The Fourth Edition of
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING’S POEMS.
With numerous Additions. Three Vols. Foolscap 8vo.
MEN AND WOMEN.
BY ROBERT BROWNING.
Two Vols. Foolscap 8vo. 12s.
A New Edition of
ROBERT BROWNING’S POEMS.
Two Vols. Foolscap 8vo. 16s.
ALSO,
CHRISTMAS-EVE
AND
EASTER-DAY.
A POEM.
Foolscap 8vo. 6s.
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
AURORA LEIGH.
BY
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1857.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
DEDICATION TO
JOHN KENYON, ESQ.
The 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, Devonshire Place,
October 17, 1856.
[1]
AURORA LEIGH.
FIRST BOOK.
Of writing many books there is no end;And I who have written much in prose and verseFor others’ uses, will write now for mine,—Will write my story for my better self,As when you paint your portrait for a friend,Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at itLong after he has ceased to love you, justTo hold together what he was and is.
I, writing thus, am still what men call young;I have not so far left the coasts of lifeTo travel inland, that I cannot hearThat murmur of the outer InfiniteWhich unweaned babies smile at in their sleepWhen wondered at for smiling; not so far,But still I catch my mother at her postBeside the nursery-door, with finger up,‘Hush, hush—here’s too much noise!’ while her sweet eyesLeap forward, taking part against her word[2]In the child’s riot. Still I sit and feelMy father’s slow hand, when she had left us both,Stroke out my childish curls across his knee;And hear Assunta’s daily jest (she knewHe liked it better than a better jest)Inquire how many golden scudi wentTo make such ringlets. O my father’s hand,Stroke the poor hair down, stroke it heavily,—Draw, press the child’s head closer to thy knee!I’m still too young, too young, to sit alone.
I write. My mother was a Florentine,Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing meWhen scarcely I was four years old; my life,A poor spark snatched up from a failing lampWhich went out therefore. She was weak and frail;She could not bear the joy of giving life—The mother’s rapture slew her. If her kissHad left a longer weight upon my lips,It might have steadied the uneasy breath,And reconciled and fraternised my soulWith the new order. As it was, indeed,I felt a mother-want about the world,And still went seeking, like a bleating lambLeft out at night, in shutting up the fold,—As restless as a nest-deserted birdGrown chill through something being away, though whatIt knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was bornTo make my father sadder, and myselfNot overjoyous, truly. Women know[3]The way to rear up children, (to be just,)They know a simple, merry, tender knackOf tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,And stringing pretty words that make no sense,And kissing full sense into empty words;Which things are corals to cut life upon,Although such trifles: children learn by such,Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play,And get not over-early solemnised,—But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love’s Divine,Which burns and hurts not,—not a single bloom,—Become aware and unafraid of Love.Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well—Mine did, I know,—but still with heavier brains,And wills more consciously responsible,And not as wisely, since less foolishly;So mothers have God’s licence to be missed.
My father was an austere Englishman,Who, after a dry life-time spent at homeIn college-learning, law, and parish talk,Was flooded with a passion unaware,His whole provisioned and complacent pastDrowned out from him that moment. As he stoodIn Florence, where he had come to spend a monthAnd note the secret of Da Vinci’s drains,He musing somewhat absently perhapsSome English question ... whether men should payThe unpopular but necessary taxWith left or right hand—in the alien sun[4]In that great square of the Santissima,There drifted past him (scarcely marked enoughTo move his comfortable island-scorn,)A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm,—The white-veiled rose-crowned maidens holding upTall tapers, weighty for such wrists, aslantTo the blue luminous tremor of the air,And letting drop the white wax as they wentTo eat the bishop’s wafer at the church;From which long trail of chanting priests and girls,A face flashed like a cymbal on his face,And shook with silent clangour brain and heart,Transfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus,He too received his sacramental giftWith eucharistic meanings; for he loved.
And thus beloved, she died. I’ve heard it saidThat but to see him in the first surpriseOf widower and father, nursing me,Unmothered little child of four years old,His large man’s hands afraid to touch my curls,As if the gold would tarnish,—his grave lipsContriving such a miserable smile,As if he knew needs must, or I should die,And yet ’twas hard,—would almost make the stonesCry out for pity. There’s a verse he setIn Santa Croce to her memory,‘Weep for an infant too young to weep muchWhen death removed this mother’—stops the mirthTo-day, on women’s faces when they walk[5]With rosy children hanging on their gowns,Under the cloister, to escape the sunThat scorches in the piazza. After which,He left our Florence, and made haste to hideHimself, his prattling child, and silent grief,Among the mountains above Pelago;Because unmothered babes, he thought, had needOf mother nature more than others use,And Pan’s white goats, with udders warm and fullOf mystic contemplations, come to feedPoor milkless lips of orphans like his own—Such scholar-scraps he talked, I’ve heard from friends,For even prosaic men, who wear grief long,Will get to wear it as a hat asideWith a flower stuck in’t. Father, then, and child,We lived among the mountains many years,God’s silence on the outside of the house,And we, who did not speak too loud, within;And old Assunta to make up the fire,Crossing herself whene’er a sudden flameWhich lightened from the firewood, made aliveThat picture of my mother on the wall.The painter drew it after she was dead;And when the face was finished, throat and hands,Her cameriera carried him, in hateOf the English-fashioned shroud, the last brocadeShe dressed in at the Pitti. ‘He should paintNo sadder thing than that,’ she swore, ‘to wrongHer poor signora.’ Therefore very strangeThe effect was. I, a little child, would crouch[6]For hours upon the floor, with knees drawn up,And gaze across them, half in terror, halfIn adoration, at the picture there,—That swan-like supernatural white life,Just sailing upward from the red stiff silkWhich seemed to have no part in it, nor powerTo keep it from quite breaking out of bounds:For hours I sate and stared. Assunta’s aweAnd my poor father’s melancholy eyesStill pointed that way. That way, went my thoughtsWhen wandering beyond sight. And as I grewIn years, I mixed, confused, unconsciously,Whatever I last read or heard or dreamed,Abhorrent, admirable, beautiful,Pathetical, or ghastly, or grotesque,With still that face ... which did not therefore change,But kept the mystic level of all formsAnd fears and admirations; was by turnsGhost, fiend, and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite,—A dauntless Muse who eyes a dreadful Fate,A loving Psyche who loses sight of Love,A still Medusa, with mild milky browsAll curdled and all clothed upon with snakesWhose slime falls fast as sweat will; or, anon,Our Lady of the Passion, stabbed with swordsWhere the Babe sucked; or, Lamia in her firstMoonlighted pallor, ere she shrunk and blinked,And, shuddering, wriggled down to the unclean;Or, my own mother, leaving her last smileIn her last kiss, upon the baby-mouth[7]My father pushed down on the bed for that,—Or my dead mother, without smile or kiss,Buried at Florence. All which images,Concentred on the picture, glassed themselvesBefore my meditative childhood, ... asThe incoherencies of change and deathAre represented fully, mixed and merged,In the smooth fair mystery of perpetual Life.
And while I stared away my childish witsUpon my mother’s picture, (ah, poor child!)My father, who through love had suddenlyThrown off the old conventions, broken looseFrom chin-bands of the soul, like Lazarus,Yet had no time to learn to talk and walkOr grow anew familiar with the sun,—Who had reached to freedom, not to action, lived,But lived as one entranced, with thoughts, not aims,—Whom love had unmade from a common manBut not completed to an uncommon man,—My father taught me what he had learnt the bestBefore he died and left me,—grief and love.And, seeing we had books among the hills,Strong words of counselling souls, confederateWith vocal pines and waters,—out of booksHe taught me all the ignorance of men,And how God laughs in heaven when any manSays ‘Here I’m learned; this, I understand;In that, I am never caught at fault or doubt.’He sent the schools to school, demonstrating[8]A fool will pass for such through one mistake,While a philosopher will pass for such,Through said mistakes being ventured in the grossAnd heaped up to a system. I am like, They tell me, my dear father. Broader browsHowbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowthOf 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 GodAmong his mountains. I was just thirteen,Still growing like the plants from unseen rootsIn tongue-tied Springs,—and suddenly awokeTo full life and its needs and agonies,With an intense, strong, struggling heart besideA 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 nextI recollect as, after fevers, menThread 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[9]With flame, that it should eat and end itselfLike some tormented scorpion. Then, at last,I do remember clearly, how there cameA stranger with authority, not right,(I thought not) who commanded, caught me upFrom old Assunta’s neck; how, with a shriek,She let me go,—while I, with ears too fullOf my father’s silence, to shriek back a word,In all a child’s astonishment at griefStared 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 skirtsWhich suppliants catch at. Then the bitter seaInexorably pushed between us both,And sweeping up the ship with my despairThrew us out as a pasture to the stars.
Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep;Ten nights and days, without the common faceOf any day or night; the moon and sunCut off from the green reconciling earth,To starve into a blind ferocityAnd glare unnatural; the very sky(Dropping its bell-net down upon the seaAs if no human heart should scape alive,)Bedraggled with the desolating salt,Until it seemed no more that holy heavenTo which my father went. All new, and strange—[10]The universe turned stranger, for a child.
Then, land!—then, England! oh, the frosty cliffsLooked cold upon me. Could I find a homeAmong those mean red houses through the fog?And when I heard my father’s language firstFrom 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 madThrough much sea-sickness. The train swept us on.Was this my father’s England? the great isle?The ground seemed cut up from the fellowshipOf 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 offFrom God’s celestial crystals; all things, blurredAnd dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his matesAbsorb the light here?—not a hill or stoneWith heart to strike a radiant colour upOr active outline on the indifferent air!
I think I see my father’s sister standUpon the hall-step of her country-houseTo give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tightAs if for taming accidental thoughtsFrom possible pulses; brown hair pricked with greyBy frigid use of life, (she was not old,Although my father’s elder by a year)[11]A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines;A close mild mouth, a little soured aboutThe ends, through speaking unrequited loves,Or peradventure niggardly half-truths;Eyes of no colour,—once they might have smiled,But never, never have forgot themselvesIn smiling; cheeks, in which was yet a roseOf 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 sometimesFrom the empyreal, to assure their soulsAgainst 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 giftsOf knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,Because we are of one flesh after allAnd need one flannel, (with a proper senseOf difference in the quality)—and stillThe book-club, guarded from your modern trickOf shaking dangerous questions from the crease,Preserved her intellectual. She had livedA sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,Accounting that to leap from perch to perch[12]Was act and joy enough for any bird.Dear heaven, how silly are the things that liveIn 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 woolTo draw the new light closer, catch and clingLess blindly. In my ears, my father’s wordHummed 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, intoThe room she sate in. There, with some strange spasm Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my handsImperiously, and held me at arm’s length,And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyesSearched through my face,—ay, stabbed it through and through,Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to findA wicked murderer in my innocent face,If not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath,She struggled for her ordinary calm,[13]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 tooAs 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 awayA wise man from wise courses, a good manFrom 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 yearsWhat sort of woman could be suitableTo her sort of hate, to entertain it with;And so, her very curiosityBecame hate too, and all the idealismShe ever used in life, was used for hate,Till hate, so nourished, did exceed at lastThe love from which it grew, in strength and heat,And wrinkled her smooth conscience with a senseOf disputable virtue (say not, sin)When Christian doctrine was enforced at church.
And thus my father’s sister was to meMy mother’s hater. From that day, she did[14]Her duty to me, (I appreciate itIn 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 stillThe first place,—as if fearful that God’s saintsWould look down suddenly and say, ‘HereinYou missed a point, I think, through lack of love.’Alas, a mother never is afraidOf speaking angerly 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 graveThan in all England. Since that threw me offWho fain would cleave, (his latest will, they say,Consigned me to his land) I only thoughtOf lying quiet there where I was thrownLike sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer herTo prick me to a pattern with her pin,Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf,And dry out from my drowned anatomyThe last sea-salt left in me. So it was. I broke the copious curls upon my headIn braids, because she liked smooth-ordered hair.I left off saying my sweet Tuscan wordsWhich still at any stirring of the heart[15]Came up to float across the English phrase,As lilies, (Bene ... or che ch’è) becauseShe 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 ofInhuman 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 rangeOf liberal education,—tongues, not books.I learnt a little algebra, a littleOf the mathematics,—brushed with extreme flounceThe circle of the sciences, becauseShe misliked women who are frivolous.I learnt the royal genealogiesOf Oviedo, the internal lawsOf the Burmese empire, ... by how many feetMount Chimborazo outsoars Himmeleh,What navigable river joins itselfTo Lara, and what census of the year fiveWas taken at Klagenfurt,—because she likedA general insight into useful facts.I learnt much music,—such as would have beenAs quite impossible in Johnson’s dayAs still it might be wished—fine sleights of handAnd unimagined fingering, shuffling off[16]The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notesTo a noisy Tophet; and I drew ... costumesFrom French engravings, nereids neatly draped,With smirks of simmering godship,—I washed inFrom 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 womanhoodTo prove, if women do not think at all,They may teach thinking, (to a maiden-auntOr else the author)—books demonstratingTheir right of comprehending husband’s talkWhen not too deep, and even of answeringWith 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 fireAnd never say ‘no’ when the world says ‘ay,’For that is fatal,—their angelic reachOf virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn,And fatten household sinners,—their, in brief,Potential faculty in everythingOf abdicating power in it: she ownedShe 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 lastI learnt cross-stitch, because she did not likeTo see me wear the night with empty hands,[17]A-doing nothing. So, my shepherdessWas something after all, (the pastoral saintsBe praised for’t) leaning lovelorn with pink eyesTo match her shoes, when I mistook the silks;Her head uncrushed by that round weight of hatSo strangely similar to the tortoise-shellWhich 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 stoolTo stumble over and vex you ... ‘curse that stool!’Or else at best, a cushion, where you leanAnd 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 paidThe worth of our work, perhaps. In looking down Those years of education, (to return)I wonder if Brinvilliers suffered moreIn the water-torture, ... flood succeeding floodTo drench the incapable throat and split the veins ...Than I did. Certain of your feebler soulsGo out in such a process; many pineTo a sick, inodorous light; my own endured:I had relations in the Unseen, and drewThe elemental nutriment and heatFrom nature, as earth feels the sun at nights,Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark.[18]I kept the life, thrust on me, on the outsideOf the inner life, with all its ample roomFor 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,—didThe thing she bade me, without heed to a thingBeyond it, sate in just the chair she placed,With back against the window, to excludeThe sight of the great lime-tree on the lawn,Which seemed to have come on purpose from the woodsTo bring the house a message,—ay, and walkedDemurely 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 yetThan when we came the last time; she will die.’
‘Will die.’ My cousin, Romney Leigh, blushed too,With sudden anger, and approaching meSaid low between his teeth—‘You’re wicked now?You wish to die and leave the world a-duskFor others, with your naughty light blown out?’[19]I looked into his face defyingly.He might have known, that, being what I was,’Twas natural to like to get awayAs far as dead folk can; and then indeedSome people make no trouble when they die.He turned and went abruptly, slammed the doorAnd 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 shyAnd 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 youthRepressing all its seasonable delights,And agonising with a ghastly senseOf universal hideous want and wrongTo incriminate possession. When he cameFrom college to the country, very oftHe crossed the hills on visits to my aunt,With gifts of blue grapes from the hothouses,A book in one hand,—mere statistics, (ifI chanced to lift the cover) count of allThe goats whose beards are sprouting down toward hell,Against God’s separating judgment-hour.And she, she almost loved him,—even allowedThat sometimes he should seem to sigh my way;It made him easier to be pitiful,And sighing was his gift. So, undisturbed[20]At whiles she let him shut my music upAnd push my needles down, and lead me outTo see in that south angle of the houseThe figs grow black as if by a Tuscan rock,On some light pretext. She would turn her headAt 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 headBent 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 differencesToo intimately. Always Romney LeighWas 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 moreBy something in me, surely not my will,[21]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 painOf blank obstruction, and a roar i’ the earsOf visionary chariots which retreatAs 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 birdMight choose to build in, though the nest itselfCould show but dead-brown sticks and straws; the wallsWere green, the carpet was pure green, the straightSmall bed was curtained greenly, and the foldsHung green about the window, which let inThe out-door world with all its greenery.You could not push your head out and escapeA dash of dawn-dew from the honeysuckle,But so you were baptised into the graceAnd privilege of seeing.... First, the lime, (I had enough, there, of the lime, be sure,—My morning-dream was often hummed awayBy the bees in it;) past the lime, the lawn,Which, after sweeping broadly round the house,Went trickling through the shrubberies in a streamOf tender turf, and wore and lost itselfAmong the acacias, over which, you sawThe irregular line of elms by the deep lane[22]Which stopped the grounds and dammed the overflowOf arbutus and laurel. Out of sightThe lane was; sunk so deep, no foreign trampNor drover of wild ponies out of WalesCould guess if lady’s hall or tenant’s lodgeDispensed such odours,—though his stick well-crookedMight reach the lowest trail of blossoming briarWhich dipped upon the wall. Behind the elms,And through their tops, you saw the folded hillsStriped up and down with hedges, (burly oaksProjecting from the lines to show themselves)Through which my cousin Romney’s chimneys smokedAs still as when a silent mouth in frostBreathes—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, otherwiseThe vigorous sun would catch it up at eveAnd use it for an anvil till he had filledThe shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts,And proved he need not rest so early:—then,When all his setting trouble was resolvedTo a trance of passive glory, you might seeIn apparition on the golden sky(Alas, my Giotto’s background!) the sheep runAlong the fine clear outline, small as miceThat run along a witch’s scarlet thread.
Not a grand nature. Not my chestnut-woods[23]Of Vallombrosa, cleaving by the spursTo the precipices. Not my headlong leapsOf waters, that cry out for joy or fearIn leaping through the palpitating pines,Like a white soul tossed out to eternityWith thrills of time upon it. Not indeedMy multitudinous mountains, sitting inThe magic circle, with the mutual touchElectric, panting from their full deep heartsBeneath the influent heavens, and waiting forCommunion and commission. ItalyIs one thing, England one. On English ground You understand the letter ... ere the fall,How Adam lived in a garden. All the fieldsAre 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 wildernessYou find, at best, a park. A nature tamedAnd 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 ofYour eggs to-morrow at breakfast, in the pauseOf finer meditation. Rather say, A sweet familiar nature, stealing inAs a dog might, or child, to touch your handOr pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so[24]Of presence and affection, excellentFor inner uses, from the things without.
I could not be unthankful, I who wasEntreated thus and holpen. In the roomI speak of, ere the house was well awake,And also after it was well asleep,I sate alone, and drew the blessing inOf all that nature. With a gradual step,A stir among the leaves, a breath, a ray,It came in softly, while the angels madeA place for it beside me. The moon came,And swept my chamber clean of foolish thoughts.The sun came, saying, ‘Shall I lift this lightAgainst the lime-tree, and you will not look?I make the birds sing—listen!... but, for you,God never hears your voice, excepting whenYou lie upon the bed at nights and weep.’
