not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts, So sympathetic to the personal pang, Close on each separate knife-stroke, yielding up A whole life at each wound; incapable Of deepening, widening a large lap of life To hold the world-full woe. The human race To you means, such a child, or such a man, You saw one morning waiting in the cold, Beside that gate, perhaps. You gather up A few such cases, and, when strong, sometimes Will write of factories and of slaves, as if Your father were a negro, and your son A spinner in the mills. All’s yours and you,— All, coloured with your blood, or otherwise Just nothing to you. Why, I call you hard To general suffering. Here’s the world half blind With intellectual light, half brutalised With civilization, having caught the plague In silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain And sin too! . . does one woman of you all, (You who weep easily) grow pale to see This tiger shake his cage?—does one of you Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls And pine and die, because of the great sum

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Rh Of universal anguish?—Show me a tear Wet as Cordelia’s, in eyes bright as yours, Because the world is mad? You cannot count, That you should weep for this account, not you! You weep for what you know. A red-haired child Sick in a fever, if you touch him once, Though but so little as with a finger-tip, Will set you weeping; but a million sick. . You could as soon weep for the rule of three, Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world Uncomprehended by you must remain Uninfluenced by you. Women as you are, Mere women, personal and passionate, You give us doating mothers, and chaste wives, Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints! We get no Christ from you,—and verily We shall not get a poet, in my mind.’

‘With which conclusion you conclude’. . ‘But this— That you, Aurora, with the large live brow And steady eyelids, cannot condescend To play at art, as children play at swords, To show a pretty spirit, chiefly admired Because true action is impossible. You never can be satisfied with praise Which men give women when they judge a book Not as mere work, but as mere woman’s work, Expressing the comparative respect Which means the absolute scorn. ‘Oh, excellent!

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52 ‘What grace! what facile turns! what fluent sweeps! ‘What delicate discernment. . almost thought! ‘The book does honour to the sex, we hold. ‘Among our female authors we make room ‘For this fair writer, and congratulate ‘The country that produces in these times ‘Such women, competent to. . spell.’’ ‘Stop there!’ I answered—burning through his thread of talk With a quick flame of emotion,—‘You have read My soul, if not my book, and argue well I would not condescend. . we will not say To such a kind of praise, (a worthless end Is praise of all kinds) but to such a use Of holy art and golden life. I am young, And peradventure weak—you tell me so— Through being a woman. And, for all the rest, Take thanks for justice. I would rather dance At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped Their gingerbread for joy,—than shift the types For tolerable verse, intolerable To men who act and suffer. Better far, Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means, Than a sublime art frivolously.’ ‘You, Choose nobler work than either, O moist eyes, And hurrying lips, and heaving heart! We are young Aurora, you and I. The world. . look round. . The world, we’re come to late, is swollen hard With perished generations and their sins:

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Rh The civiliser’s spade grinds horribly On dead men’s bones, and cannot turn up soil That’s otherwise than fetid. All success Proves partial failure; all advance implies What’s left behind; all triumph, something crushed At the chariot-wheels; all government, some wrong: And rich men make the poor, who curse the rich, Who agonise together, rich and poor, Under and over, in the social spasm And crisis of the ages. Here’s an age, That makes its own vocation! here, we have stepped Across the bounds of time! here’s nought to see, But just the rich man and just Lazarus, And both in torments; with a mediate gulph, Though not a hint of Abraham’s bosom. Who, Being man and human, can stand calmly by And view these things, and never tease his soul For some great cure? No physic for this grief, In all the earth and heavens too?’ ‘You believe In God, for your part?—ay? That He who makes, Can make good things from ill things, best from worst, As men plant tulips upon dunghills when They wish them finest?’ ‘True. A death-heat is The same as life-heat, to be accurate; And in all nature is no death at all, As men account of death, as long as God Stands witnessing for life perpetually, By being just God. That’s abstract truth, I know,

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54 Philosophy, or sympathy with God: But I, I sympathise with man, not God, I think I was a man for chiefly this; And when I stand beside a dying bed, It’s death to me. Observe,—it had not much Consoled the race of mastodons to know Before they went to fossil, that anon Their place should quicken with the elephant They were not elephants but mastodons: And I, a man, as men are now, and not As men may be hereafter, feel with men In the agonising present.’ ‘Is it so,’ I said, ’my cousin? is the world so bad, While I hear nothing of it through the trees? The world was always evil,—but so bad?’