Then, something moved me. Then, I wakened upMore slowly than I verily write now,But wholly, at last, I wakened, opened wideThe window and my soul, and let the airsAnd 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 causeFor rupture;—herein we must break with Life,Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged,Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!’[25]—And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyesAnd think all ended.—Then, Life calls to usIn 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 ashamedTo 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. SoonI used to get up early, just to sitAnd watch the morning quicken in the grey,And hear the silence open like a flower,Leaf after leaf,—and stroke with listless handThe woodbine through the window, till at lastI came to do it with a sort of love,At foolish unaware: whereat I smiled,—A melancholy smile, to catch myselfSmiling for joy. Capacity for joy Admits temptation. It seemed, next, worth whileTo dodge the sharp sword set against my life;To slip down stairs through all the sleepy house,As mute as any dream there, and escapeAs 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 sate on in my chamber green,[26]And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayedMy prayers without the vicar; read my books,Without considering whether they were fitTo do me good. Mark, there. We get no goodBy being ungenerous, even to a book,And calculating profits ... so much helpBy so much reading. It is rather whenWe gloriously forget ourselves, and plungeSoul-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 beforeFrom many a volume, Love re-emphasisedUpon the self-same pages: TheophrastGrew tender with the memory of his eyes,And Ælian made mine wet. The trick of GreekAnd Latin, he had taught me, as he wouldHave taught me wrestling or the game of fivesIf such he had known,—most like a shipwrecked manWho heaps his single platter with goats’ cheeseAnd scarlet berries; or like any manWho loves but one, and so gives all at once,Because he has it, rather than becauseHe counts it worthy. Thus, my father gave;And thus, as did the women formerlyBy young Achilles, when they pinned the veilAcross the boy’s audacious front, and sweptWith tuneful laughs the silver-fretted rocks,He wrapt his little daughter in his large[27]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 footHad trod me out, which suddenly broke off,(What time he dropped the wallet of the fleshAnd passed) alone I carried on, and setMy 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 forthAlone, unconscious of the perilous road,The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes,To thrust his own way, he an alien, throughThe 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 restToo long beside a fountain. Yet, behold,Behold!—the world of books is still the world;And worldlings in it are less mercifulAnd more puissant. For the wicked thereAre winged like angels. Every knife that strikes,Is edged from elemental fire to assailA spiritual life. The beautiful seems rightBy force of beauty, and the feeble wrongBecause of weakness. Power is justified,[28]Though armed against St. Michael. Many a crownCovers 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 asideFrom their calm locks, and undiscomfitedLook stedfast truths against Time’s changing mask.True, many a prophet teaches in the roads;True, many a seer pulls down the flaming heavensUpon 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 onceThe sound of the trumpets, when the trumpets blowFor Alaric as well as Charlemagne?Who judges prophets, and can tell true seersFrom conjurors? The child, there? Would you leaveThat child to wander in a battle-fieldAnd push his innocent smile against the guns?Or even in the catacombs, ... his torchGrown ragged in the fluttering air, and allThe dark a-mutter round him? not a child!
I read books bad and good—some bad and goodAt once: good aims not always make good books:Well-tempered spades turn up ill-smelling soilsIn digging vineyards, even: books, that proveGod’s being so definitely, that man’s doubtGrows self-defined the other side the line,[29]Made atheist by suggestion; moral books,Exasperating to license; genial books,Discounting from the human dignity;And merry books, which set you weeping whenThe sun shines,—ay, and melancholy books,Which make you laugh that any one should weepIn 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 throughThe 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 dashedFrom error on to error, every turnStill brought me nearer to the central truth.
I thought so. All this anguish in the thickOf men’s opinions ... press and counterpress,Now up, now down, now underfoot, and nowEmergent ... all the best of it, perhaps,But throws you back upon a noble trustAnd use of your own instinct,—merely provesPure reason stronger than bare inferenceAt strongest. Try it,—fix against heaven’s wallYour scaling ladders of high logic—mountStep by step!—Sight goes faster; that still rayWhich strikes out from you, how, you cannot tell,And why, you know not—(did you eliminate,[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 manIs born in ignorance of his element,And feels out blind at first, disorganisedBy sin i’ the blood,—his spirit-insight dulledAnd crossed by his sensations. PresentlyWe feel it quicken in the dark sometimes;Then, mark, be reverent, be obedient,—For those dumb motions of imperfect lifeAre oracles of vital DeityAttesting the Hereafter. Let who says‘The soul’s a clean white paper,’ rather say,A palimpsest, a prophet’s holographDefiled, erased and covered by a monk’s,—The apocalypse, by a Longus! poring onWhich obscene text, we may discern perhapsSome fair, fine trace of what was written once,Some upstroke of an alpha and omegaExpressing the old scripture. Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-roomPiled high with cases in my father’s name;Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and outAmong the giant fossils of my past,Like some small nimble mouse between the ribsOf a mastodon, I nibbled here and thereAt this or that box, pulling through the gap,In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,[31]The first book first. And how I felt it beatUnder 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 firesHave reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flatThe marts and temples, the triumphal gatesAnd towers of observation, clears herselfTo elemental freedom—thus, my soul,At poetry’s divine first finger-touch,Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,Convicted of the great eternitiesBefore 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 byHis 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,[32]Erect, sublime,—the measure of a man,And that’s the measure of an angel, saysThe apostle. Ay, and while your common menBuild pyramids, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine,And dust the flaunty carpets of the worldFor kings to walk on, or our senators,The poet suddenly will catch them upWith 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 feetConclude my visit to your holy hillIn personal presence, or but testifyThe rustling of your vesture through my dreamsWith influent odours? When my joy and pain,My thought and aspiration, like the stopsOf pipe or flute, are absolutely dumbIf not melodious, do you play on me,My pipers,—and if, sooth, you did not blow,Would no 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 doubtFor cloudy seasons![33] But the sun was high When first I felt my pulses set themselvesFor concords; when the rhythmic turbulenceOf blood and brain swept outward upon words,As wind upon the alders, blanching themBy turning up their under-natures tillThey trembled in dilation. O delightAnd triumph of the poet,—who would sayA 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 throughWith a special revelation, shakes the heartOf all the men and women in the world,As if one came back from the dead and spoke,With eyes too happy, a familiar thingBecome divine i’ the utterance! while for himThe poet, the speaker, he expands with joy;The palpitating angel in his fleshThrills inly with consenting fellowshipTo those innumerous spirits who sun themselvesOutside of time. O life, O poetry, —Which means life in life! cognisant of lifeBeyond this blood-beat,—passionate for truthBeyond these senses,—poetry, my life,—My eagle, with both grappling feet still hotFrom Zeus’s thunder, who has ravished meAway from all the shepherds, sheep, and dogs,And set me in the Olympian roar and roundOf luminous faces, for a cup-bearer,[34]To keep the mouths of all the godheads moistFor 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 footAnd swoon back to the earth,—and find ourselvesFace-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 downsHave poets.Am I such indeed? The nameIs royal, and to sign it like a queen,Is what I dare not,—though some royal bloodWould seem to tingle in me now and then,With sense of power and ache,—with imposthumesAnd manias usual to the race. HowbeitI 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 steelIf steel had offered, in a restless heatOf doing something. Many tender soulsHave 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[35]And live for use. Alas, near all the birdsWill sing at dawn,—and yet we do not takeThe chaffering swallow for the holy lark.
In those days, though, I never analysedMyself even. All analysis comes late.You catch a sight of Nature, earliest,In full front sun-face, and your eyelids winkAnd drop before the wonder of’t; you missThe 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 floodAbolished 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 withoutAre 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 flushOf individual life, I poured myselfAlong the veins of others, and achievedMere 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,[36]As if still ignorant of counterpoint;We call the Muse.... ‘O Muse, benignant Muse!’—As if we had seen her purple-braided headWith the eyes in it, start between the boughsAs 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 cowsWould scare the writer if they splashed the mudIn lashing off the flies,—didactics, drivenAgainst the heels of what the master said;And counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumpsA babe might blow between two straining cheeksOf 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, writOn happy mornings, with a morning heart,That leaps for love, is active for resolve,Weak for art only. Oft, the ancient formsWill 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 steppedIn gradual progress like another man,But, turning grandly on his central self,Ensphered himself in twenty perfect yearsAnd died, not young,—(the life of a long life,[37]Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tearUpon the world’s cold cheek to make it burnFor 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 enoughIn trance, to attain to clairvoyance,—and stillThe 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 sinceWith 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 caughtMy soul agaze in my eyes. She could not sayI had no business with a sort of soul,But plainly she objected,—and demurred,That souls were dangerous things to carry straight[38]Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.
She said sometimes, ‘Aurora, have you doneYour 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 enoughTo flatten and bake you to a wholesome crustFor household uses and proprieties,Before the rain has got into my barnAnd set the grains a-sprouting. What, you’re greenWith 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 teasedThe patient needle till it spilt the thread,Which oozed off from it in meandering laceFrom hour to hour. I was not, therefore, sad;My soul was singing at a work apartBehind the wall of sense, as safe from harmAs 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 thinPined body, struck a colour up the cheeks,[39]Though somewhat faint. I clenched my brows acrossMy 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 otherwiseThrough secret windings of the afternoons,I threw my hunters off and plunged myselfAmong the deep hills, as a hunted stagWill take the waters, shivering with the fearAnd passion of the course. And when, at lastEscaped,—so many a green slope built on slopeBetwixt me and the enemy’s house behind,I dared to rest, or wander,—like a restMade sweeter for the step upon the grass,—And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement,(As if God’s finger touched but did not pressIn making England!) such an up and downOf verdure,—nothing too much up or down,A ripple of land; such little hills, the skyCan 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 tellWhite daisies from white dew,—at intervalsThe mythic oaks and elm-trees standing outSelf-poised upon their prodigy of shade,—I thought my father’s land was worthy too[40]Of being my Shakspeare’s. Very oft alone, Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leaveTo walk the third with Romney and his friendThe rising painter, Vincent Carrington,Whom men judge hardly, as bee-bonnetted,Because he holds that, paint a body well,You paint a soul by implication, likeThe grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for ifHe said ... ‘When I was last in Italy’ ...It sounded as an instrument that’s playedToo far off for the tune—and yet it’s fineTo listen. Ofter 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, overfullOf what is, and I, haply, overboldFor 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 worldWent ill, as he related, certainlyThe thrushes still sang in it.—At which wordHis brow would soften,—and he bore with meIn melancholy patience, not unkind,While, breaking into voluble ecstacy,[41]I flattered all the beauteous country round,As poets use ... the skies, the clouds, the fields,The happy violets hiding from the roadsThe primroses run down to, carrying gold,—The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push outImpatient horns and tolerant churning mouths’Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all aliveWith birds and gnats and large white butterfliesWhich look as if the May-flower had caught lifeAnd 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 vileSave 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.[42]
[43]
SECOND BOOK.
Times followed one another. Came a mornI stood upon the brink of twenty years,And looked before and after, as I stoodWoman and artist,—either incomplete,Both credulous of completion. There I heldThe 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 multitudesOf 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 pullMy childhood backward in a childish jestTo see the face of’t once more, and farewell!In which fantastic mood I bounded forthAt early morning,—would not wait so long[44]As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings,But, brushing a green trail across the lawnWith my gown in the dew, took will and wayAmong the acacias of the shrubberies,To fly my fancies in the open airAnd keep my birthday, till my aunt awokeTo stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on,As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves;‘The worthiest poets have remained uncrownedTill death has bleached their foreheads to the bone,And so with me it must be, unless I proveUnworthy of the grand adversity,—And certainly I would not fail so much.What, therefore, if I crown myself to-dayIn sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it,Before my brows be numb as Dante’s ownTo 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 loveIs something awful which one dares not touchSo early o’ mornings. This verbena strainsThe point of passionate fragrance; and hard by,This guelder-rose, at far too slight a beckOf 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[45]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 gravesAs 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 bellTo ring with once being touched, I drew a wreathDrenched, blinding me with dew, across my brow,And fastening it behind so, ... turning faced... My public!—cousin Romney—with a mouthTwice graver than his eyes. I stood there fixed— My arms up, like the caryatid, soleOf some abolished temple, helplesslyPersistent in a gesture which deridesA former purpose. Yet my blush was flame,As if from flax, not stone. ‘Aurora Leigh, The earliest of Auroras!’ Hand stretched out I clasped, as shipwrecked men will clasp a hand,Indifferent to the sort of palm. The tideHad caught me at my pastime, writing downMy foolish name too near upon the seaWhich drowned me with a blush as foolish. ‘You,My cousin!’The smile died out in his eyes[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’tWhereof 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 beech leans down into—of which you said,The Oread in it has a Naiad’s heartAnd pines for waters.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Rather you, My cousin! that I have seen you not too muchA witch, a poet, scholar, and the rest,To be a woman also.’ With a glance The smile rose in his eyes again, and touchedThe ivy on my forehead, light as air.I answered gravely, ‘Poets needs must beOr 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 bronzeBrings headaches, pretty cousin, and defilesThe clean white morning dresses.’[47] ‘So you judge! Because I love the beautiful, I mustLove pleasure chiefly, and be overchargedFor ease and whiteness! Well—you know the world,And only miss your cousin; ’tis not much!—But learn this: I would rather take my partWith God’s Dead, who afford to walk in whiteYet 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 headsThat hold a rhythmic thought, must ache perforce,For my part, I choose headaches,—and today’sMy birthday.’‘Dear Aurora, choose insteadTo 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, exceptTo 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—[48]You shall not hinder.’ He, as shaking outHis hand and answering ‘Fly then,’ did not speak,Except by such a gesture. SilentlyWe paced, until, just coming into sightOf the house-windows, he abruptly caughtAt one end of the swinging wreath, and said‘Aurora!’ There I stopped short, breath and all.
‘Aurora, let’s be serious, and throw byThis game of head and heart. Life means, be sure,Both heart and head,—both active, both complete,And both in earnest. Men and women makeThe world, as head and heart make human life.Work man, work woman, since there’s work to doIn this beleaguered earth, for head and heart,And thought can never do the work of love!But work for ends, I mean for uses; notFor such sleek fringes (do you call them ends?Still less God’s glory) as we sew ourselvesUpon the velvet of those baldaquinsHeld ’twixt us and the sun. That book of yours,I have not read a page of; but I tossA 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[49]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 ourselvesDivine by overcoming with mere hopeAnd most prosaic patience. You, you are youngAs 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 wreathsTo hang upon her ruins,—and forgetsTo rhyme the cry with which she still beats backThose savage, hungry dogs that hunt her downTo the empty grave of Christ. The world’s hard pressed;The sweat of labour in the early curseHas (turning acrid in six thousand years)Become the sweat of torture. Who has time,An hour’s time ... think!... to sit upon a bankAnd 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.’[50] ‘There it is!— You play beside a death-bed like a child,Yet measure to yourself a prophet’s placeTo teach the living. None of all these things,Can women understand. You generaliseOh, nothing!—not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts,So sympathetic to the personal pang,Close, on each separate knife-stroke, yielding upA whole life at each wound; incapableOf deepening, widening a large lap of lifeTo hold the world-full woe. The human raceTo you means, such a child, or such a man,You saw one morning waiting in the cold,Beside that gate, perhaps. You gather upA few such cases, and, when strong, sometimesWill write of factories and of slaves, as ifYour father were a negro, and your sonA spinner in the mills. All’s yours and you,—All, coloured with your blood, or otherwiseJust nothing to you. Why, I call you hardTo general suffering. Here’s the world half blindWith intellectual light, half brutalisedWith civilisation, having caught the plagueIn silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and westAlong a thousand railroads, mad with painAnd sin too!... does one woman of you all,(You who weep easily) grow pale to seeThis tiger shake his cage?—does one of youStand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls,And pine and die, because of the great sum[51]Of universal anguish?—Show me a tearWet 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 childSick 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 worldUncomprehended by you, must remainUninfluenced 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 verilyWe shall not get a poet, in my mind.’
‘With which conclusion you conclude’.... ‘But this— That you, Aurora, with the large live browAnd steady eyelids, cannot condescendTo play at art, as children play at swords,To show a pretty spirit, chiefly admiredBecause true action is impossible.You never can be satisfied with praiseWhich men give women when they judge a bookNot as mere work, but as mere woman’s work,Expressing the comparative respectWhich means the absolute scorn. ‘Oh, excellent![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 roomFor this fair writer, and congratulateThe country that produces in these timesSuch women, competent to ... spell.’ ‘Stop there!’ I answered—burning through his thread of talkWith a quick flame of emotion,—‘You have readMy soul, if not my book, and argue wellI would not condescend ... we will not sayTo such a kind of praise, (a worthless endIs praise of all kinds) but to such a useOf 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 danceAt fairs on tight-rope, till the babies droppedTheir gingerbread for joy,—than shift the typesFor tolerable verse, intolerableTo 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 youngAurora, you and I. The world ... look round ...The world, we’re come to late, is swollen hardWith perished generations and their sins:[53]The civiliser’s spade grinds horriblyOn dead men’s bones, and cannot turn up soilThat’s otherwise than fetid. All successProves partial failure; all advance impliesWhat’s left behind; all triumph, something crushedAt 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 spasmAnd crisis of the ages. Here’s an age,That makes its own vocation! here, we have steppedAcross 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 byAnd view these things, and never tease his soulFor 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 whenThey 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 GodStands witnessing for life perpetually,By being just God. That’s abstract truth, I know,[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 muchConsoled the race of mastodons to knowBefore they went to fossil, that anonTheir place should quicken with the elephant;They were not elephants but mastodons:And I, a man, as men are now, and notAs men may be hereafter, feel with menIn 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 greyWith 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 despairsWith such a total of distracted life, ...To see it down in figures on a page,Plain, silent, clear ... as God sees through the earthThe sense of all the graves!... that’s terribleFor one who is not God, and cannot rightThe wrong he looks on. May I choose indeedBut vow away my years, my means, my aims,[55]Among the helpers, if there’s any helpIn such a social strait? The common bloodThat swings along my veins, is strong enoughTo 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 timeTo creep so high up as to wet my feet.I cannot judge these tides—I shall, perhaps.A woman’s always younger than a manAt equal years, because she is disallowedMaturing 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,—Inthe 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 amenTo a bishop’s prayer and see the way it goes;And I, incapable to loose the knotOf social questions, can approve, applaudAugust compassion, christian thoughts that shootBeyond 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,[56]Because a woman’s. Do you now turn roundAnd 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 browThe full weight of his soul,—‘I ask for love,And that, she can; for life in fellowshipThrough 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 lightAbove his stature,—‘am I proved too weakTo stand alone, yet strong enough to bearSuch 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 light-house willThat turns upon the sea. ‘It’s always so!Anything does for a wife.’ ‘Aurora, dear, And dearly honoured’ ... he pressed in at onceWith eager utterance,—‘you translate me ill.I do not contradict my thought of youWhich is most reverent, with another thoughtFound less so. If your sex is weak for art,(And I who said so, did but honour you[57]By using truth in courtship) it is strongFor life and duty. Place your fecund heartIn mine, and let us blossom for the worldThat wants love’s colour in the grey of time.With all my talk I can but set you whereYou look down coldly on the arena-heapsOf headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct!The Judgment-Angel scarce would find his wayThrough 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 touchThese victims, one by one! till, one by one,The formless, nameless trunk of every manShall seem to wear a head, with hair you know,And every woman catch your mother’s faceTo melt you into passion.’ ‘I am a girl,’ I answered slowly; ‘you do well to nameMy 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 shineIn that face and another. Just so much;No more indeed at all. I have not seenSo 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![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 enoughTo 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 youA wife ... a sister ... shall we speak it out?A sister of charity.’ ‘Then, must it be Indeed farewell? And was I so far wrongIn hope and in illusion, when I tookThe woman to be nobler than the man,Yourself the noblest woman,—in the useAnd comprehension of what love is,—love,That generates the likeness of itselfThrough 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,[59]And, where the Graces walk before, the MuseWill follow at the lighting of their 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 complementOf his sex merely. You forget too muchThat every creature, female as the male,Stands single in responsible act and thought,As also in birth and death. Whoever saysTo 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 bestShe 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 makeToo frequently heaven’s saints. But me, your workIs not the best for,—nor your love the best,Nor able to commend the kind of workFor 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 changedMy father’s face for theirs,—and, though your world[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 headThan any of their prosperities? what then,Unless the artist keep up open roadsBetwixt the seen and unseen,—bursting throughThe best of your conventions with his best,The speakable, imaginable bestGod bids him speak, to prove what lies beyondBoth speech and imagination? A starved manExceeds a fat beast: we’ll not barter, sir,The beautiful for barley.—And, even so,I hold you will not compass your poor endsOf barley-feeding and material ease,Without a poet’s individualismTo 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 offThe dust of the actual.—Ah, your Fouriers failed,Because not poets enough to understandThat life develops from within.——For me,Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,Of work like this!... perhaps a woman’s soul[61]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 strawLike other false works—I’ll not ask for grace,Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. IWho love my art, would never wish it lowerTo 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 newsYou 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 memoryFor his sake, not their own. And yet I knowI 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[62]To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vinesThat 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 setHim 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 thingSo much best to us, that what personates loveIs next best? A potential love, forsooth!We are not so vile. No, no—he cleaves, I think,This man, this image, ... chiefly for the wrongAnd shock he gave my life, in finding mePrecisely where the devil of my youthHad set me, on those mountain-peaks of hopeAll glittering with the dawn-dew, all erectAnd famished for the morning,—saying, whileI 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 coinWhich 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[63]As if you brought a candle out of doors,—Broke in with, ‘Romney, here!—My child, entreatYour cousin to the house, and have your talk,If girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come,’
He answered for me calmly, with pale lipsThat 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 saidBeneath the trees, than wrong by such a wordYour house’s hospitalities. Farewell.’
With that he vanished. I could hear his heelRing bluntly in the lane, as down he leaptThe short way from us.—Then, a measured speechWithdrew 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 quelledBefore her,—meekened to the child she knew:I prayed her pardon, said, ‘I had little thoughtTo give dismissal to a guest of hers,In letting go a friend of mine, who cameTo 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[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 upFor certain uses which he found to doFor 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 stepOne 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 monthsWill 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 handWhen 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)[65]Unhoused, unfed, my dear, poor brother’s lamb,(Ah heaven,—that pains!)—without a right to cropA single blade of grass beneath these trees,Or cast a lamb’s small shadow on the lawn,Unfed, unfolded! Ah, my brother, here’sThe fruit you planted in your foreign loves!—Ay, there’s the fruit he planted! never lookAstonished at me with your mother’s eyes,For it was they, who set you where you are,An undowered orphan. Child, your father’s choiceOf that said mother, disinheritedHis daughter, his and hers. Men do not thinkOf 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 entailExcluding offspring by a foreign wife,(The clause set up a hundred years agoBy a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girlAnd had his heart danced over in return);But this man shrunk at nothing, never thoughtOf 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, wroteDirectly on your birth, to Italy,‘I ask your baby daughter for my son[66]In whom the entail now merges by the law.Betroth her to us out of love, insteadOf colder reasons, and she shall not loseBy love or law from henceforth’—so he wrote;A generous cousin, was my cousin Vane.Remember how he drew you to his kneeThe 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 houseAnd 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 preparedTo carry out his kindest word and thoughtTo you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young manIs Romney Leigh; although the sun of youthHas shone too straight upon his brain, I know,And fevered him with dreams of doing goodTo good-for-nothing people. But a wifeWill put all right, and stroke his temples coolWith healthy touches’.... I broke in at that. I could not lift my heavy heart to breatheTill then, but then I raised it, and it fellIn broken words like these—‘No need to wait.The dream of doing good to ... me, at least,Is ended, without waiting for a wifeTo cool the fever for him. We’ve escapedThat danger ... thank Heaven for it.’[67] ‘You,’ she cried, ‘Have got a fever. What, I talk and talkAn hour long to you,—I instruct you howYou cannot eat or drink or stand or sit,Or even die, like any decent wretchIn all this unroofed and unfurnished world,Without your cousin,—and you still maintainThere’s room ’twixt him and you, for flirting fansAnd running knots in eyebrows! You must haveA pattern lover sighing on his knee:You do not count enough a noble heart,Above book-patterns, which this very mornUnclosed 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 wordBefore you write yours. Cousin Vane did well,And cousin Romney well,—and I well too,In casting back with all my strength and willThe good they meant me. O my God, my God!God meant me good, too, when he hindered meFrom saying ‘yes’ this morning. If you writeA word, it shall be ‘no.’ I say no, no!I tie up ‘no’ upon His altar-horns,Quite out of reach of perjury! At leastMy soul is not a pauper; I can liveAt least my soul’s life, without alms from men;And if it must be in heaven instead of earth,[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 eyesRight 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 tellThe 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 nowStrike hot, sear deep, as guiltless men may feelThe felon’s iron, say, and scorn the markOf what they are not. Most illogicalIrrational 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, accreditingThat treason of false witness in my blush,[69]Did bow me downward like a swathe of grassBelow its level that struck me,—I attestThe 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 keepOur love, to pay our debts with? White and cold I grew next moment. As my blood recoiledFrom that imputed ignominy, I madeMy heart great with it. Then, at last, I spoke,—Spoke veritable words, but passionate,Too passionate perhaps ... ground up with sobsTo 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 speakA quiet ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ like English girls,Without convulsions. In another monthWe’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 saintsWhen once gone from us! We may call against[70]The lighted windows of thy fair June-heavenWhere all the souls are happy,—and not one,Not even my father, look from work or playTo ask, ‘Who is it that cries after us,Below there, in the dusk?’ Yet formerlyHe turned his face upon me quick enough,If I said ‘father.’ Now I might cry loud;The little lark reached higher with his songThan I with crying. Oh, alone, alone,—Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth,I stood there in the garden, and looked upThe deaf blue sky that brings the roses outOn 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 youIn gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all beginBy singing with the birds, and running fastWith June-days, hand in hand: but once, for all,The birds must sing against us, and the sunStrike down upon us like a friend’s sword caughtBy an enemy to slay us, while we readThe dear name on the blade which bites at us!—That’s bitter and convincing: after that,We seldom doubt that something in the largeSmooth order of creation, though no moreThan haply a man’s footstep, has gone wrong.
Some tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled,[71]As those smile who have no face in the worldTo smile back to them. I had lost a friendIn 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 nowMore utterly shut out from me, I felt,Than even my father’s. Romney now was turnedTo a benefactor, to a generous man,Who had tied himself to marry ... me, insteadOf such a woman, with low timorous lidsHe lifted with a sudden word one day,And left, perhaps, for my sake.—Ah, self-tiedBy a contract,—male Iphigenia, boundAt a fatal Aulis, for the winds to change,(But loose him—they’ll not change); he well might seemA little cold and dominant in love!He had a right to be dogmatical,This poor, good Romney. Love, to him, was madeA 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 thoughtAnd every heart-beat down there in the bill,—Not one found honestly deductibleFrom any use that pleased him! He might cutMy body into coins to give awayAmong his other paupers; change my sons,While I stood dumb as Griseld, for black babesOr piteous foundlings; might unquestioned setMy right hand teaching in the Ragged Schools,[72]My left hand washing in the Public Baths,What time my angel of the Ideal stretchedBoth his to me in vain! I could not claimThe 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 beSo generous to me. Farewell, friend, since friendBetwixt us two, forsooth, must be a wordSo heavily overladen. And, since helpMust 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 bitterlyAs when the Spanish king did crown the bonesOf his dead love. So be it. I preserveThat 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 sunIn the dust of the racing chariots! After that, Before the evening fell, I had a noteWhich ran,—‘Aurora, sweet Chaldean, you readMy meaning backward like your eastern books,While I am from the west, dear. Read me nowA little plainer. Did you hate me quiteBut yesterday? I loved you for my part;I love you. If I spoke untenderly[73]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 brineOf 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, discernStill farther than we read. I know your heart,And shut it like the holy book it is,Reserved for mild-eyed saints to pore uponBetwixt their prayers at vespers. Well, you’re right,I did not surely hate you yesterday;And yet I do not love you enough to-dayTo wed you, cousin Romney. Take this word,And let it stop you as a generous manFrom 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 growWithin my wayside hedge, and pass your way!This flower has never as much to say to you[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,Not sew on steadily, nor drop a stitchAnd a sigh with it, but I felt her looksStill cleaving to me, like the sucking aspTo Cleopatra’s breast, persistentlyThrough 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 devildomWhich plainly held me. So with all the house.Susannah could not stand and twist my hair,Without such glancing at the looking-glassTo 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 JohnResolved the problem, ’twixt his napkined thumbs,Of what was signified by taking soupOr choosing mackerel. Neighbours, who dropped inOn morning visits, feeling a joint wrong,[75]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 dogWould watch me from his sun-patch on the floor,In alternation with the large black flyNot yet in reach of snapping. So I lived.
A Roman died so; smeared with honey, teasedBy insects, stared to torture by the noon:And many patient souls ’neath English roofsHave died like Romans. I, in looking back,Wish only, now, I had borne the plague of allWith meeker spirits than were rife in Rome.
For, on the sixth week, the dead sea broke up,Dashed suddenly through beneath the heel of HimWho stands upon the sea and earth, and swearsTime shall be nevermore. The clock struck nineThat morning, too,—no lark was out of tune;The hidden farms among the hills, breathed straightTheir smoke toward heaven; the lime-tree scarcely stirredBeneath the blue weight of the cloudless sky,Though still the July air came floating throughThe woodbine at my window, in and out,With touches of the out-door country-newsFor a bending forehead. There I sate, and wishedThat morning-truce of God would last till eve,Or longer. ‘Sleep,’ I thought, ‘late sleepers,—sleep,[76]And spare me yet, the burden of your eyes.’
Then, suddenly, a single ghastly shriekTore 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 stairsWith 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 pointOf 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 bedFor that night’s sleeping ... yet slept well. My God,The dumb derision of that grey, peaked faceConcluded something grave against the sun,Which filled the chamber with its July burstWhen Susan drew the curtains, ignorantOf 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[77]To duchies or to dunghills, not an inchShe’d budge, ’twas obvious, for such worthless odds:Nor, though the stars were suns, and overburnedTheir spheric limitations, swallowing upLike wax the azure spaces, could they forceThose open eyes to wink once. What last sightHad left them blank and flat so,—drawing outThe faculty of vision from the roots,As nothing more, worth seeing, remained behind?
Were those the eyes that watched me, worried me?That dogged me up and down the hours and days,A beaten, breathless, miserable soul?And did I pray, a half hour back, but so,To escape the burden of those eyes ... those eyes?‘Sleep late’ I said.— Why now, indeed, they sleep. God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,A gauntlet with a gift in’t. Every wishIs like a prayer ... with God. I had my wish,— To read and meditate the thing I would,To fashion all my life upon my thought,And marry, or not marry. Henceforth, noneCould disapprove me, vex me, hamper me.Full ground-room, in this desert newly made,For Babylon or Balbec,—when the breath,Just choked with sand, returns, for building towns![78]The heir came over on the funeral day,And we two cousins met before the dead,With two pale faces. Was it death or lifeThat moved us? When the will was read and done,The official guest and witnesses withdrawn,We rose up in a silence almost hard,And looked at one another. Then I said,‘Farewell, my cousin.’ But he touched, just touched My hatstrings tied for going, (at the doorThe carriage stood to take me) and said low,His voice a little unsteady through his smile,‘Siste, viator.’ ‘Is there time,’ I asked, ‘In these last days of railroads, to stop shortLike Cæsar’s chariot (weighing half a ton)On the Appian road, for morals?’ ‘There is time,’ He answered grave, ‘for necessary words,Inclusive, trust me, of no epitaphOn man or act, my cousin. We have readA will, which gives you all the personal goodsAnd funded monies of your aunt.’ ‘I thank Her memory for it. With three hundred poundsWe buy in England even, clear standing-roomTo stand and work in. Only two hours since,I fancied I was poor.’ ‘And, cousin, still You’re richer than you fancy. The will says,[79]Three hundred pounds, and any other sumOf which the said testatrix dies possessed.I say she died possessed of other sums.’
‘Dear Romney, need we chronicle the pence?I’m richer than I thought—that’s evident.Enough so.’‘Listen rather. You’ve to doWith business and a cousin,’ he resumed,‘And both, I fear, need patience. Here’s the fact.The other sum (there is another sum,Unspecified in any will which datesAfter possession, yet bequeathed as muchAnd clearly as those said three hundred pounds)Is thirty thousand. You will have it paidWhen?... where? My duty troubles you with words.’
He struck the iron when the bar was hot;No wonder if my eyes sent out some sparks.‘Pause there! I thank you. You are delicateIn glosing gifts;—but I, who share your blood,Am rather made for giving, like yourself,Than taking, like your pensioners. Farewell.’
He stopped me with a gesture of calm pride.‘A Leigh,’ he said, ‘gives largesse and gives love,But gloses neither: if a Leigh could glose,He would not do it, moreover, to a Leigh,With blood trained up along nine centuriesTo hound and hate a lie, from eyes like yours.[80]And now we’ll make the rest as clear; your auntPossessed these monies.’ ‘You will make it clear, My cousin, as the honour of us both,Or one of us speaks vainly—that’s not I.My aunt possessed this sum,—inheritedFrom whom, and when? bring documents, prove dates.’
‘Why now indeed you throw your bonnet off,As if you had time left for a logarithm!The faith’s the want. Dear cousin, give me faith,And you shall walk this road with silken shoes,As clean as any lady of our houseSupposed the proudest. Oh, I comprehendThe whole position from your point of sight.I oust you from your father’s halls and lands,And make you poor by getting rich—that’s law;Considering which, in common circumstance,You would not scruple to accept from meSome compensation, some sufficiencyOf income—that were justice; but, alas,I love you ... that’s mere nature!—you rejectMy love ... that’s nature also;—and at once,You cannot, from a suitor disallowed,A hand thrown back as mine is, into yoursReceive a doit, a farthing, ... not for the world!That’s etiquette with women, obviouslyExceeding claim of nature, law, and right,Unanswerable to all. I grant, you see,The case as you conceive it,—leave you room[81]To sweep your ample skirts of womanhood;While, standing humbly squeezed against the wall,I own myself excluded from being just,Restrained from paying indubitable debts,Because denied from giving you my soul—That’s my misfortune!—I submit to itAs if, in some more reasonable age,’Twould not be less inevitable. Enough.You’ll trust me, cousin, as a gentleman,To keep your honour, as you count it, pure,—Your scruples (just as if I thought them wise)Safe and inviolate from gifts of mine.’
I answered mild but earnest. ‘I believeIn no one’s honour which another keeps,Nor man’s nor woman’s. As I keep, myself,My truth and my religion, I deputeNo father, though I had one this side death,Nor brother, though I had twenty, much less you,Though twice my cousin, and once Romney Leigh,To keep my honour pure. You face, to-day,A man who wants instruction, mark me, notA woman who wants protection. As to a man,Show manhood, speak out plainly, be preciseWith facts and dates. My aunt inheritedThis sum, you say—’‘I said she died possessedOf this, dear cousin.’‘Not by heritage.Thank you: we’re getting to the facts at last.[82]Perhaps she played at commerce with a shipWhich came in heavy with Australian gold?Or touched a lottery with her finger-end,Which tumbled on a sudden into her lapSome old Rhine tower or principality?Perhaps she had to do with a marineSub-transatlantic railroad, which pre-paysAs well as pre-supposes? or perhapsSome stale ancestral debt was after-paidBy a hundred years, and took her by surprise?—You shake your head my cousin; I guess ill.’
‘You need not guess, Aurora, nor deride,—The truth is not afraid of hurting you.You’ll find no cause, in all your scruples, whyYour aunt should cavil at a deed of gift’Twixt her and me.’ ‘I thought so—ah! a gift.’
‘You naturally thought so,’ he resumed.‘A very natural gift.’ ‘A gift, a gift! Her individual life being stranded highAbove all want, approaching opulence,Too haughty was she to accept a giftWithout some ultimate aim: ah, ah, I see,—A gift intended plainly for her heirs,And so accepted ... if accepted ... ah,Indeed that might be; I am snared perhaps,Just so. But, cousin, shall I pardon you,[83]If thus you have caught me with a cruel springe?’
He answered gently, ‘Need you tremble and pantLike a netted lioness? is’t my fault, mine,That you’re a grand wild creature of the woods,And hate the stall built for you? Any way,Though triply netted, need you glare at me?I do not hold the cords of such a net;You’re free from me, Aurora!’ ‘Now may God Deliver me from this strait! This gift of yoursWas tendered ... when? accepted ... when?’ I asked.‘A month ... a fortnight since? Six weeks agoIt was not tendered. By a word she dropped,I know it was not tendered nor received.When was it? bring your dates.’ ‘What matters when? A half-hour ere she died, or a half-year,Secured the gift, maintains the heritageInviolable with law. As easy pluckThe golden stars from heaven’s embroidered stole,To pin them on the grey side of this earth,As make you poor again, thank God.’ ‘Not poor Nor clean again from henceforth, you thank God?Well, sir—I ask you ... I insist at need, ...Vouchsafe the special date, the special date.’