‘So bad, Aurora. Dear, my soul is grey With poring over the long sum of ill; So much for vice, so much for discontent, So much for the necessities of power, So much for the connivances of fear,— Coherent in statistical despairs With such a total of distracted life,. . To see it down in figures on a page, Plain, silent, clear. . as God sees through the earth The sense of all the graves! . . . that’s terrible For one who is not God, and cannot right The wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed But vow away my years, my means, my aims,

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Rh Among the helpers, if there’s any help In such a social strait? The common blood That swings along my veins, is strong enough To draw me to this duty.’ Then I spoke. ‘I have not stood long on the strand of life, And these salt waters have had scarcely time To creep so high up as to wet my feet. I cannot judge these tides—I shall, perhaps. A woman’s always younger than a man At equal years, because she is disallowed Maturing by the outdoor sun and air, And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk. Ah well, I know you men judge otherwise! You think a woman ripens as a peach,— In the cheeks, chiefly. Pass it to me now; I’m young in age, and younger still, I think, As a woman. But a child may say amen To a bishop’s prayer and see the way it goes; And I, incapable to loose the knot Of social questions, can approve, applaud August compassion, christian thoughts that shoot Beyond the vulgar white of personal aims. Accept my reverence.’ There he glowed on me With all his face and eyes. ‘No other help?’ Said he—‘no more than so?’ ‘What help?’ I asked. ‘You’d scorn my help,—as Nature’s self, you say, Has scorned to put her music in my mouth,

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56 Because a woman’s. Do you now turn round And ask for what a woman cannot give?’

‘For what she only can, I turn and ask,’ He answered, catching up my hands in his, And dropping on me from his high-eaved brow The full weight of his soul,—‘I ask for love, And that, she can; for life in fellowship Through bitter duties—that, I know she can; For wifehood. . will she?’ ‘Now,’ I said, ‘may God Be witness ’twixt us two!’ and with the word, Meseemed I floated into a sudden light Above his stature,—‘am I proved too weak To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think, Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought? Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can, Yet competent to love, like HIM?’ I paused: Perhaps I darkened, as the lighthouse will That turns upon the sea. ‘It’s always so! Anything does for a wife.’ ‘Aurora, dear, And dearly honoured’. . he pressed in at once With eager utterance,—‘you translate me ill. I do not contradict my thought of you Which is most reverent, with another thought Found less so. If your sex is weak for art, (And I who said so, did but honour you

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Rh By using truth in courtship) it is strong For life and duty. Place your fecund heart In mine, and let us blossom for the world That wants love’s colour in the grey of time. With all my talk I can but set you where You look down coldly on the arena-heaps Of headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct! The Judgment-Angel scarce would find his way Through such a heap of generalised distress, To the individual man with lips and eyes— Much less Aurora. Ah, my sweet, come down, And, hand in hand, we’ll go where yours shall touch These victims, one by one! till, one by one, The formless, nameless trunk of every man Shall seem to wear a head, with hair you know, And every woman catch your mother’s face To melt you into passion.’ ‘I am a girl,’ I answered slowly; ’you do well to name My mother’s face. Though far too early, alas, God’s hand did interpose ’twixt it and me, I know so much of love, as used to shine In that face and another. Just so much; No more indeed at all. I have not seen So much love since, I pray you pardon me, As answers even to make a marriage with, In this cold land of England. What you love, Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause: You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,— A wife to help your ends. . in her no end!