‘The day before her death-day,’ he replied,‘The gift was in her hands. We’ll find that deed,[84]And certify that date to you.’ As one Who has climbed a mountain-height and carried upHis own heart climbing, panting in his throatWith the toil of the ascent, takes breath at last,Looks back in triumph—so I stood and looked:‘Dear cousin Romney, we have reached the topOf this steep question, and may rest, I think.But first,—I pray you pardon, that the shockAnd surge of natural feeling and eventHad made me oblivious of acquainting youThat this, this letter ... unread, mark,—still sealed,Was found enfolded in the poor dead hand:That spirit of hers had gone beyond the address,Which could not find her though you wrote it clear,—I know your writing, Romney,—recogniseThe open-hearted A, the liberal sweepOf the G. Now listen,—let us understand;You will not find that famous deed of gift,Unless you find it in the letter here,Which, not being mine, I give you back.—RefuseTo take the letter? well then—you and I,As writer and as heiress, open itTogether, by your leave.—Exactly so:The words in which the noble offering’s made,Are nobler still, my cousin; and, I own,The proudest and most delicate heart alive,Distracted from the measure of the giftBy such a grace in giving, might acceptYour largesse without thinking any more[85]Of the burthen of it, than King SolomonConsidered, when he wore his holy ringCharáctered over with the ineffable spell,How many carats of fine gold made upIts money-value. So, Leigh gives to Leigh—Or rather, might have given, observe!—for that’sThe point we come to. Here’s a proof of gift,But here’s no proof, sir, of acceptancy,But rather, disproof. Death’s black dust, being blown,Infiltrated through every secret foldOf this sealed letter by a puff of fate,Dried up for ever the fresh-written ink,Annulled the gift, disutilised the grace,And left these fragments.’ As I spoke, I tore The paper up and down, and down and upAnd crosswise, till it fluttered from my hands,As forest-leaves, stripped suddenly and raptBy a whirlwind on Valdarno, drop again,Drop slow, and strew the melancholy groundBefore the amazèd hills ... why, so, indeed,I’m writing like a poet, somewhat largeIn the type of the image,—and exaggerateA small thing with a great thing, topping it!—But then I’m thinking how his eyes looked ... his,With what despondent and surprised reproach!I think the tears were in them, as he looked—I think the manly mouth just trembled. ThenHe broke the silence. ‘I may ask, perhaps, [86]Although no stranger ... only Romney Leigh,Which means still less ... than Vincent Carrington ...Your plans in going hence, and where you go.This cannot be a secret.’ ‘All my life Is open to you, cousin. I go henceTo London, to the gathering-place of souls,To live mine straight out, vocally, in books;Harmoniously for others, if indeedA woman’s soul, like man’s, be wide enoughTo carry the whole octave (that’s to prove)Or, if I fail, still, purely for myself.Pray God be with me, Romney.’ ‘Ah, poor child, Who fight against the mother’s ‘tiring hand,And choose the headsman’s! May God change his worldFor your sake, sweet, and make it mild as heaven,And juster than I have found you!’ But I paused. ‘And you, my cousin?’— ‘I,’ he said,—‘you ask? You care to ask? Well, girls have curious minds,And fain would know the end of everything,Of cousins, therefore, with the rest. For me,Aurora, I’ve my work; you know my work;And, having missed this year some personal hope,I must beware the rather that I missNo reasonable duty. While you singYour happy pastorals of the meads and trees,Bethink you that I go to impress and prove[87]On stifled brains and deafened ears, stunned deaf,Crushed dull with grief, that nature sings itself,And needs no mediate poet, lute or voice,To make it vocal. While you ask of menYour audience, I may get their leave perhapsFor hungry orphans to say audibly‘We’re hungry, see,’—for beaten and bullied wivesTo hold their unweaned babies up in sight,Whom orphanage would better; and for allTo speak and claim their portion ... by no meansOf the soil, ... but of the sweat in tilling it,—Since this is now-a-days turned privilege,To have only God’s curse on us, and not man’s.Such work I have for doing, elbow-deepIn social problems,—as you tie your rhymes,To draw my uses to cohere with needs,And bring the uneven world back to its round;Or, failing so much, fill up, bridge at leastTo smoother issues, some abysmal cracksAnd feuds of earth, intestine heats have madeTo keep men separate,—using sorry shiftsOf hospitals, almshouses, infant schools,And other practical stuff of partial good,You lovers of the beautiful and whole,Despise by system.’‘I despise? The scornIs yours, my cousin. Poets become such,Through scorning nothing. You decry them forThe good of beauty, sung and taught by them,While they respect your practical partial good[88]As being a part of beauty’s self. Adieu!When God helps all the workers for his world,The singers shall have help of Him, not last.’
He smiled as men smile when they will not speakBecause of something bitter in the thought;And still I feel his melancholy eyesLook judgment on me. It is seven years since:I know not if ’twas pity or ’twas scornHas made them so far-reaching: judge it yeWho have had to do with pity more than love.And scorn than hatred. I am used, since then,To other ways, from equal men. But so,Even so, we let go hands, my cousin and I,And, in between us, rushed the torrent-worldTo blanch our faces like divided rocks,And bar for ever mutual sight and touchExcept through swirl of spray and all that roar.[89]
THIRD BOOK.
‘To-day thou girdest up thy loins thyself,And goest where thou wouldest: presentlyOthers shall gird thee,’ said the Lord, ‘to goWhere thou would’st not.’ He spoke to Peter thus,To signify the death which he should dieWhen crucified head downwards. If He spoke To Peter then, He speaks to us the same;The word suits many different martyrdoms,And signifies a multiform of death,Although we scarcely die apostles, we,And have mislaid the keys of heaven and earth.
For ’tis not in mere death that men die most;And, after our first girding of the loinsIn youth’s fine linen and fair broidery,To run up hill and meet the rising sun,We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,While others gird us with the violent bandsOf social figments, feints, and formalisms,[90]Reversing our straight nature, lifting upOur base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,Head downward on the cross-sticks of the world.
Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross.God, set our feet low and our forehead high,And show us how a man was made to walk!
Leave the lamp, Susan, and go up to bed.The room does very well; I have to writeBeyond the stroke of midnight. Get away;Your steps, for ever buzzing in the room,Tease me like gnats. Ah, letters! throw them downAt once, as I must have them, to be sure,Whether I bid you never bring me suchAt such an hour, or bid you. No excuse.You choose to bring them, as I choose perhapsTo throw them in the fire. Now, get to bed,And dream, if possible, I am not cross.
Why what a pettish, petty thing I grow,—A mere, mere woman,—a mere flaccid nerve,—A kerchief left out all night in the rain,Turned soft so,—overtasked and overstrainedAnd overlived in this close London life!And yet I should be stronger. Never burn Your letters, poor Aurora! for they stareWith red seals from the table, saying each,‘Here’s something that you know not.’ Out alas,[91]’Tis scarcely that the world’s more good and wiseOr even straighter and more consequentSince yesterday at this time—yet, again,If but one angel spoke from Ararat,I should be very sorry not to hear:So open all the letters! let me read.Blanche Ord, the writer in the ‘Lady’s Fan,’Requests my judgment on ... that, afterwards.Kate Ward desires the model of my cloak,And signs, ‘Elisha to you.’ Pringle SharpePresents his work on ‘Social Conduct,’ ... cravesA little money for his pressing debts ...From me, who scarce have money for my needs,—Art’s fiery chariot which we journey inBeing apt to singe our singing-robes to holes,Although you ask me for my cloak, Kate Ward!Here’s Rudgely knows it,—editor and scribe—He’s ‘forced to marry where his heart is not,Because the purse lacks where he lost his heart.’Ah,—— lost it because no one picked it up!That’s really loss! (and passable impudence.)My critic Hammond flatters prettily,And wants another volume like the last.My critic Belfair wants another bookEntirely different, which will sell, (and live?)A striking book, yet not a startling book,The public blames originalities,(You must not pump spring-water unawaresUpon a gracious public, full of nerves—)Good things, not subtle, new yet orthodox,[92]As easy reading as the dog-eared pageThat’s fingered by said public, fifty years,Since first taught spelling by its grandmother,And yet a revelation in some sort:That’s hard, my critic Belfair! So—what next?My critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts;‘Call a man, John, a woman, Joan,’ says he,‘And do not prate so of humanities:’Whereat I call my critic, simply Stokes.My critic Jobson recommends more mirth,Because a cheerful genius suits the times,And all true poets laugh unquenchablyLike Shakspeare and the gods. That’s very hard.The gods may laugh, and Shakspeare; Dante smiledWith such a needy heart on two pale lips,We cry, ‘Weep rather, Dante.’ Poems areMen, if true poems: and who dares exclaimAt any man’s door, ’Here, ’tis probableThe thunder fell last week, and killed a wife,And scared a sickly husband—what of that?Get up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands,Because a cheerful genius suits the times—’?None says so to the man,—and why indeedShould any to the poem? A ninth seal;The apocalypse is drawing to a close.Ha,—this from Vincent Carrington,—‘Dear friend,I want good counsel. Will you lend me wingsTo raise me to the subject, in a sketchI’ll bring to-morrow—may I? at eleven?A poet’s only born to turn to use;[93]So save you! for the world ... and Carrington.’‘(Writ after.) Have you heard of Romney Leigh,Beyond what’s said of him in newspapers,His phalansteries there, his speeches here,His pamphlets, pleas, and statements, everywhere?He dropped me long ago; but no one dropsA golden apple—though indeed, one day,You hinted that, but jested. Well, at least,You know Lord Howe, who sees him ... whom he sees,And you see, and I hate to see,—for HoweStands high upon the brink of theories,Observes the swimmers, and cries ‘Very fine,’But keeps dry linen equally,—unlikeThat gallant breaster, Romney. Strange it is,Such sudden madness seizing a young man,To make earth over again,—while I’m contentTo make the pictures. Let me bring the sketch.A tiptoe Danae, overbold and hot;Both arms a-flame to meet her wishing JoveHalfway, and burn him faster down; the faceAnd breasts upturned and straining, the loose locksAll glowing with the anticipated gold.Or here’s another on the self-same theme.She lies here—flat upon her prison-floor,The long hair swathed about her to the heel,Like wet sea-weed. You dimly see her throughThe glittering haze of that prodigious rain,Half blotted out of nature by a loveAs heavy as fate. I’ll bring you either sketch.I think, myself, the second indicates[94]More passion.’ Surely. Self is put away, And calm with abdication. She is Jove,And no more Danae—greater thus. PerhapsThe painter symbolises unawaresTwo states of the recipient artist-soul;One, forward, personal, wanting reverence,Because aspiring only. We’ll be calm,And know that, when indeed our Joves come down,We all turn stiller than we have ever been.
Kind Vincent Carrington. I’ll let him come.He talks of Florence,—and may say a wordOf something as it chanced seven years ago,—A hedgehog in the path, or a lame bird,In those green country walks, in that good time,When certainly I was so miserable ...I seem to have missed a blessing ever since.
The music soars within the little lark,And the lark soars. It is not thus with men.We do not make our places with our strains,—Content, while they rise, to remain behind,Alone on earth instead of so in heaven.No matter—I bear on my broken tale.
When Romney Leigh and I had parted thus,I took a chamber up three flights of stairsNot far from being as steep as some larks climb,And, in a certain house in Kensington,[95]Three years I lived and worked. Get leave to workIn this world,—’tis the best you get at all;For God, in cursing, gives us better giftsThan men in benediction. God says, ‘SweatFor foreheads;’ men say ‘crowns;’ and so we are crowned,—Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steelWhich snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work;Be sure ’tis better than what you work to get.
So, happy and unafraid of solitude,I worked the short days out,—and watched the sunOn lurid morns or monstrous afternoons,Like some Druidic idol’s fiery brass,With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat,In which the blood of wretches pent insideSeemed oozing forth to incarnadine the air,—Push out through fog with his dilated disk,And startle the slant roofs and chimney-potsWith splashes of fierce colour. Or I sawFog only, the great tawny weltering fog,Involve the passive city, strangle itAlive, and draw it off into the void,Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a spungeHad wiped out London,—or as noon and nightHad clapped together and utterly struck outThe intermediate time, undoing themselvesIn the act. Your city poets see such things,Not despicable. Mountains of the south,When, drunk and mad with elemental wines,They rend the seamless mist and stand up bare,[96]Make fewer singers, haply. No one sings,Descending Sinai: on Parnassus mount,You take a mule to climb, and not a muse,Except in fable and figure: forests chantTheir anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb.But sit in London, at the day’s decline,And view the city perish in the mistLike Pharaoh’s armaments in the deep Red Sea,—The chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host,Sucked down and choked to silence—then, surprisedBy a sudden sense of vision and of tune,You feel as conquerors though you did not fight,And you and Israel’s other singing girls,Ay, Miriam with them, sing the song you choose.
I worked with patience which means almost power.I did some excellent things indifferently,Some bad things excellently. Both were praised,The latter loudest. And by such a timeThat I myself had set them down as sinsScarce worth the price of sackcloth, week by week,Arrived some letter through the sedulous post,Like these I’ve read, and yet dissimilar,With pretty maiden seals,—initials twinedOf lilies, or a heart marked Emily,(Convicting Emily of being all heart);Or rarer tokens from young bachelors,Who wrote from college (with the same goosequill,Suppose, they had just been plucked of) and a snatchFrom Horace, ‘Collegisse juvat,’ set[97]Upon the first page. Many a letter signedOr unsigned, showing the writers at eighteenHad lived too long, though every muse should helpThe daylight, holding candles,—compliments,To smile or sigh at. Such could pass with meNo more than coins from Moscow circulateAt Paris. Would ten roubles buy a tagOf ribbon on the boulevard, worth a sou?I smiled that all this youth should love me,—sighedThat such a love could scarcely raise them upTo love what was more worthy than myself;Then sighed again, again, less generously,To think the very love they lavished so,Proved me inferior. The strong loved me not,And he ... my cousin Romney ... did not write.I felt the silent finger of his scornPrick every bubble of my frivolous fameAs my breath blew it, and resolve it backTo the air it came from. Oh, I justifiedThe measure he had taken of my height:The thing was plain—he was not wrong a line;I played at art, made thrusts with a toy-sword,Amused the lads and maidens. Came a sigh Deep, hoarse with resolution,—I would workTo better ends, or play in earnest. ‘Heavens,I think I should be almost popularIf this went on!’—I ripped my verses up,And found no blood upon the rapier’s point;The heart in them was just an embryo’s heart,[98]Which never yet had beat, that it should die;Just gasps of make-believe galvanic life;Mere tones, inorganised to any tune.
And yet I felt it in me where it burnt,Like those hot fire-seeds of creation heldIn Jove’s clenched palm before the worlds were sown,—But I—I was not Juno even! my handWas shut in weak convulsion, woman’s ill,And when I yearned to loose a finger—lo,The nerve revolted. ’Tis the same even now:This hand may never, haply, open large,Before the spark is quenched, or the palm charred,To prove the power not else than by the pain.
It burns, it burnt—my whole life burnt with it,And light, not sunlight and not torchlight, flashedMy steps out through the slow and difficult road.I had grown distrustful of too forward Springs,The season’s books in drear significanceOf morals, dropping round me. Lively books?The ash has livelier verdure than the yew;And yet the yew’s green longer, and aloneFound worthy of the holy Christmas time.We’ll plant more yews if possible, albeitWe plant the graveyards with them. Day and night I worked my rhythmic thought, and furrowed upBoth watch and slumber with long lines of lifeWhich did not suit their season. The rose fell[99]From either cheek, my eyes globed luminousThrough orbits of blue shadow, and my pulseWould shudder along the purple-veined wristLike a shot bird. Youth’s stern, set face to faceWith youth’s ideal: and when people cameAnd said, ‘You work too much, you are looking ill,’I smiled for pity of them who pitied me,And thought I should be better soon perhapsFor those ill looks. Observe—‘I,’ means in youthJust I ... the conscious and eternal soulWith all its ends,—and not the outside life,The parcel-man, the doublet of the flesh,The so much liver, lung, integument,Which make the sum of ‘I’ hereafter, whenWorld-talkers talk of doing well or ill.I prosper, if I gain a step, althoughA nail then pierced my foot: although my brainEmbracing any truth, froze paralysed,I prosper. I but change my instrument;I break the spade off, digging deep for gold,And catch the mattock up. I worked on, on. Through all the bristling fence of nights and daysWhich hedges time in from the eternities,I struggled, ... never stopped to note the stakesWhich hurt me in my course. The midnight oilWould stink sometimes; there came some vulgar needs:I had to live, that therefore I might work,And, being but poor, I was constrained, for life,To work with one hand for the booksellers,[100]While working with the other for myselfAnd art. You swim with feet as well as hands,Or make small way. I apprehended this,—In England, no one lives by verse that lives;And, apprehending, I resolved by proseTo make a space to sphere my living verse.I wrote for cyclopædias, magazines,And weekly papers, holding up my nameTo keep it from the mud. I learnt the useOf the editorial ‘we’ in a review,As courtly ladies the fine trick of trains,And swept it grandly through the open doorsAs if one could not pass through doors at allSave so encumbered. I wrote tales beside,Carved many an article on cherry-stonesTo suit light readers,—something in the linesRevealing, it was said, the mallet-hand,But that, I’ll never vouch for. What you doFor bread, will taste of common grain, not grapes,Although you have a vineyard in Champagne,—Much less in Nephelococcygia,As mine was, peradventure. Having bread For just so many days, just breathing roomFor body and verse, I stood up straight and workedMy veritable work. And as the soulWhich grows within a child, makes the child grow,—Or as the fiery sap, the touch from God,Careering through a tree, dilates the bark,And roughs with scale and knob, before it strikes[101]The summer foliage out in a green flame—So life, in deepening with me, deepened allThe course I took, the work I did. Indeed,The academic law convinced of sin;The critics cried out on the falling off,Regretting the first manner. But I feltMy heart’s life throbbing in my verse to showIt lived, it also—certes incomplete,Disordered with all Adam in the blood,But even its very tumours, warts, and wens,Still organised by, and implying life.