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58 Your cause is noble, your ends excellent, But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.’

‘Farewell, Aurora, you reject me thus?’ He said. ‘Why, sir, you are married long ago. You have a wife already whom you love, Your social theory. Bless you both, I say. For my part, I am scarcely meek enough To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse. Do I look a Hagar, think you?’ ‘So, you jest!’

‘Nay so, I speak in earnest,’ I replied. ‘You treat of marriage too much like, at least, A chief apostle; you would bear with you A wife. . a sister. . shall we speak it out? A sister of charity.’ ‘Then, must it be Indeed farewell? And was I so far wrong In hope and in illusion, when I took The woman to be nobler than the man, Yourself the noblest woman,—in the use And comprehension of what love is,—love, That generates the likeness of itself Through all heroic duties? so far wrong In saying bluntly, venturing truth on love, ‘Come, human creature, love and work with me,’— Instead of, ‘Lady, thou art wondrous fair,

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Rh ‘And, where the Graces walk before, the Muse ‘Will follow at the lighting of the eyes, ‘And where the Muse walks, lovers need to creep: ‘Turn round and love me, or I die of love.’’

With quiet indignation I broke in. ‘You misconceive the question like a man, Who sees a woman as the complement Of his sex merely. You forget too much That every creature, female as the male, Stands single in responsible act and thought, As also in birth and death. Whoever says To a loyal woman, ‘Love and work with me,’ Will get fair answers, if the work and love Being good themselves, are good for her—the best She was born for. Women of a softer mood, Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life, Will sometimes only hear the first word, love, And catch up with it any kind of work, Indifferent, so that dear love go with it: I do not blame such women, though, for love, They pick much oakum; earth’s fanatics make Too frequently heaven’s saints. But me, your work Is not the best for,—nor your love the best, Nor able to commend the kind of work For love’s sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir, To be over-bold in speaking of myself,— I, too, have my vocation,—work to do, The heavens and earth have set me, since I changed My father’s face for theirs,—and though your world

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60 Were twice as wretched as you represent, Most serious work, most necessary work, As any of the economists’. Reform, Make trade a Christian possibility, And individual right no general wrong; Wipe out earth’s furrows of the Thine and Mine, And leave one green, for men to play at bowls; With innings for them all! . . what then, indeed, If mortals were not greater by the head Than any of their prosperities? what then, Unless the artist keep up open roads Betwixt the seen and unseen,—bursting through The best of your conventions with his best The unspeakable, imaginable best God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond Both speech and imagination? A starved man Exceeds a fat beast: we’ll not barter, sir, The beautiful for barley.—And, even so, I hold you will not compass your poor ends Of barley-feeding and material ease, Without a poet’s individualism To work your universal. It takes a soul, To move a body: it takes a high-souled man, To move the masses. . even to a cleaner stye: It takes the ideal, to blow a hair’s breadth off The dust of the actual.—Ah, your Fouriers failed, Because not poets enough to understand That life develops from within.—For me, Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say, Of work like this! . . perhaps a woman’s soul

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Rh Aspires, and not creates! yet we aspire, And yet I’ll try out your perhapses, sir; And if I fail. . why, burn me up my straw Like other false works—I’ll not ask for grace, Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I Who love my art, would never wish it lower To suit my stature. I may love my art. You’ll grant that even a woman may love art, Seeing that to waste true love on anything, Is womanly, past question.’ I retain The very last word which I said, that day, As you the creaking of the door, years past, Which let upon you such disabling news You ever after have been graver. He, His eyes, the motions in his silent mouth, Were fiery points on which my words were caught, Transfixed for ever in my memory For his sake, not their own. And yet I know I did not love him. . nor he me. . that’s sure. . And what I said, is unrepented of, As truth is always. Yet. . a princely man!— If hard to me, heroic for himself! He bears down on me through the slanting years, The stronger for the distance. If he had loved, Ay, loved me, with that retributive face,. . I might have been a common woman now, And happier, less known and less left alone; Perhaps a better woman after all,— With chubby children hanging on my neck

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62 To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vines That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it. The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.