A lady called upon me on such a day.She had the low voice of your English dames,Unused, it seems, to need rise half a noteTo catch attention,—and their quiet mood,As if they lived too high above the earthFor that to put them out in anything:So gentle, because verily so proud;So wary and afeared of hurting you,By no means that you are not really vile,But that they would not touch you with their footTo push you to your place; so self-possessedYet gracious and conciliating, it takesAn effort in their presence to speak truth:You know the sort of woman,—brilliant stuff,And out of nature. ‘Lady Waldemar,’She said her name quite simply, as if it meantNot much indeed, but something,—took my hands,And smiled, as if her smile could help my case,[102]And dropped her eyes on me, and let them melt.‘Is this,’ she said, ‘the Muse?’ ‘No sybil even,’ I answered, ‘since she fails to guess the causeWhich taxed you with this visit, madam.’ ‘Good,’ She said, ‘I like to be sincere at once;Perhaps, if I had found a literal Muse,The visit might have taxed me. As it is,You wear your blue so chiefly in your eyes,My fair Aurora, in a frank good way,It comforts me entirely for your fame,As well as for the trouble of my ascentTo this Olympus.’ There, a silver laugh Ran rippling through her quickened little breathsThe steep stair somewhat justified. ‘But still Your ladyship has left me curious whyYou dared the risk of finding the said Muse?’
‘Ah,—keep me, notwithstanding, to the point,Like any pedant. Is the blue in eyesAs awful as in stockings, after all,I wonder, that you’d have my business outBefore I breathe—exact the epic plungeIn spite of gasps? Well, naturally you thinkI’ve come here, as the lion-hunters goTo deserts, to secure you, with a trap,For exhibition in my drawing-rooms[103]On zoologic soirées? Not in the least.Roar softly at me; I am frivolous,I dare say; I have played at lions, too,Like other women of my class,—but nowI meet my lion simply as AndroclesMet his ... when at his mercy.’ So, she bent Her head, as queens may mock,—then lifting upHer eyelids with a real grave queenly look,Which ruled, and would not spare, not even herself,—‘I think you have a cousin:—Romney Leigh.’
‘You bring a word from him?’—my eyes leapt upTo the very height of hers,—‘a word from him?’
‘I bring a word about him, actually.But first,’—she pressed me with her urgent eyes—‘You do not love him,—you?’ ‘You’re frank at least In putting questions, madam,’ I replied.‘I love my cousin cousinly—no more.’
‘I guessed as much. I’m ready to be frankIn answering also, if you’ll question me,Or even with something less. You stand outside,You artist women, of the common sex;You share not with us, and exceed us soPerhaps by what you’re mulcted in, your heartsBeing starved to make your heads: so run the oldTraditions of you. I can therefore speak,[104]Without the natural shame which creatures feelWhen speaking on their level, to their like.There’s many a papist she, would rather dieThan own to her maid she put a ribbon onTo catch the indifferent eye of such a man,—Who yet would count adulteries on her beadsAt holy Mary’s shrine, and never blush;Because the saints are so far off, we loseAll modesty before them. Thus, today.’Tis I, love Romney Leigh.’ ‘Forbear,’ I cried. ‘If here’s no Muse, still less is any saint;Nor even a friend, that Lady WaldemarShould make confessions’.... ‘That’s unkindly said. If no friend, what forbids to make a friendTo join to our confession ere we have done?I love your cousin. If it seems unwiseTo say so, it’s still foolisher (we’re frank)To feel so. My first husband left me young,And pretty enough, so please you, and rich enough,To keep my booth in May-fair with the restTo happy issues. There are marquisesWould serve seven years to call me wife, I know:And, after seven, I might consider it,For there’s some comfort in a marquisateWhen all’s said,—yes, but after the seven years;I, now, love Romney. You put up your lip,So like a Leigh! so like him!—Pardon me,I am well aware I do not derogate[105]In loving Romney Leigh. The name is good,The means are excellent; but the man, the man—Heaven help us both,—I am near as mad as he,In loving such an one.’ She slowly swung Her heavy ringlets till they touched her smile,As reasonably sorry for herself;And thus continued,— ‘Of a truth, Miss Leigh, I have not, without struggle, come to this.I took a master in the German tongue,I gamed a little, went to Paris twice;But, after all, this love!... you eat of love,And do as vile a thing as if you ateOf garlic—which, whatever else you eat,Tastes uniformly acrid, till your peachReminds you of your onion. Am I coarse?Well, love’s coarse, nature’s coarse—ah, there’s the rub!We fair fine ladies, who park out our livesFrom common sheep-paths, cannot help the crowsFrom flying over,—we’re as natural stillAs Blowsalinda. Drape us perfectlyIn Lyons’ velvet,—we are not, for that,Lay-figures, look you! we have hearts within,Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts,As ready for distracted ends and actsAs any distressed sempstress of them allThat Romney groans and toils for. We catch loveAnd other fevers, in the vulgar way.Love will not be outwitted by our wit,[106]Nor outrun by our equipages:—minePersisted, spite of efforts. All my cardsTurned up but Romney Leigh; my German stoppedAt germane Wertherism; my Paris roundsReturned me from the Champs Elysées justA ghost, and sighing like Dido’s. I came homeUncured,—convicted rather to myselfOf being in love ... in love! That’s coarse you’ll say.I’m talking garlic.’Coldly I replied.‘Apologise for atheism, not love!For me, I do believe in love, and God.I know my cousin: Lady WaldemarI know not: yet I say as much as this—Whoever loves him, let her not excuseBut cleanse herself, that, loving such a man,She may not do it with such unworthy loveHe cannot stoop and take it.’ ‘That is said Austerely, like a youthful prophetess,Who knits her brows across her pretty eyesTo keep them back from following the grey flightOf doves between the temple-columns. Dear,Be kinder with me. Let us two be friends.I’m a mere woman,—the more weak perhapsThrough being so proud; you’re better; as for him,He’s best. Indeed he builds his goodness upSo high, it topples down to the other side,And makes a sort of badness; there’s the worstI have to say against your cousin’s best![107]And so be mild, Aurora, with my worst,For his sake, if not mine.’ ‘I own myself Incredulous of confidence like thisAvailing him or you.’ ‘I, worthy of him? In your sense I am not so—let it pass.And yet I save him if I marry him;Let that pass too.’ ‘Pass, pass! we play police Upon my cousin’s life, to indicateWhat may or may not pass?’ I cried. ‘He knowsWhat’s worthy of him; the choice remains with him;And what he chooses, act or wife, I thinkI shall not call unworthy, I, for one.’
‘’Tis somewhat rashly said,’ she answered slow.‘Now let’s talk reason, though we talk of love.Your cousin Romney Leigh’s a monster! there,The word’s out fairly; let me prove the fact.We’ll take, say, that most perfect of antiques,They call the Genius of the Vatican,Which seems too beauteous to endure itselfIn this mixed world, and fasten it for onceUpon the torso of the Drunken Fawn,(Who might limp surely, if he did not dance,)Instead of Buonarroti’s mask: what then?We show the sort of monster Romney is,With god-like virtues and heroic aimsSubjoined to limping possibilities[108]Of mismade human nature. Grant the manTwice god-like, twice heroic,—still he limps,And here’s the point we come to.’ ‘Pardon me, But, Lady Waldemar, the point’s the thingWe never come to.’ ‘Caustic, insolent At need! I like you’—(there, she took my hands)‘And now my lioness, help Androcles,For all your roaring. Help me! for myselfI would not say so—but for him. He limpsSo certainly, he’ll fall into the pitA week hence,—so I lose him—so he is lost!And when he’s fairly married, he a Leigh,To a girl of doubtful life, undoubtful birth,Starved out in London, till her coarse-grained handsAre whiter than her morals,—you, for one,May call his choice most worthy.’ ‘Married! lost! He, ... Romney!’‘Ah, you’re moved at last,’ she said.‘These monsters, set out in the open sun,Of course throw monstrous shadows: those who thinkAwry, will scarce act straightly. Who but he?And who but you can wonder? He has been mad,The whole world knows, since first, a nominal man,He soured the proctors, tried the gownsmen’s wits,With equal scorn of triangles and wine,And took no honours, yet was honourable.They’ll tell you he lost count of Homer’s ships[109]In Melbourne’s poor-bills, Ashley’s factory bills,—Ignored the Aspasia we all dare to praise,For other women, dear, we could not nameBecause we’re decent. Well, he had some rightOn his side probably; men always have,Who go absurdly wrong. The living boorWho brews your ale, exceeds in vital worthDead Cæsar who ‘stops bungholes’ in the cask;And also, to do good is excellent,For persons of his income, even to boors:I sympathise with all such things. But heWent mad upon them ... madder and more mad,From college times to these,—as, going down hill,The faster still, the farther! you must knowYour Leigh by heart: he has sown his black young curlsWith bleaching cares of half a million menAlready. If you do not starve, or sin,You’re nothing to him. Pay the income-tax,And break your heart upon’t ... he’ll scarce be touched;But come upon the parish, qualifiedFor the parish stocks, and Romney will be thereTo call you brother, sister, or perhapsA tenderer name still. Had I any chanceWith Mister Leigh, who am Lady Waldemar,And never committed felony?’ ‘You speak Too bitterly,’ I said, ‘for the literal truth.’
‘The truth is bitter. Here’s a man who looksFor ever on the ground! you must be low[110]Or else a pictured ceiling overhead,Good painting thrown away. For me, I’ve doneWhat women may, (we’re somewhat limited,We modest women) but I’ve done my best.—How men are perjured when they swear our eyesHave meaning in them! they’re just blue or brown,—They just can drop their lids a little. In fact,Mine did more, for I read half Fourier through,Proudhon, Considerant, and Louis Blanc,With various others of his socialists;And if I had been a fathom less in love,Had cured myself with gaping. As it was,I quoted from them prettily enough,Perhaps, to make them sound half rationalTo a saner man than he, whene’er we talked,(For which I dodged occasion)—learnt by heartHis speeches in the Commons and elsewhereUpon the social question; heaped reportsOf wicked women and penitentiaries,On all my tables, with a place for Sue;And gave my name to swell subscription-listsToward keeping up the sun at nights in heaven,And other possible ends. All things I did,Except the impossible ... such as wearing gownsProvided by the Ten Hours’ movement! there,I stopped—we must stop somewhere. He, meanwhile,Unmoved as the Indian tortoise ’neath the world,Let all that noise go on upon his back:He would not disconcert or throw me out;’Twas well to see a woman of my class[111]With such a dawn of conscience. For the heart,Made firewood for his sake, and flaming upTo his very face ... he warmed his feet at it;But deigned to let my carriage stop him shortIn park or street,—he leaning on the door,With news of the committee which sate lastOn pickpockets at suck.’
‘You jest—you jest.’
‘As martyrs jest, dear, (if you’ve read their lives)Upon the axe which kills them. When all’s doneBy me, ... for him—you’ll ask him presentlyThe colour of my hair—he cannot tell,Or answers ‘dark’ at random,—while, be sure,He’s absolute on the figure, five or ten,Of my last subscription. Is it bearable,And I a woman?’‘Is it reparable,Though I were a man?’ ‘I know not. That’s to prove. But, first, this shameful marriage.’ ‘Ay?’ I cried, ‘Then really there’s a marriage?’ ‘Yesterday I held him fast upon it. ‘Mister Leigh,’Said I, ‘shut up a thing, it makes more noise.The boiling town keeps secrets ill; I’ve knownYours since last week. Forgive my knowledge so:You feel I’m not the woman of the world[112]The world thinks; you have borne with me before,And used me in your noble work, our work,And now you shall not cast me off becauseYou’re at the difficult point, the join. ’Tis trueEven I can scarce admit the cogencyOf such a marriage ... where you do not love,(Except the class) yet marry and throw your nameDown to the gutter, for a fire-escapeTo future generations! it’s sublime,A great example,—a true GenesisOf the opening social era. But take heed;This virtuous act must have a patent weight,Or loses half its virtue. Make it tell,Interpret it, and set in the light,And do not muffle it in a winter-cloakAs a vulgar bit of shame,—as if, at best,A Leigh had made a misalliance and blushedA Howard should know it.’ Then, I pressed him more—‘He would not choose,’ I said, ‘that even his kin, ...Aurora Leigh, even ... should conceive his actLess sacrifice, more appetite.’ At whichHe grew so pale, dear, ... to the lips, I knewI had touched him. ‘Do you know her,’ he enquired,‘My cousin Aurora?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, and lied,(But truly we all know you by your books)And so I offered to come straight to you,Explain the subject, justify the cause,And take you with me to St. Margaret’s CourtTo see this miracle, this Marian Erle,This drover’s daughter (she’s not pretty, he swears)[113]Upon whose finger, exquisitely prickedBy a hundred needles, we’re to hang the tie’Twixt class and class in England,—thus, indeed,By such a presence, yours and mine, to liftThe match up from the doubtful place. At onceHe thanked me, sighing ... murmured to himself,‘She’ll do it perhaps; she’s noble,’—thanked me twice,And promised, as my guerdon, to put offHis marriage for a month.’ I answered then. ‘I understand your drift imperfectly.You wish to lead me to my cousin’s betrothed,To touch her hand if worthy, and hold her handIf feeble, thus to justify his match.So be it then. But how this serves your ends,And how the strange confession of your loveServes this, I have to learn—I cannot see.’
She knit her restless forehead. ‘Then, despite,Aurora, that most radiant morning name,You’re dull as any London afternoon.I wanted time,—and gained it,—wanted you,And gain you! You will come and see the girl,In whose most prodigal eyes, the lineal pearlAnd pride of all your lofty race of LeighsIs destined to solution. AuthorisedBy sight and knowledge, then, you’ll speak your mind,And prove to Romney, in your brilliant way,He’ll wrong the people and posterity(Say such a thing is bad for you and me,[114]And you fail utterly,) by concluding thusAn execrable marriage. Break it up,Disroot it—peradventure, presently,We’ll plant a better fortune in its place.Be good to me, Aurora, scorn me lessFor saying the thing I should not. Well I knowI should not. I have kept, as others have,The iron rule of womanly reserveIn lip and life, till now: I wept a weekBefore I came here.’—Ending, she was pale;The last words, haughtily said, were tremulous.This palfrey pranced in harness, arched her neck,And, only by the foam upon the bit,You saw she champed against it. Then I rose. ‘I love love! truth’s no cleaner thing than love.I comprehend a love so fiery hotIt burns its natural veil of august shame,And stands sublimely in the nude, as chasteAs Medicean Venus. But I know,A love that burns through veils, will burn through masks,And shrivel up treachery. What, love and lie!Nay—go to the opera! your love’s curable.’
‘I love and lie?’ she said—‘I lie, forsooth?’And beat her taper foot upon the floor,And smiled against the shoe,—‘You’re hard, Miss Leigh,Unversed in current phrases.—Bowling-greensOf poets are fresher than the world’s highways;Forgive me that I rashly blew the dust[115]Which dims our hedges even, in your eyes,And vexed you so much. You find, probably,No evil in this marriage,—rather goodOf innocence, to pastoralise in song:You’ll give the bond your signature, perhaps,Beneath the lady’s mark,—indifferentThat Romney chose a wife, could write her name,In witnessing he loved her.’ ‘Loved!’ I cried; ‘Who tells you that he wants a wife to love?He gets a horse to use, not love, I think:There’s work for wives as well,—and after, straw,When men are liberal. For myself, you errSupposing power in me to break this match.I could not do it, to save Romney’s life;And would not, to save mine.’ ‘You take it so,’ She said; ‘farewell then. Write your books in peace,As far as may be for some secret stirNow obvious to me,—for, most obviously,In coming hither I mistook the way.’Whereat she touched my hand, and bent her head,And floated from me like a silent cloudThat leaves the sense of thunder. I drew breath As hard as in a sick room. After allThis woman breaks her social system upFor love, so counted—the love possibleTo such,—and lilies are still lilies, pulledBy smutty hands, though spotted from their white;[116]And thus she is better, haply, of her kind,Than Romney Leigh, who lives by diagrams,And crosses out the spontaneitiesOf all his individual, personal life,With formal universals. As if manWere set upon a high stool at a desk,To keep God’s books for Him, in red and black,And feel by millions! What, if even GodWere chiefly God by living out HimselfTo an individualism of the Infinite,Eterne, intense, profuse,—still throwing upThe golden spray of multitudinous worldsIn measure to the proclive weight and rushOf His inner nature,—the spontaneous loveStill proof and outflow of spontaneous life?Then live, Aurora! Two hours afterward, Within St. Margaret’s Court I stood alone,Close-veiled. A sick child, from an ague-fit,Whose wasted right hand gambled ’gainst his leftWith an old brass button, in a blot of sun,Jeered weakly at me as I passed acrossThe uneven pavement; while a woman, rougedUpon the angular cheek-bones, kerchief torn,Thin dangling locks, and flat lascivious mouth,Cursed at a window, both ways, in and out,By turns some bed-rid creature and myself,—‘Lie still there, mother! liker the dead dogYou’ll be to-morrow. What, we pick our way,Fine madam, with those damnable small feet![117]We cover up our face from doing good,As if it were our purse! What brings you here,My lady? is’t to find my gentlemanWho visits his tame pigeon in the eaves?Our cholera catch you with its cramps and spasms,And tumble up your good clothes, veil and all,And turn your whiteness dead-blue.’ I looked up;I think I could have walked through hell that day,And never flinched. ‘The dear Christ comfort you,’I said, ‘you must have been most miserableTo be so cruel,’—and I emptied outMy purse upon the stones: when, as I had castThe last charm in the cauldron, the whole courtWent boiling, bubbling up, from all its doorsAnd windows, with a hideous wail of laughsAnd roar of oaths, and blows perhaps ... I passedToo quickly for distinguishing ... and pushedA little side-door hanging on a hinge,And plunged into the dark, and groped and climbedThe long, steep, narrow stair ’twixt broken railAnd mildewed wall that let the plaster dropTo startle me in the blackness. Still, up, up!So high lived Romney’s bride. I paused at lastBefore a low door in the roof, and knocked;There came an answer like a hurried dove—‘So soon? can that be Mister Leigh? so soon?’And as I entered, an ineffable faceMet mine upon the threshold. ‘Oh, not you,Not you!’ ... the dropping of the voice implied,‘Then, if not you, for me not any one.’[118]I looked her in the eyes, and held her hands,And said, ‘I am his cousin,—Romney Leigh’s;And here I’m come to see my cousin too.’She touched me with her face and with her voice,This daughter of the people. Such soft flowers,From such rough roots? the people, under there,Can sin so, curse so, look so, smell so ... faugh!Yet have such daughters? No wise beautiful Was Marian Erle. She was not white nor brown,But could look either, like a mist that changedAccording to being shone on more or less.The hair, too, ran its opulence of curlsIn doubt ’twixt dark and bright, nor left you clearTo name the colour. Too much hair perhaps(I’ll name a fault here) for so small a head,Which seemed to droop on that side and on this,As a full-blown rose uneasy with its weight,Though not a breath should trouble it. Again,The dimple in the cheek had better goneWith redder, fuller rounds: and somewhat largeThe mouth was, though the milky little teethDissolved it to so infantine a smile!For soon it smiled at me; the eyes smiled too,But ’twas as if remembering they had wept,And knowing they should, some day, weep again.
We talked. She told me all her story out,Which I’ll re-tell with fuller utterance,As coloured and confirmed in aftertimes[119]By others, and herself too. Marian ErleWas born upon the ledge of Malvern HillTo eastward, in a hut, built up at nightTo evade the landlord’s eye, of mud and turf,Still liable, if once he looked that way,To being straight levelled, scattered by his foot,Like any other anthill. Born, I say;God sent her to his world, commissioned right,Her human testimonials fully signed,Not scant in soul—complete in lineaments;But others had to swindle her a placeTo wail in when she had come. No place for her,By man’s law! born an outlaw, was this babe.Her first cry in our strange and strangling air,When cast in spasms out by the shuddering womb,Was wrong against the social code,—forced wrong.What business had the baby to cry there?
I tell her story and grow passionate.She, Marian, did not tell it so, but usedMeek words that made no wonder of herselfFor being so sad a creature. ‘Mister LeighConsidered truly that such things should change.They will, in heaven—but meantime, on the earth,There’s none can like a nettle as a pink,Except himself. We’re nettles, some of us,And give offence by the act of springing up;And, if we leave the damp side of the wall,The hoes, of course, are on us.’ So she said.[120]Her father earned his life by random jobsDespised by steadier workmen—keeping swineOn commons, picking hops, or hurrying onThe harvest at wet seasons,—or, at need,Assisting the Welsh drovers, when a droveOf startled horses plunged into the mistBelow the mountain-road, and sowed the windWith wandering neighings. In between the gapsOf such irregular work, he drank and slept,And cursed his wife because, the pence being out,She could not buy more drink. At which she turned,(The worm) and beat her baby in revengeFor her own broken heart. There’s not a crimeBut takes its proper change out still in crime,If once rung on the counter of this world;Let sinners look to it. Yet the outcast child, For whom the very mother’s face forewentThe mother’s special patience, lived and grew;Learnt early to cry low, and walk alone,With that pathetic vacillating rollOf the infant body on the uncertain feet,(The earth being felt unstable ground so soon)At which most women’s arms unclose at onceWith irrepressive instinct. Thus, at three,This poor weaned kid would run off from the fold,This babe would steal off from the mother’s chair,And, creeping through the golden walls of gorse,Would find some keyhole toward the secresyOf Heaven’s high blue, and, nestling down, peer out—[121]Oh, not to catch the angels at their games,She had never heard of angels,—but to gazeShe knew not why, to see she knew not what,A-hungering outward from the barren earthFor something like a joy. She liked, she said,To dazzle black her sight against the sky,For then, it seemed, some grand blind Love came down,And groped her out, and clasped her with a kiss;She learnt God that way, and was beat for itWhenever she went home,—yet came again,As surely as the trapped hare, getting free,Returns to his form. This grand blind Love, she said,This skyey father and mother both in one,Instructed her and civilised her moreThan even the Sunday-school did afterward,To which a lady sent her to learn booksAnd sit upon a long bench in a rowWith other children. Well, she laughed sometimesTo see them laugh and laugh, and moil their texts;But ofter she was sorrowful with noise,And wondered if their mothers beat them hard,That ever they should laugh so. There was oneShe loved indeed,—Rose Bell, a seven years’ child,So pretty and clever, who read syllablesWhen Marian was at letters; she would laughAt nothing—hold your finger up, she laughed,Then shook her curls down on her eyes and mouthTo hide her make-mirth from the schoolmaster.And Rose’s pelting glee, as frank as rainOn cherry-blossoms, brightened Marian too,[122]To see another merry whom she loved.She whispered once (the children side by side,With mutual arms entwined about their necks)‘Your mother lets you laugh so?’ ‘Ay,’ said Rose,‘She lets me. She was dug into the groundSix years since, I being but a yearling wean.Such mothers let us play and lose our time,And never scold nor beat us! don’t you wishYou had one like that?’ There, Marian breaking offLooked suddenly in my face. ‘Poor Rose,’ said she,‘I heard her laugh last night in Oxford Street.I’d pour out half my blood to stop that laugh,—Poor Rose, poor Rose!’ said Marian. She resumed. It tried her, when she had learnt at Sunday-schoolWhat God was, what he wanted from us all,And how, in choosing sin, we vexed the Christ,To go straight home and hear her father pullThe Name down on us from the thunder-shelf,Then drink away his soul into the darkFrom seeing judgment. Father, mother, home,Were God and heaven reversed to her: the moreShe knew of Right, the more she guessed their wrong;Her price paid down for knowledge, was to knowThe vileness of her kindred: through her heart,Her filial and tormented heart, henceforth,They struck their blows at virtue. Oh, ’tis hardTo learn you have a father up in heavenBy a gathering certain sense of being, on earth,Still worse than orphaned: ’tis too heavy a grief,[123]The having to thank God for such a joy!
And so passed Marian’s life from year to year.Her parents took her with them when they tramped,Dodged lanes and heaths, frequented towns and fairs,And once went farther and saw Manchester,And once the sea, that blue end of the world,That fair scroll-finis of a wicked book,—And twice a prison,—back at intervals,Returning to the hills. Hills draw like heaven,And stronger sometimes, holding out their handsTo pull you from the vile flats up to them;And though, perhaps, these strollers still strolled back,As sheep do, simply that they knew the way,They certainly felt bettered unawaresEmerging from the social smut of townsTo wipe their feet clean on the mountain-turf.In which long wanderings, Marian lived and learned,Endured and learned. The people on the roadsWould stop and ask her how her eyes outgrewHer cheeks, and if she meant to lodge the birdsIn all that hair; and then they lifted her,The miller in his cart, a mile or twain,The butcher’s boy on horseback. Often, too,The pedlar stopped, and tapped her on the headWith absolute forefinger, brown and ringed,And asked if peradventure she could read;And when she answered ‘ay,’ would toss her downSome stray odd volume from his heavy pack,A Thomson’s Seasons, mulcted of the Spring,[124]Or half a play of Shakspeare’s, torn across:(She had to guess the bottom of a pageBy just the top sometimes,—as difficult,As, sitting on the moon, to guess the earth!)Or else a sheaf of leaves (for that small Ruth’sSmall gleanings) torn out from the heart of books,From Churchyard Elegies and Edens Lost,From Burns, and Bunyan, Selkirk, and Tom Jones.’Twas somewhat hard to keep the things distinct,And oft the jangling influence jarred the childLike looking at a sunset full of graceThrough a pothouse window while the drunken oathsWent on behind her; but she weeded outHer book-leaves, threw away the leaves that hurt,(First tore them small, that none should find a word)And made a nosegay of the sweet and goodTo fold within her breast, and pore uponAt broken moments of the noontide glare,When leave was given her to untie her cloakAnd rest upon the dusty roadside bankFrom the highway’s dust. Or oft, the journey done,Some city friend would lead her by the handTo hear a lecture at an institute:And thus she had grown, this Marian Erle of ours,To no book-learning,—she was ignorantOf authors,—not in earshot of the thingsOut-spoken o’er the heads of common men,By men who are uncommon,—but withinThe cadenced hum of such, and capableOf catching from the fringes of the wind[125]Some fragmentary phrases, here and there,Of that fine music,—which, being carried inTo her soul, had reproduced itself afreshIn finer motions of the lips and lids.
She said, in speaking of it, ‘If a flowerWere thrown you out of heaven at intervals,You’d soon attain to a trick of looking up,—And so with her.’ She counted me her years,Till I felt old; and then she counted meHer sorrowful pleasures, till I felt ashamed.She told me she was almost glad and calmOn such and such a season; sate and sewed,With no one to break up her crystal thoughts;While rhymes from lovely poems span aroundTheir ringing circles of ecstatic tune,Beneath the moistened finger of the Hour.Her parents called her a strange, sickly child,Not good for much, and given to sulk and stare,And smile into the hedges and the clouds,And tremble if one shook her from her fitBy any blow, or word even. Out-door jobsWent ill with her; and household quiet work,She was not born to. Had they kept the north,They might have had their pennyworth out of her,Like other parents, in the factories;(Your children work for you, not you for them,Or else they better had been choked with airThe first breath drawn;) but, in this tramping life,Was nothing to be done with such a child,[126]But tramp and tramp. And yet she knitted hoseNot ill, and was not dull at needlework;And all the country people gave her penceFor darning stockings past their natural age,And patching petticoats from old to new,And other light work done for thrifty wives.
One day, said Marian,—the sun shone that day—Her mother had been badly beat, and feltThe bruises sore about her wretched soul,(That must have been): she came in suddenly,And snatching, in a sort of breathless rage,Her daughter’s headgear comb, let down the hairUpon her, like a sudden waterfall,And drew her drenched and passive, by the arm,Outside the hut they lived in. When the childCould clear her blinded face from all that streamOf tresses ... there, a man stood, with beast’s eyes,That seemed as they would swallow her alive,Complete in body and spirit, hair and all,—With burning stertorous breath that hurt her cheek,He breathed so near. The mother held her tight,Saying hard between her teeth—‘Why wench, why wench,The squire speaks to you now—the squire’s too good;He means to set you up, and comfort us.Be mannerly at least.’ The child turned round,And looked up piteous in the mother’s face,(Be sure that mother’s death-bed will not wantAnother devil to damn, than such a look) ...‘Oh, mother!’ then, with desperate glance to heaven,[127]‘God, free me from my mother,’ she shrieked out,‘These mothers are too dreadful.’ And, with forceAs passionate as fear, she tore her handsLike lilies from the rocks, from hers and his,And sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep,Away from both—away, if possible,As far as God,—away! They yelled at her,As famished hounds at a hare. She heard them yell,She felt her name hiss after her from the hills,Like shot from guns. On, on. And now she had castThe voices off with the uplands. On. Mad fearWas running in her feet and killing the ground;The white roads curled as if she burnt them up,The green fields melted, wayside trees fell backTo make room for her. Then, her head grew vexed,Trees, fields, turned on her, and ran after her;She heard the quick pants of the hills behind,Their keen air pricked her neck. She had lost her feet,Could run no more, yet, somehow, went as fast,—The horizon, red ’twixt steeples in the east,So sucked her forward, forward, while her heartKept swelling, swelling, till it swelled so bigIt seemed to fill her body; then it burst,And overflowed the world and swamped the light,‘And now I am dead and safe,’ thought Marian Erle—She had dropped, she had fainted. When the sense returned, The night had passed—not life’s night. She was ’wareOf heavy tumbling motions, creaking wheels,The driver shouting to the lazy team[128]That swung their rankling bells against her brain;While, through the waggon’s coverture and chinks,The cruel yellow morning pecked at herAlive or dead, upon the straw inside,—At which her soul ached back into the darkAnd prayed, ‘no more of that.’ A waggonerHad found her in a ditch beneath the moon,As white as moonshine, save for the oozing blood.At first he thought her dead; but when he had wipedThe mouth and heard it sigh, he raised her up,And laid her in his waggon in the straw,And so conveyed her to the distant townTo which his business called himself, and leftThat heap of misery at the hospital.
She stirred;—the place seemed new and strange as death.The white strait bed, with others strait and white,Like graves dug side by side, at measured lengths,And quiet people walking in and outWith wonderful low voices and soft steps,And apparitional equal care for each,Astonished her with order, silence, law:And when a gentle hand held out a cup,She took it, as you do at sacrament,Half awed, half melted,—not being used, indeed,To so much love as makes the form of loveAnd courtesy of manners. Delicate drinksAnd rare white bread, to which some dying eyesWere turned in observation. O my God,How sick we must be, ere we make men just![129]I think it frets the saints in heaven to seeHow many desolate creatures on the earthHave learnt the simple dues of fellowshipAnd social comfort, in a hospital,As Marian did. She lay there, stunned, half tranced,And wished, at intervals of growing sense,She might be sicker yet, if sickness madeThe world so marvellous kind, the air so hushed,And all her wake-time quiet as a sleep;For now she understood, (as such things were)How sickness ended very oft in heaven,Among the unspoken raptures. Yet more sick,And surelier happy. Then she dropped her lids,And, folding up her hands as flowers at night,Would lose no moment of the blessed time.
She lay and seethed in fever many weeks,But youth was strong and overcame the test;Revolted soul and flesh were reconciledAnd fetched back to the necessary dayAnd daylight duties. She could creep aboutThe long bare rooms, and stare out drearilyFrom any narrow window on the street,Till some one, who had nursed her as a friend,Said coldly to her, as an enemy,‘She had leave to go next week, being well enough,’While only her heart ached. ‘Go next week,’ thought she,‘Next week! how would it be with her next week,Let out into that terrible street alone[130]Among the pushing people, ... to go ... where?’
One day, the last before the dreaded last,Among the convalescents, like herselfPrepared to go next morning, she sate dumb,And heard half absently the women talk,How one was famished for her baby’s cheeks—‘The little wretch would know her! a year old,And lively, like his father!’ one was keenTo get to work, and fill some clamorous mouths;And one was tender for her dear goodmanWho had missed her sorely,—and one, querulous ...‘Would pay those scandalous neighbours who had daredTo talk about her as already dead,’—And one was proud ... ‘and if her sweetheart LukeHad left her for a ruddier face than hers,(The gossip would be seen through at a glance)Sweet riddance of such sweethearts—let him hang!’Twere good to have been as sick for such an end.’
And while they talked, and Marian felt the worseFor having missed the worst of all their wrongs,A visitor was ushered through the wardsAnd paused among the talkers. ‘When he looked,It was as if he spoke, and when he spokeHe sang perhaps,’ said Marian; ‘could she tell?She only knew’ (so much she had chronicled,As seraphs might, the making of the sun)‘That he who came and spake, was Romney Leigh,And then, and there, she saw and heard him first.’[131]And when it was her turn to have the faceUpon her,—all those buzzing pallid lipsBeing satisfied with comfort—when he changedTo Marian, saying ‘And you? you’re going, where?’—She, moveless as a worm beneath a stoneWhich some one’s stumbling foot has spurned aside,Writhed suddenly, astonished with the light,And breaking into sobs cried, ‘Where I go?None asked me till this moment. Can I sayWhere I go? when it has not seemed worth whileTo God himself, who thinks of every one,To think of me, and fix where I shall go?’
‘So young,’ he gently asked her, ‘you have lostYour father and your mother?’ ‘Both,’ she said, ‘Both lost! my father was burnt up with ginOr ever I sucked milk, and so is lost.My mother sold me to a man last month,And so my mother’s lost, ’tis manifest.And I, who fled from her for miles and miles,As if I had caught sight of the fires of hellThrough some wild gap, (she was my mother, sir)It seems I shall be lost too, presently,And so we end, all three of us.’ ‘Poor child!’ He said,—with such a pity in his voice,It soothed her more than her own tears,—‘poor child!’Tis simple that betrayal by mother’s loveShould bring despair of God’s too. Yet be taught;[132]He’s better to us than many mothers are,And children cannot wander beyond reachOf the sweep of his white raiment. Touch and hold!And if you weep still, weep where John was laidWhile Jesus loved him.’ ‘She could say the words,’ She told me, ‘exactly as he uttered themA year back, ... since, in any doubt or dark,They came out like the stars, and shone on herWith just their comfort. Common words, perhaps;The ministers in church might say the same;But he, he made the church with what he spoke,—The difference was the miracle,’ said she.
Then catching up her smile to ravishment,She added quickly, ‘I repeat his words,But not his tones: can any one repeatThe music of an organ, out of church?And when he said ‘poor child,’ I shut my eyesTo feel how tenderly his voice broke through,As the ointment-box broke on the Holy feetTo let out the rich medicative nard.’
She told me how he had raised and rescued herWith reverent pity, as, in touching grief,He touched the wounds of Christ,—and made her feelMore self-respecting. Hope, he called, beliefIn God,—work, worship ... therefore let us pray!And thus, to snatch her soul from atheism,And keep it stainless from her mother’s face,[133]He sent her to a famous sempstress-houseFar off in London, there to work and hope.
With that, they parted. She kept sight of Heaven,But not of Romney. He had good to doTo others: through the days and through the nights,She sewed and sewed and sewed. She drooped sometimes,And wondered, while, along the tawny light,She struck the new thread into her needle’s eye,How people, without mothers on the hills,Could choose the town to live in!—then she drewThe stitch, and mused how Romney’s face would look,And if ’twere likely he’d remember hers,When they two had their meeting after death.[134]
[135]
FOURTH BOOK.
They met still sooner. ’Twas a year from thenceWhen Lucy Gresham, the sick sempstress girl,Who sewed by Marian’s chair so still and quick,And leant her head upon the back to coughMore freely when, the mistress turning round,The others took occasion to laugh out,—Gave up at last. Among the workers, spokeA bold girl with black eyebrows and red lips,—‘You know the news? Who’s dying, do you think?Our Lucy Gresham. I expected itAs little as Nell Hart’s wedding. Blush not, Nell,Thy curls be red enough without thy cheeks;And, some day, there’ll be found a man to doteOn red curls.—Lucy Gresham swooned last night,Dropped sudden in the street while going home;And now the baker says, who took her upAnd laid her by her grandmother in bed,He’ll give her a week to die in. Pass the silk.Let’s hope he gave her a loaf too, within reach,For otherwise they’ll starve before they die,[136]That funny pair of bedfellows! Miss Bell,I’ll thank you for the scissors. The old croneIs paralytic—that’s the reason whyOur Lucy’s thread went faster than her breath,Which went too quick, we all know. Marian Erle!Why, Marian Erle, you’re not the fool to cry?Your tears spoil Lady Waldemar’s new dress,You piece of pity!’ Marian rose up straight, And, breaking through the talk and through the work,Went outward, in the face of their surprise,To Lucy’s home, to nurse her back to lifeOr down to death. She knew, by such an act,All place and grace were forfeit in the house,Whose mistress would supply the missing handWith necessary, not inhuman haste,And take no blame. But pity, too, had dues:She could not leave a solitary soulTo founder in the dark, while she sate stillAnd lavished stitches on a lady’s hemAs if no other work were paramount.‘Why, God,’ thought Marian, ‘has a missing handThis moment; Lucy wants a drink, perhaps.Let others miss me! never miss me, God!’
So Marian sate by Lucy’s bed, contentWith duty, and was strong, for recompense,To hold the lamp of human love arm-highTo catch the death-strained eyes and comfort them,Until the angels, on the luminous side[137]Of death, had got theirs ready. And she said,When Lucy thanked her sometimes, called her kind,It touched her strangely. ‘Marian Erle, called kind!What, Marian, beaten and sold, who could not die!’Tis verily good fortune to be kind.Ah, you,’ she said, ‘who are born to such a grace,Be sorry for the unlicensed class, the poor,Reduced to think the best good fortune meansThat others, simply, should be kind to them.’