And I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright, Still worthy of having spoken out the truth, By being content I spoke it, though it set Him there, me here.—O woman’s vile remorse, To hanker after a mere name, a show, A supposition, a potential love! Does every man who names love in our lives, Become a power for that? is love’s true thing So much best to us, that what personates love Is next best? A potential love, forsooth! We are not so vile. No, no—he cleaves, I think, This man, this image,. . chiefly for the wrong And shock he gave my life, in finding me Precisely where the devil of my youth Had set me, on those mountain-peaks of hope All glittering with the dawn-dew, all erect And famished for the morning,—saying, while I looked for empire and much tribute, ‘Come, I have some worthy work for thee below. Come, sweep my barns, and keep my hospitals,— And I will pay thee with a current coin Which men give women.’ As we spoke, the grass Was trod in haste beside us, and my aunt, With smile distorted by the sun,—face, voice, As much at issue with the summer-day

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Rh As if you brought a candle out of doors,— Broke in with, ‘Romney, here!—My child, entreat Your cousin to the house, and have your talk, If girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come.’

He answered for me calmly, with pale lips That seemed to motion for a smile in vain. ‘The talk is ended, madam, where we stand. Your brother’s daughter has dismissed me here; And all my answer can be better said Beneath the trees, than wrong by such a word Your house’s hospitalities. Farewell.’

With that he vanished. I could hear his heel Ring bluntly in the lane, as down he leapt The short way, from us.—Then, a measured speech Withdrew me. ‘What means this, Aurora Leigh? My brother’s daughter has dismissed my guests?’

The lion in me felt the keeper’s voice, Through all its quivering dewlaps: I was quelled Before her,—meekened to the child she knew: I prayed her pardon, said, ‘I had little thought To give dismissal to a guest of hers, In letting go a friend of mine, who came To take me into service as a wife,— No more than that, indeed.’ ‘No more, no more? Pray heaven,’ she answered, ‘that I was not mad. I could not mean to tell her to her face

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64 That Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife, And I refused him?’ ‘Did he ask?’ I said; ‘I think he rather stooped to take me up For certain uses which he found to do For something called a wife. He never asked.’

‘What stuff!’ she answered; ‘are they queens, these girls? They must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks, Spread out upon the ground, before they’ll step One footstep for the noblest lover born.’

‘But I am born,’ I said with firmness, ‘I, To walk another way than his, dear aunt.’

‘You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months Will walk as well as you,’ she cried in haste, ‘Without a steadying finger. Why, you child, God help you, you are groping in the dark, For all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps, That you, sole offspring of an opulent man, Are rich and free to choose a way to walk? You think, and it’s a reasonable thought, That I besides, being well to do in life, Will leave my handful in my niece’s hand When death shall paralyse these fingers? Pray, Pray, child,—albeit I know you love me not,— As if you loved me, that I may not die! For when I die and leave you, out you go, (Unless I make room for you in my grave)

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Rh Unhoused, unfed, my dear, poor brother’s lamb, (Ah heaven,—that pains!)—without a right to crop A single blade of grass beneath these trees, Or cast a lamb’s small shadow on the lawn, Unfed, unfolded! Ah, my brother, here’s The fruit you planted in your foreign loves!— Ay, there’s the fruit he planted! never look Astonished at me with your mother’s eyes, For it was they, who set you where you are, An undowered orphan. Child, your father’s choice Of that said mother, disinherited His daughter, his and hers. Men do not think Of sons and daughters, when they fall in love, So much more than of sisters; otherwise, He would have paused to ponder what he did, And shrunk before that clause in the entail Excluding offspring by a foreign wife (The clause set up a hundred years ago By a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girl And had his heart danced over in return); But this man shrunk at nothing, never thought Of you, Aurora, any more than me— Your mother must have been a pretty thing, For all the coarse Italian blacks and browns, To make a good man, which my brother was, Unchary of the duties to his house; But so it fell indeed. Our cousin Vane, Vane Leigh, the father of this Romney, wrote Directly on your birth, to Italy, ‘I ask your baby daughter for my son

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66 In whom the entail now merges by the law. Betroth her to us out of love, instead Of colder reasons, and she shall not lose By love or law from henceforth’—so he wrote; A generous cousin, was my cousin Vane. Remember how he drew you to his knee The year you came here, just before he died, And hollowed out his hands to hold your cheeks, And wished them redder,—you remember Vane? And now his son who represents our house And holds the fiefs and manors in his place, To whom reverts my pittance when I die, (Except a few books and a pair of shawls) The boy is generous like him, and prepared To carry out his kindest word and thought To you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man Is Romney Leigh; although the sun of youth Has shone too straight upon his brain, I know, And fevered him with dreams of doing good To good-for-nothing people. But a wife Will put all right, and stroke his temples cool With healthy touches’. . I broke in at that. I could not lift my heavy heart to breathe Till then, but then I raised it, and it fell In broken words like these—‘No need to wait. The dream of doing good to. . me, at least, Is ended, without waiting for a wife To cool the fever for him. We’ve escaped That danger. . thank Heaven for it.’

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Rh ‘You,’ she cried, ‘Have got a fever. What, I talk and talk An hour long to you,—I instruct you how You cannot eat or drink or stand or sit Or even die, like any decent wretch In all this unroofed and unfurnished world, Without your cousin,—and you still maintain There’s room ’twixt him and you, for flirting fans And running knots in eyebrows! You must have A pattern lover sighing on his knee: You do not count enough a noble heart, Above book-patterns, which this very morn Unclosed itself, in two dear fathers’ names, To embrace your orphaned life! fie, fie! But stay I write a word, and counteract this sin.’

She would have turned to leave me, but I clung. ‘O sweet my father’s sister, hear my word Before you write yours. Cousin Vane did well, And Romney well,—and I well too, In casting back with all my strength and will The good they meant me. O my God, my God! God meant me good, too, when he hindered me From saying‘yes’ this morning. If you write A word, it shall be ‘no.’ I say no, no! I tie up ‘no’ upon His altar-horns Quite out of reach of perjury! At least My soul is not a pauper; I can live At least my soul’s life, without alms from men, And if it must be in heaven instead of earth,

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68 Let heaven look to it,—I am not afraid.’

She seized my hands with both hers, strained them fast And drew her probing and unscrupulous eyes Right through me, body and heart. ‘Yet, foolish Sweet, You love this man. I have watched you when he came, And when he went, and when we’ve talked of him: I am not old for nothing; I can tell The weather-signs of love—you love this man.’

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who’s sorry for a gnat. . or girl? I blushed. I feel the brand upon my forehead now Strike hot, sear deep, as guiltless men may feel The felon’s iron, say, and scorn the mark Of what they are not. Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps, another! After all, We cannot be the equal of the male, Who rules his blood a little. For although I blushed indeed, as if I loved the man, And her incisive smile, accrediting That treason of false witness in my blush,

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Rh Did bow me downward like a swathe of grass Below its level that struck me,—I attest The conscious skies and all their daily suns, I think I loved him not. . nor then, nor since. . Nor ever. Do we love the schoolmaster, Being busy in the woods? much less, being poor, The overseer of the parish? Do we keep Our love, to pay our debts with? White and cold I grew next moment. As my blood recoiled From that imputed ignominy, I made My heart great with it. Then, at last I spoke,— Spoke veritable words, but passionate, Too passionate perhaps. . ground up with sobs To shapeless endings. She let fall my hands, And took her smile off, in sedate disgust, As peradventure she had touched a snake,— A dead snake, mind!—and, turning round, replied ‘We’ll leave Italian manners, if you please. I think you had an English father, child, And ought to find it possible to speak A quiet ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ like English girls, Without convulsions. In another month We’ll take another answer. . no, or yes.’ With that she left me in the garden-walk.