From sleep to sleep while Lucy slid awaySo gently, like the light upon a hill,Of which none names the moment that it goes,Though all see when ’tis gone,—a man came inAnd stood beside the bed. The old idiot wretchScreamed feebly, like a baby overlain,‘Sir, sir, you won’t mistake me for the corpse?Don’t look at me, sir! never bury me!Although I lie here, I’m alive as you,Except my legs and arms,—I eat and drink,And understand,—(that you’re the gentlemanWho fits the funerals up, Heaven speed you, sir,)And certainly I should be livelier stillIf Lucy here ... sir, Lucy is the corpse ...Had worked more properly to buy me wine:But Lucy, sir, was always slow at work,I shan’t lose much by Lucy. Marian Erle,Speak up and show the gentleman the corpse.’
And then a voice said, ‘Marian Erle.’ She rose;[138]It was the hour for angels—there, stood hers!She scarcely marvelled to see Romney Leigh.As light November snows to empty nests,As grass to graves, as moss to mildewed stones,As July suns to ruins, through the rents,As ministering spirits to mourners, through a loss,As Heaven itself to men, through pangs of death,He came uncalled wherever grief had come.‘And so,’ said Marian Erle, ‘we met anew,’And added softly, ‘so, we shall not part.’
He was not angry that she had left the houseWherein he placed her. Well—she had feared it mightHave vexed him. Also, when he found her setOn keeping, though the dead was out of sight,That half-dead, half-live body left behindWith cankerous heart and flesh,—which took your bestAnd cursed you for the little good it did,(Could any leave the bedrid wretch alone,So joyless, she was thankless even to God,Much less to you?) he did not say ’twas well,Yet Marian thought he did not take it ill,—Since day by day he came, and, every day,She felt within his utterance and his eyesA closer, tenderer presence of the soul,Until at last he said, ‘We shall not part.’
On that same day, was Marian’s work complete:She had smoothed the empty bed, and swept the floorOf coffin sawdust, set the chairs anew[139]The dead had ended gossip in, and stoodIn that poor room so cold and orderly,The door-key in her hand, prepared to goAs they had, howbeit not their way. He spoke.
‘Dear Marian, of one clay God made us all,And though men push and poke and paddle in’t(As children play at fashioning dirt-pies)And call their fancies by the name of facts,Assuming difference, lordship, privilege,When all’s plain dirt,—they come back to it at last;The first grave-digger proves it with a spade,And pats all even. Need we wait for this,You, Marian, and I, Romney?’ She, at that, Looked blindly in his face, as when one looksThrough driving autumn-rains to find the sky.He went on speaking. ‘Marian, I being born What men call noble, and you, issued fromThe noble people,—though the tyrannous swordWhich pierced Christ’s heart, has cleft the world in twain’Twixt class and class, opposing rich to poor,—Shall we keep parted? Not so. Let us leanAnd strain together rather, each to each,Compress the red lips of this gaping wound,As far as two souls can,—ay, lean and league,I, from my superabundance,—from your want,You,—joining in a protest ’gainst the wrongOn both sides!’—[140] All the rest, he held her hand In speaking, which confused the sense of much;Her heart, against his words, beat out so thick,They might as well be written on the dustWhere some poor bird, escaping from hawk’s beak,Has dropped, and beats its shuddering wings,—the linesAre rubbed so,—yet ’twas something like to this,—‘That they two, standing at the two extremesOf social classes, had received one seal,Been dedicate and drawn beyond themselvesTo mercy and ministration,—he, indeed,Through what he knew, and she, through what she felt,He, by man’s conscience, she, by woman’s heart,Relinquishing their several ’vantage postsOf wealthy ease and honourable toil,To work with God at love. And, since God willedThat, putting out his hand to touch this ark,He found a woman’s hand there, he’d acceptThe sign too, hold the tender fingers fast,And say, ‘My fellow-worker, be my wife!’’
She told the tale with simple, rustic turns,—Strong leaps of meaning in her sudden eyesThat took the gaps of any imperfect phraseOf the unschooled speaker: I have rather writThe thing I understood so, than the thingI heard so. And I cannot render rightHer quick gesticulation, wild yet soft,Self-startled from the habitual mood she used,Half sad, half languid,—like dumb creatures (now[141]A rustling bird, and now a wandering deer,Or squirrel against the oak-gloom flashing upHis sidelong burnished head, in just her wayOf savage spontaneity,) that stirAbruptly the green silence of the woods,And make it stranger, holier, more profound;As Nature’s general heart confessed itselfOf life, and then fell backward on repose.
I kissed the lips that ended.—‘So indeedHe loves you, Marian?’ ‘Loves me!’ She looked up With a child’s wonder when you ask him firstWho made the sun—a puzzled blush, that grew,Then broke off in a rapid radiant smileOf sure solution. ‘Loves me! he loves all,—And me, of course. He had not asked me elseTo work with him for ever, and be his wife.’
Her words reproved me. This perhaps was love—To have its hands too full of gifts to give,For putting out a hand to take a gift;To love so much, the perfect round of loveIncludes, in strict conclusion, the being loved;As Eden-dew went up and fell again,Enough for watering Eden. ObviouslyShe had not thought about his love at all:The cataracts of her soul had poured themselves,And risen self-crowned in rainbow: would she askWho crowned her?—it sufficed that she was crowned.[142]With women of my class, ’tis otherwise:We haggle for the small change of our gold,And so much love, accord, for so much love,Rialto-prices. Are we therefore wrong?If marriage be a contract, look to it then,Contracting parties should be equal, just;But if, a simple fealty on one side,A mere religion,—right to give, is all,And certain brides of Europe duly askTo mount the pile, as Indian widows do,The spices of their tender youth heaped up,The jewels of their gracious virtues worn,More gems, more glory,—to consume entireFor a living husband! as the man’s alive,Not dead,—the woman’s duty, by so much,Advanced in England, beyond Hindostan.
I sate there, musing, till she touched my handWith hers, as softly as a strange white birdShe feared to startle in touching. ‘You are kind.But are you, peradventure, vexed at heartBecause your cousin takes me for a wife?I know I am not worthy—nay, in truth,I’m glad on’t, since, for that, he chooses me.He likes the poor things of the world the best;I would not therefore, if I could, be rich.It pleasures him to stoop for buttercups;I would not be a rose upon the wallA queen might stop at, near the palace-door,To say to a courtier, ‘Pluck that rose for me,[143]‘It’s prettier than the rest,’ O Romney Leigh!I’d rather far be trodden by his foot,Than lie in a great queen’s bosom.’ Out of breath She paused.‘Sweet Marian, do you disavowThe roses with that face?’ She dropt her head, As if the wind had caught that flower of her,And bent it in the garden,—then looked upWith grave assurance. ‘Well, you think me bold!But so we all are, when we’re praying God.And if I’m bold—yet, lady, credit me,That, since I know myself for what I am,Much fitter for his handmaid than his wife,I’ll prove the handmaid and the wife at once,Serve tenderly, and love obediently,And be a worthier mate, perhaps, than someWho are wooed in silk among their learned books;While I shall set myself to read his eyes,Till such grow plainer to me than the FrenchTo wisest ladies. Do you think I’ll missA letter, in the spelling of his mind?No more than they do, when they sit and writeTheir flying words with flickering wild-fowl tails,Nor ever pause to ask how many ts,Should that be y or i—they know’t so well:I’ve seen them writing, when I brought a dressAnd waited,—floating out their soft white handsOn shining paper. But they’re hard sometimes,[144]For all those hands!—we’ve used out many nights,And worn the yellow daylight into shredsWhich flapped and shivered down our aching eyesTill night appeared more tolerable, justThat pretty ladies might look beautiful,Who said at last ... ‘You’re lazy in that house!‘You’re slow in sending home the work,—I countI’ve waited near an hour for’t.’ Pardon me,—I do not blame them, madam, nor misprize;They are fair and gracious; ay, but not like you,Since none but you has Mister Leigh’s own bloodBoth noble and gentle,—and, without it ... well,They are fair, I said; so fair, it scarce seems strangeThat, flashing out in any looking-glassThe wonder of their glorious brows and breasts,They are charmed so, they forget to look behindAnd mark how pale we’ve grown, we pitifulRemainders of the world. And so, perhaps,If Mister Leigh had chosen a wife from these,She might ... although he’s better than her best,And dearly she would know it ... steal a thoughtWhich should be all his, an eye-glance from his face,To plunge into the mirror opposite,In search of her own beauty’s pearl: while I....Ah, dearest lady, serge will outweigh silkFor winter-wear, when bodies feel a-cold,And I’ll be a true wife to your cousin Leigh.’
Before I answered, he was there himself.I think he had been standing in the room,[145]And listened probably to half her talk,Arrested, turned to stone,—as white as stone.Will tender sayings make men look so white?He loves her then profoundly. ‘You are here, Aurora? Here I meet you!’—We clasped hands.
‘Even so, dear Romney. Lady WaldemarHas sent me in haste to find a cousin of mineWho shall be.’
‘Lady Waldemar is good.’
‘Here’s one, at least, who is good,’ I sighed, and touchedPoor Marian’s happy head, as, doglike, sheMost passionately patient, waited on,A-tremble for her turn of greeting words;‘I’ve sate a full hour with your Marian Erle,And learnt the thing by heart,—and, from my heart,Am therefore competent to give you thanksFor such a cousin.’ ‘You accept at last A gift from me, Aurora, without scorn?At last I please you?’—How his voice was changed!
‘You cannot please a woman against her will,And once you vexed me. Shall we speak of that?We’ll say, then, you were noble in it all,And I not ignorant—let it pass. And now,You please me, Romney, when you please yourself;[146]So, please you, be fanatical in love,And I’m well pleased. Ah, cousin! at the old hall,Among the gallery portraits of our Leighs,We shall not find a sweeter signoryThan this pure forehead’s.’ Not a word he said. How arrogant men are!—Even philanthropists,Who try to take a wife up in the wayThey put down a subscription-cheque,—if onceShe turns and says, ‘I will not tax you so,Most charitable sir,’—feel ill at ease,As though she had wronged them somehow. I supposeWe women should remember what we are,And not throw back an obolus inscribedWith Cæsar’s image, lightly. I resumed.
‘It strikes me, some of those sublime VandykesWere not too proud, to make good saints in heaven;And, if so, then they’re not too proud to-dayTo bow down (now the ruffs are off their necks)And own this good, true, noble Marian, ... yours,And mine, I’ll say!—For poets (bear the word)Half-poets even, are still whole democrats,—Oh, not that we’re disloyal to the high,But loyal to the low, and cognisantOf the less scrutable majesties. For me,I comprehend your choice—I justifyYour right in choosing.’ ‘No, no, no,’ he sighed, With a sort of melancholy impatient scorn,[147]As some grown man, who never had a child,Puts by some child who plays at being a man;—‘You did not, do not, cannot comprehendMy choice, my ends, my motives, nor myself:No matter now—we’ll let it pass, you say.I thank you for your generous cousinshipWhich helps this present; I accept for herYour favourable thoughts. We’re fallen on days,We two, who are not poets, when to wedRequires less mutual love than common love,For two together to bear out at onceUpon the loveless many. Work in pairs,In galley-couplings or in marriage-rings,The difference lies in the honour, not the work,—And such we’re bound to, I and she. But love,(You poets are benighted in this age;The hour’s too late for catching even moths,You’ve gnats instead,) love!—love’s fool-paradiseIs out of date, like Adam’s. Set a swanTo swim the Trenton, rather than true loveTo float its fabulous plumage safely downThe cataracts of this loud transition-time,—Whose roar, for ever, henceforth, in my ears,Must keep me deaf to music.’ There, I turned And kissed poor Marian, out of discontent.The man had baffled, chafed me, till I flungFor refuge to the woman,—as, sometimes,Impatient of some crowded room’s close smell,You throw a window open, and lean out[148]To breathe a long breath in the dewy night,And cool your angry forehead. She, at least,Was not built up, as walls are, brick by brick;Each fancy squared, each feeling ranged by line,The very heat of burning youth appliedTo indurate forms and systems! excellent bricks,A well-built wall,—which stops you on the road,And, into which, you cannot see an inchAlthough you beat your head against it—pshaw!
‘Adieu,’ I said, ‘for this time, cousins both;And, cousin Romney, pardon me the word,Be happy!—oh, in some esoteric senseOf course!—I mean no harm in wishing well.Adieu, my Marian:—may she come to me,Dear Romney, and be married from my house?It is not part of your philosophyTo keep your bird upon the blackthorn?’ ‘Ay,’ He answered, ‘but it is:—I take my wifeDirectly from the people,—and she comes,As Austria’s daughter to imperial France,Betwixt her eagles, blinking not her race,From Margaret’s Court at garret-height, to meetAnd wed me at St. James’s, nor put offHer gown of serge for that. The things we do,We do: we’ll wear no mask, as if we blushed.’
‘Dear Romney, you’re the poet,’ I replied,—But felt my smile too mournful for my word,[149]And turned and went. Ay, masks, I thought,—bewareOf tragic masks, we tie before the glass,Uplifted on the cothurn half a yardAbove the natural stature! we would playHeroic parts to ourselves,—and end, perhaps,As impotently as Athenian wivesWho shrieked in fits at the Eumenides.
His foot pursued me down the stair. ‘At least,You’ll suffer me to walk with you beyondThese hideous streets, these graves, where men alive,Packed close with earthworms, burr unconsciouslyAbout the plague that slew them; let me go.The very women pelt their souls in mudAt any woman who walks here alone.How came you here alone?—you are ignorant.’
We had a strange and melancholy walk:The night came drizzling downward in dark rain;And, as we walked, the colour of the time,The act, the presence, my hand upon his arm,His voice in my ear, and mine to my own sense,Appeared unnatural. We talked modern books,And daily papers; Spanish marriage-schemes,And English climate—was’t so cold last year?And will the wind change by to-morrow morn?Can Guizot stand? is London full? is tradeCompetitive? has Dickens turned his hingeA-pinch upon the fingers of the great?And are potatoes to grow mythical[150]Like moly? will the apple die out too?Which way is the wind to-night? south-east? due east?We talked on fast, while every common wordSeemed tangled with the thunder at one end,And ready to pull down upon our headsA terror out of sight. And yet to pauseWere surelier mortal: we tore greedily upAll silence, all the innocent breathing-points,As if, like pale conspirators in haste,We tore up papers where our signaturesImperilled us to an ugly shame or death.
I cannot tell you why it was. ’Tis plainWe had not loved nor hated: wherefore dreadTo spill gunpowder on ground safe from fire?Perhaps we had lived too closely, to divergeSo absolutely: leave two clocks, they say,Wound up to different hours, upon one shelf,And slowly, through the interior wheels of each,The blind mechanic motion sets itselfA-throb, to feel out for the mutual time.It was not so with us, indeed. While heStruck midnight, I kept striking six at dawn,While he marked judgment, I, redemption-day;And such exception to a general law,Imperious upon inert matter even,Might make us, each to either, insecure,A beckoning mystery, or a troubling fear.
I mind me, when we parted at the door,[151]How strange his good-night sounded,—like good-nightBeside a deathbed, where the morrow’s sunIs sure to come too late for more good-days:—And all that night I thought.... ‘Good-night,’ said he.
And so, a month passed. Let me set it downAt once,—I have been wrong, I have been wrong.We are wrong always, when we think too muchOf what we think or are; albeit our thoughtsBe verily bitter as self-sacrifice,We’re no less selfish. If we sleep on rocksOr roses, sleeping past the hour of noonWe’re lazy. This I write against myself.I had done a duty in the visit paidTo Marian, and was ready otherwiseTo give the witness of my presence and nameWhenever she should marry.—Which, I thought,Sufficed. I even had cast into the scaleAn overweight of justice toward the match;The Lady Waldemar had missed her tool,Had broken it in the lock as being too straightFor a crooked purpose, while poor Marian ErleMissed nothing in my accents or my acts:I had not been ungenerous on the whole,Nor yet untender; so, enough. I feltTired, overworked: this marriage somewhat jarred;Or, if it did not, all the bridal noise ...The pricking of the map of life with pins,In schemes of ... ‘Here we’ll go,’ and ‘There we’ll stay,’And ‘Everywhere we’ll prosper in our love,’[152]Was scarce my business. Let them order it;Who else should care? I threw myself aside,As one who had done her work and shuts her eyesTo rest the better. I, who should have known, Forereckoned mischief! Where we disavowBeing keeper to our brother, we’re his Cain.
I might have held that poor child to my heartA little longer! ’twould have hurt me muchTo have hastened by its beats the marriage-day,And kept her safe meantime from tampering hands,Or, peradventure, traps? What drew me backFrom telling Romney plainly, the designsOf Lady Waldemar, as spoken outTo me ... me? had I any right, ay, right,With womanly compassion and reserveTo break the fall of woman’s impudence?—To stand by calmly, knowing what I knew,And hear him call her good? Distrust that word. ‘There is none good save God,’ said Jesus Christ.If He once, in the first creation-week,Called creatures good,—for ever, afterward,The Devil only has done it, and his heirs,The knaves who win so, and the fools who lose;The word’s grown dangerous. In the middle age,I think they called malignant fays and impsGood people. A good neighbour, even in this,Is fatal sometimes,—cuts your morning up[153]To mince-meat of the very smallest talk,Then helps to sugar her bohea at nightWith your reputation. I have known good wives,As chaste, or nearly so, as Potiphar’s;And good, good mothers, who would use a childTo better an intrigue; good friends, beside,(Very good) who hung succinctly round your neckAnd sucked your breath, as cats are fabled to doBy sleeping infants. And we all have knownGood critics, who have stamped out poet’s hopes;Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state;Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause;Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax;Good popes, who brought all good to jeopardy;Good Christians, who sate still in easy chairs,And damned the general world for standing up.—Now, may the good God pardon all good men!
How bitterly I speak,—how certainlyThe innocent white milk in us is turned,By much persistent shining of the sun!—Shake up the sweetest in us long enoughWith men, it drops to foolish curd, too sourTo feed the most untender of Christ’s lambs.