I had a father! yes, but long ago— How long it seemed that moment. Oh, how far, How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints When once gone from us! We may call against

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70 The lighted windows of thy fair June-heaven Where all the souls are happy,—and not one, Not even my father, look from work or play To ask, ‘Who is it that cries after us, Below there, in the dusk?’ Yet formerly He turned his face upon me quick enough, If I said ‘father.’ Now I might cry loud; The little lark reached higher with his song Than I with crying. Oh, alone, alone,— Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth, I stood there in the garden, and looked up The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out On such June mornings. You who keep account Of crisis and transition in this life, Set down the first time Nature says plain ‘no’ To some ‘yes’ in you, and walks over you In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin By singing with the birds, and running fast With June-days, hand in hand: but once, for all, The birds must sing against us, and the sun Strike down upon us like a friend’s sword caught By an enemy to slay us, while we read The dear name on the blade which bites at us!— That’s bitter and convincing: after that We seldom doubt that something in the large Smooth order of creation, though no more Than haply a man’s footstep, has gone wrong.

Some tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled,

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Rh As those smile who have no face in the world To smile back to them. I had lost a friend In Romney Leigh; the thing was sure—a friend, Who had looked at me most gently now and then, And spoken of my favourite books. . ‘our books’. . With such a voice! Well, voice and look were now More utterly shut out from me, I felt, Than even my father’s. Romney now was turned To a benefactor, to a generous man, Who had tied himself to marry. . me, instead Of such a woman, with low timorous lids He lifted with a sudden word one day, And left, perhaps, for my sake.—Ah, self-tied By a contract,—male Iphigenia, bound At a fatal Aulis, for the winds to change, (But loose him—they’ll not change;) he well might seem A little cold and dominant in love! He had a right to be dogmatical, This poor, good Romney. Love, to him, was made A simple law-clause. If I married him, I would not dare to call my soul my own, Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought And every heart-beat down there in the bill,— Not one found honestly deductible From any use that pleased him! He might cut My body into coins to give away Among his other paupers; change my sons, While I stood dumb as Griseld, for black babes Or piteous foundlings; might unquestioned set My right hand teaching in the Ragged Schools,

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72 My left hand washing in the Public Baths, What time my angel of the Ideal stretched Both his to me in vain! I could not claim The poor right of a mouse in a trap, to squeal, And take so much as pity, from myself.

Farewell, good Romney! if I loved you even, I could but ill afford to let you be So generous to me. Farewell, friend, since friend Betwixt us two, forsooth, must be a word So heavily overladen. And, since help Must come to me from those who love me not, Farewell, all helpers—I must help myself, And am alone from henceforth.—Then I stooped, And lifted the soiled garland from the ground, And set it on my head as bitterly As when the Spanish king did crown the bones Of his dead love. So be it. I preserve That crown still,—in the drawer there! ’twas the first; The rest are like it;—those Olympian crowns, We run for, till we lose sight of the sun In the dust of the racing chariots! After that, Before the evening fell, I had a note Which ran,—‘Aurora, sweet Chaldean, you read My meaning backward like your eastern books, While I am from the west, dear. Read me now A little plainer. Did you hate me quite But yesterday? I loved you for my part; I love you. If I spoke untenderly

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Rh This morning, my beloved, pardon it; And comprehend me that I loved you so, I set you on the level of my soul, And overwashed you with the bitter brine Of some habitual thoughts. Henceforth, my flower, Be planted out of reach of any such, And lean the side you please, with all your leaves! Write woman’s verses and dream woman’s dreams; But let me feel your perfume in my home, To make my sabbath after working-days; Bloom out your youth beside me,—be my wife.’

I wrote in answer—‘We, Chaldeans, discern Still farther than we read. I know your heart And shut it like the holy book it is, Reserved for mild-eyed saints to pore upon Betwixt their prayers at vespers. Well, you’re right, I did not surely hate you yesterday; And yet I do not love you enough to-day To wed you, cousin Romney. Take this word, And let it stop you as a generous man From speaking farther. You may tease, indeed, And blow about my feelings, or my leaves,— And here’s my aunt will help you with east winds, And break a stalk, perhaps, tormenting me; But certain flowers grow near as deep as trees, And, cousin, you’ll not move my root, not you, With all your confluent storms. Then let me grow Within my wayside hedge, and pass your way! This flower has never as much to say to you

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74 As the antique tomb which said to travellers, ‘Pause,’ ‘Siste, viator.’’ Ending thus, I signed.

The next week passed in silence, so the next, And several after: Romney did not come, Nor my aunt chide me. I lived on and on, As if my heart were kept beneath a glass, And everybody stood, all eyes and ears, To see and hear it tick. I could not sit, Nor walk, nor take a book, nor lay it down, Nor sew on steadily, nor drop a stitch And a sigh with it, but I felt her looks Still cleaving to me, like the sucking asp To Cleopatra’s breast, persistently Through the intermittent pantings. Being observed, When observation is not sympathy, Is just being tortured. If she said a word, A ‘thank you,’ or an ‘if it please you, dear,’ She meant a commination, or, at best, An exorcism against the devildom Which plainly held me. So with all the house. Susannah could not stand and twist my hair, Without such glancing at the looking-glass To see my face there, that she missed the plait: And John,—I never sent my plate for soup, Or did not send it, but the foolish John Resolved the problem, ’twixt his napkined thumbs, Of what was signified by taking soup Or choosing mackerel. Neighbours, who dropped in On morning visits, feeling a joint wrong,

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Rh Smiled admonition, sate uneasily, And talked with measured, emphasised reserve, Of parish news, like doctors to the sick, When not called in,—as if, with leave to speak, They might say something. Nay, the very dog Would watch me from his sun-patch on the floor, In alternation with the large black fly Not yet in reach of snapping. So I lived.

A Roman died so; smeared with honey, teased By insects, stared to torture by the noon: And many patient souls ’neath English roofs Have died like Romans. I, in looking back, Wish only, now, I had borne the plague of all With meeker spirits than were rife in Rome.

For, on the sixth week, the dead sea broke up, Dashed suddenly through beneath the heel of Him Who stands upon the sea and earth, and swears Time shall be nevermore. The clock struck nine That morning, too,—no lark was out of tune; The hidden farms among the hills, breathed straight Their smoke toward heaven; the lime-trees scarcely stirred Beneath the blue weight of the cloudless sky, Though still the July air came floating through The woodbine at my window, in and out, With touches of the out-door country-news For a bending forehead. There I sate, and wished That morning-truce of God would last till eve, Or longer. ‘Sleep,’ I thought, ‘late sleepers,—sleep,

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76 And spare me yet, the burden of your eyes.’

Then, suddenly, a single ghastly shriek Tore upwards from the bottom of the house. Like one who wakens in a grave and shrieks, The still house seemed to shriek itself alive, And shudder through its passages and stairs With slam of doors and clash of bells.—I sprang, I stood up in the middle of the room, And there confronted at my chamber-door, A white face,—shivering, ineffectual lips.

‘Come, come,’ they tried to utter, and I went; As if a ghost had drawn me at the point Of a fiery finger through the uneven dark, I went with reeling footsteps down the stair. Nor asked a question.

There she sate, my aunt,— Bolt upright in the chair beside her bed, Whose pillow had no dint! she had used no bed For that night’s sleeping. . yet slept well. My God, The dumb derision of that grey, peaked face Concluded something grave against the sun, Which filled the chamber with its July burst When Susan drew the curtains, ignorant Of who sate open-eyed behind her. There, She sate. . it sate. . we said ‘she’ yesterday. . And held a letter with unbroken seal, As Susan gave it to her hand last night: All night she had held it. If its news referred

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