I should have thought ... a woman of the worldLike her I’m meaning,—centre to herself,Who has wheeled on her own pivot half a lifeIn isolated self-love and self-will,As a windmill seen at distance radiating[154]Its delicate white vans against the sky,So soft and soundless, simply beautiful,—Seen nearer ... what a roar and tear it makes,How it grinds and bruises!... if she loves at last,Her love’s a re-adjustment of self-love,No more; a need felt of another’s useTo her one advantage,—as the mill wants grain,The fire wants fuel, the very wolf wants prey;And none of these is more unscrupulousThan such a charming woman when she loves.She’ll not be thwarted by an obstacleSo trifling as ... her soul is, ... much less yours!—Is God a consideration?—she loves you,Not God; she will not flinch for Him indeed:She did not for the Marchioness of Perth,When wanting tickets for the birthnight-ball.She loves you, sir, with passion, to lunacy;She loves you like her diamonds ... almost. Well, A month passed so, and then the notice came;On such a day the marriage at the church.I was not backward. Half St. Giles in frieze Was bidden to meet St. James in cloth of gold,And, after contract at the altar, passTo eat a marriage-feast on Hampstead Heath.Of course the people came in uncompelled,Lame, blind, and worse—sick, sorrowful, and worse,The humours of the peccant social woundAll pressed out, poured out upon Pimlico,[155]Exasperating the unaccustomed airWith hideous interfusion: you’d supposeA finished generation, dead of plague,Swept outward from their graves into the sun,The moil of death upon them. What a sight!A holiday of miserable menIs sadder than a burial-day of kings.
They clogged the streets, they oozed into the churchIn a dark slow stream, like blood. To see that sight,The noble ladies stood up in their pews,Some pale for fear, a few as red for hate,Some simply curious, some just insolent,And some in wondering scorn,—‘What next? what next?’These crushed their delicate rose-lips from the smileThat misbecame them in a holy place,With broidered hems of perfumed handkerchiefs;Those passed the salts with confidence of eyesAnd simultaneous shiver of moiré silk;While all the aisles, alive and black with heads,Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street,As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a holeWith shuddering involutions, swaying slowFrom right to left, and then from left to right,In pants and pauses. What an ugly crestOf faces, rose upon you everywhere,From that crammed mass! you did not usuallySee faces like them in the open day:They hide in cellars, not to make you madAs Romney Leigh is.—Faces!—O my God,[156]We call those, faces? men’s and women’s ... ay,And children’s;—babies, hanging like a ragForgotten on their mother’s neck,—poor mouths,Wiped clean of mother’s milk by mother’s blow,Before they are taught her cursing. Faces!... phew,We’ll call them vices festering to despairs,Or sorrows petrifying to vices: notA finger-touch of God left whole on them;All ruined, lost—the countenance worn outAs the garments, the will dissolute as the acts,The passions loose and draggling in the dirtTo trip the foot up at the first free step!—Those, faces! ’twas as if you had stirred up hellTo heave its lowest dreg-fiends uppermostIn fiery swirls of slime,—such strangled fronts,Such obdurate jaws were thrown up constantly,To twit you with your race, corrupt your blood,And grind to devilish colours all your dreamsHenceforth, ... though, haply, you should drop asleepBy clink of silver waters, in a museOn Raffael’s mild Madonna of the Bird.
I’ve waked and slept through many nights and daysSince then,—but still that day will catch my breathLike a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed,In which the fibrous years have taken rootSo deeply, that they quiver to their topsWhene’er you stir the dust of such a day.
My cousin met me with his eyes and hand,[157]And then, with just a word, ... that ‘Marian ErleWas coming with her bridesmaids presently,’Made haste to place me by the altar-stair,Where he and other noble gentlemenAnd high-born ladies, waited for the bride.
We waited. It was early: there was timeFor greeting, and the morning’s compliment;And gradually a ripple of women’s talkArose and fell, and tossed about a sprayOf English ss, soft as a silent hush,And, notwithstanding, quite as audibleAs louder phrases thrown out by the men.—‘Yes, really, if we’ve need to wait in church,We’ve need to talk there.’—‘She? ’Tis Lady Ayr,In blue—not purple! that’s the dowager.’—‘She looks as young.’—‘She flirts as young, you mean!Why if you had seen her upon Thursday night,You’d call Miss Norris modest.’—‘You again!I waltzed with you three hours back. Up at six,Up still at ten: scarce time to change one’s shoes.I feel as white and sulky as a ghost,So pray don’t speak to me, Lord Belcher.’—‘No,I’ll look at you instead, and it’s enoughWhile you have that face.’ ‘In church, my lord! fie, fie!’—‘Adair, you stayed for the Division?’—‘LostBy one.’ ‘The devil it is! I’m sorry for’t.And if I had not promised Mistress Grove’ ...—‘You might have kept your word to Liverpool.’‘Constituents must remember, after all,[158]We’re mortal.’—‘We remind them of it.’—‘Hark,The bride comes! Here she comes, in a stream of milk!’—‘There? Dear, you are asleep still; don’t you knowThe five Miss Granvilles? always dressed in whiteTo show they’re ready to be married.’—‘Lower!The aunt is at your elbow.’—‘Lady Maud,Did Lady Waldemar tell you she had seenThis girl of Leigh’s?’ ‘No,—wait! ’twas Mrs. Brookes,Who told me Lady Waldemar told her—No, ’twasn’t Mrs. Brookes.’—‘She’s pretty?’—‘Who?Mrs. Brookes? Lady Waldemar?’—‘How hot!Pray is’t the law to-day we’re not to breathe?You’re treading on my shawl—I thank you, sir.’—‘They say the bride’s a mere child, who can’t read,But knows the things she shouldn’t, with wide-awakeGreat eyes. I’d go through fire to look at her.’—‘You do, I think.’—‘And Lady Waldemar(You see her; sitting close to Romney Leigh;How beautiful she looks, a little flushed!)Has taken up the girl, and organisedLeigh’s folly. Should I have come here, you suppose,Except she’d asked me?’—‘She’d have served him moreBy marrying him herself.’ ‘Ah—there she comes, The bride, at last!’ ‘Indeed, no. Past eleven. She puts off her patched petticoat to-dayAnd puts on May-fair manners, so beginsBy setting us to wait.’—‘Yes, yes, this LeighWas always odd; it’s in the blood, I think;[159]His father’s uncle’s cousin’s second sonWas, was ... you understand me—and for him,He’s stark!—has turned quite lunatic uponThis modern question of the poor—the poor:An excellent subject when you’re moderate;You’ve seen Prince Albert’s model lodging-house?Does honour to his Royal Highness. Good!But would he stop his carriage in CheapsideTo shake a common fellow by the fistWhose name was ... Shakspeare? no. We draw a line,And if we stand not by our order, weIn England, we fall headlong. Here’s a sight,—A hideous sight, a most indecent sight!My wife would come, sir, or I had kept her back.By heaven, sir, when poor Damiens’ trunk and limbsWere torn by horses, women of the courtStood by and stared, exactly as to-dayOn this dismembering of society,With pretty troubled faces.’ ‘Now, at last. She comes now.’‘Where? who sees? you push me, sir,Beyond the point of what is mannerly.You’re standing, madam, on my second flounce—I do beseech you.’ ‘No—it’s not the bride. Half-past eleven. How late. The bridegroom, mark,Gets anxious and goes out.’ ‘And as I said ... These Leighs! our best blood running in the rut![160]It’s something awful. We had pardoned himA simple misalliance, got up asideFor a pair of sky-blue eyes; our House of LordsHas winked at such things, and we’ve all been young.But here’s an inter-marriage reasoned out,A contract (carried boldly to the light,To challenge observation, pioneerGood acts by a great example) ’twixt the extremesOf martyrised society,—on the left,The well-born,—on the right, the merest mob,To treat as equals!—’tis anarchical!It means more than it says—’tis damnable!Why, sir, we can’t have even our coffee good,Unless we strain it.’ ‘Here, Miss Leigh!’ ‘Lord Howe, You’re Romney’s friend. What’s all this waiting for?’
‘I cannot tell. The bride has lost her head(And way, perhaps!) to prove her sympathyWith the bridegroom.’ ‘What,—you also, disapprove!’
‘Oh, I approve of nothing in the world,’He answered; ‘not of you, still less of me,Nor even of Romney—though he’s worth us both.We’re all gone wrong. The tune in us is lost:And whistling in back alleys to the moon,Will never catch it.’ Let me draw Lord Howe; [161]A born aristocrat, bred radical,And educated socialist, who stillGoes floating, on traditions of his kind,Across the theoretic flood from France,—Though, like a drenched Noah on a rotten deck,Scarce safer for his place there. He, at least,Will never land on Ararat, he knows,To recommence the world on the old plan:Indeed, he thinks, said world had better end;He sympathises rather with the fishOutside, than with the drowned paired beasts withinWho cannot couple again or multiply:And that’s the sort of Noah he is, Lord Howe.He never could be anything complete,Except a loyal, upright gentleman,A liberal landlord, graceful diner-out,And entertainer more than hospitable,Whom authors dine with and forget the port.Whatever he believes, and it is much,But no-wise certain ... now here and now there, ...He still has sympathies beyond his creed,Diverting him from action. In the House,No party counts upon him, and all praiseAll like his books too, (he has written books)Which, good to lie beside a bishop’s chair,So oft outreach themselves with jets of fireAt which the foremost of the progressistsMay warm audacious hands in passing by.—Of stature over-tall, lounging for ease;Light hair, that seems to carry a wind in it,[162]And eyes that, when they look on you, will leanTheir whole weight half in indolence, and halfIn wishing you unmitigated good,Until you know not if to flinch from himOr thank him.—’Tis Lord Howe. ‘We’re all gone wrong,’ Said he, ‘and Romney, that dear friend of ours,Is no-wise right. There’s one true thing on earth;That’s love! He takes it up, and dresses it,And acts a play with it, as Hamlet did,To show what cruel uncles we have been,And how we should be uneasy in our minds,While he, Prince Hamlet, weds a pretty maid(Who keeps us too long waiting, we’ll confess)By symbol, to instruct us formallyTo fill the ditches up ’twixt class and class,And live together in phalansteries.What then?—he’s mad, our Hamlet! clap his play,And bind him.’ ‘Ah Lord Howe, this spectacle Pulls stronger at us than the Dane’s. See there!The crammed aisles heave and strain and steam with life—Dear Heaven, what life!’ ‘Why, yes,—a poet sees; Which makes him different from a common man.I, too, see somewhat, though I cannot sing;I should have been a poet, only thatMy mother took fright at the ugly world,And bore me tongue-tied. If you’ll grant me nowThat Romney gives us a fine actor-piece[163]To make us merry on his marriage-morn,The fable’s worse than Hamlet’s, I’ll concede.The terrible people, old and poor and blind,Their eyes eat out with plague and povertyFrom seeing beautiful and cheerful sights,We’ll liken to a brutalised King Lear,Led out,—by no means to clear scores with wrongs—His wrongs are so far back, ... he has forgot;All’s past like youth; but just to witness hereA simple contract,—he, upon his side,And Regan with her sister GonerilAnd all the dappled courtiers and court-fools,On their side. Not that any of these would sayThey’re sorry, neither. What is done, is done,And violence is now turned privilege,As cream turns cheese, if buried long enough.What could such lovely ladies have to doWith the old man there, in those ill-odorous rags,Except to keep the wind-side of him? LearIs flat and quiet, as a decent grave;He does not curse his daughters in the least.Be these his daughters? Lear is thinking ofHis porridge chiefly ... is it getting coldAt Hampstead? will the ale be served in pots?Poor Lear, poor daughters! Bravo, Romney’s play!’
A murmur and a movement drew around;A naked whisper touched us. Something wrong!What’s wrong? The black crowd, as an overstrainedCord, quivered in vibrations, and I saw ...[164]Was that his face I saw?... his ... Romney Leigh’s ...Which tossed a sudden horror like a spongeInto all eyes,—while himself stood white uponThe topmost altar-stair, and tried to speak,And failed, and lifted higher above his headA letter, ... as a man who drowns and gasps.
‘My brothers, bear with me! I am very weak.I meant but only good. Perhaps I meantToo proudly,—and God snatched the circumstanceAnd changed it therefore. There’s no marriage—none.She leaves me,—she departs,—she disappears,—I lose her. Yet I never forced her ‘ay,’To have her ‘no’ so cast into my teeth,In manner of an accusation, thus.My friends, you are all dismissed. Go, eat and drinkAccording to the programme,—and farewell!’
He ended. There was silence in the church;We heard a baby sucking in its sleepAt the farthest end of the aisle. Then spoke a man,‘Now, look to it, coves, that all the beef and drinkBe not filched from us like the other fun;For beer’s spilt easier than a woman is!This gentry is not honest with the poor;They bring us up, to trick us.’—‘Go it, Jim,’A woman screamed back,—‘I’m a tender soul;I never banged a child at two years oldAnd drew blood from him, but I sobbed for itNext moment,—and I’ve had a plague of seven.[165]I’m tender; I’ve no stomach even for beef,Until I know about the girl that’s lost,That’s killed, mayhap. I did misdoubt, at first,The fine lord meant no good by her, or us.He, maybe, got the upper hand of herBy holding up a wedding-ring, and then ...A choking finger on her throat, last night,And just a clever tale to keep us still,As she is, poor lost innocent. ‘Disappear!’Who ever disappears except a ghost?And who believes a story of a ghost?I ask you,—would a girl go off, insteadOf staying to be married? a fine tale!A wicked man, I say, a wicked man!For my part I would rather starve on ginThan make my dinner on his beef and beer.’—At which a cry rose up—‘We’ll have our rights.We’ll have the girl, the girl! Your ladies thereAre married safely and smoothly every day,And she shall not drop through into a trapBecause she’s poor and of the people: shame!We’ll have no tricks played off by gentlefolks;We’ll see her righted.’ Through the rage and roar I heard the broken words which Romney flungAmong the turbulent masses, from the groundHe held still, with his masterful pale face—As huntsmen throw the ration to the pack,Who, falling on it headlong, dog on dogIn heaps of fury, rend it, swallow it up[166]With yelling hound-jaws,—his indignant words,His piteous words, his most pathetic words,Whereof I caught the meaning here and thereBy his gesture ... torn in morsels, yelled across,And so devoured. From end to end, the churchRocked round us like the sea in storm, and thenBroke up like the earth in earthquake. Men cried out‘Police’—and women stood and shrieked for God,Or dropt and swooned; or, like a herd of deer,(For whom the black woods suddenly grow alive,Unleashing their wild shadows down the windTo hunt the creatures into corners, backAnd forward) madly fled, or blindly fell,Trod screeching underneath the feet of thoseWho fled and screeched. The last sight left to me Was Romney’s terrible calm face aboveThe tumult!—the last sound was ‘Pull him down!Strike—kill him!’ Stretching my unreasoning arms,As men in dreams, who vainly interpose’Twixt gods and their undoing, with a cryI struggled to precipitate myselfHead-foremost to the rescue of my soulIn that white face, ... till some one caught me back,And so the world went out,—I felt no more.
What followed, was told after by Lord Howe,Who bore me senseless from the strangling crowdIn church and street, and then returned aloneTo see the tumult quelled. The men of law[167]Had fallen as thunder on a roaring fire,And made all silent,—while the people’s smokePassed eddying slowly from the emptied aisles.
Here’s Marian’s letter, which a ragged childBrought running, just as Romney at the porchLooked out expectant of the bride. He sentThe letter to me by his friend Lord HoweSome two hours after, folded in a sheetOn which his well-known hand had left a word.Here’s Marian’s letter. ‘Noble friend, dear saint, Be patient with me. Never think me vile,Who might to-morrow morning be your wifeBut that I loved you more than such a name.Farewell, my Romney. Let me write it once,—My Romney. ‘’Tis so pretty a coupled word, I have no heart to pluck it with a blot.We say ‘my God’ sometimes, upon our knees,Who is not therefore vexed: so bear with it ...And me. I know I’m foolish, weak, and vain;Yet most of all I’m angry with myselfFor losing your last footstep on the stair,That last time of your coming,—yesterday!The very first time I lost step of yours,(Its sweetness comes the next to what you speak)But yesterday sobs took me by the throat,And cut me off from music. ‘Mister Leigh, [168]You’ll set me down as wrong in many things.You’ve praised me, sir, for truth,—and now you’ll learnI had not courage to be rightly true.I once began to tell you how she came,The woman ... and you stared upon the floorIn one of your fixed thoughts ... which put me outFor that day. After, some one spoke of me,So wisely, and of you, so tenderly,Persuading me to silence for your sake ...Well, well! it seems this moment I was wrongIn keeping back from telling you the truth:There might be truth betwixt us two, at least,If nothing else. And yet ’twas dangerous.Suppose a real angel came from heavenTo live with men and women! he’d go mad,If no considerate hand should tie a blindAcross his piercing eyes. ’Tis thus with you:You see us too much in your heavenly light;I always thought so, angel,—and indeedThere’s danger that you beat yourself to deathAgainst the edges of this alien world,In some divine and fluttering pity. ‘Yes, It would be dreadful for a friend of yours,To see all England thrust you out of doorsAnd mock you from the windows. You might say,Or think (that’s worse), ‘There’s some one in the houseI miss and love still.’ Dreadful! ‘Very kind, I pray you mark, was Lady Waldemar.[169]She came to see me nine times, rather ten—So beautiful, she hurts me like the dayLet suddenly on sick eyes. ‘Most kind of all, Your cousin!—ah, most like you! Ere you cameShe kissed me mouth to mouth: I felt her soulDip through her serious lips in holy fire.God help me, but it made me arrogant;I almost told her that you would not loseBy taking me to wife: though, ever since,I’ve pondered much a certain thing she asked ...‘He loves you, Marian?’ ... in a sort of mildDerisive sadness ... as a mother asksHer babe, ‘You’ll touch that star, you think?’ ‘Farewell! I know I never touched it. This is worst: Babes grow, and lose the hope of things above;A silver threepence sets them leaping high—But no more stars! mark that. I’ve writ all night, And told you nothing. God, if I could die,And let this letter break off innocentJust here! But no—for your sake ... Here’s the last: I never could be happy as your wife,I never could be harmless as your friend,I never will look more into your face,Till God says, ‘Look!’ I charge you, seek me not,Nor vex yourself with lamentable thoughts[170]That peradventure I have come to grief;Be sure I’m well, I’m merry, I’m at ease,But such a long way, long way, long way off,I think you’ll find me sooner in my grave,And that’s my choice, observe. For what remains,An over-generous friend will care for me,And keep me happy ... happier.... There’s a blot! This ink runs thick ... we light girls lightly weep ...And keep me happier ... was the thing to say, ...Than as your wife I could be!—O, my star,My saint, my soul! for surely you’re my soul,Through whom God touched me! I am not so lostI cannot thank you for the good you did,The tears you stopped, which fell down bitterly,Like these—the times you made me weep for joyAt hoping I should learn to write your notesAnd save the tiring of your eyes, at night;And most for that sweet thrice you kissed my lipsAnd said ‘Dear Marian.’ ’Twould be hard to read, This letter, for a reader half as learn’d,But you’ll be sure to master it, in spiteOf ups and downs. My hand shakes, I am blind,I’m poor at writing, at the best,—and yetI tried to make my gs the way you showed.Farewell—Christ love you.—Say ‘poor Marian’ now.’
Poor Marian!—wanton Marian!—was it so,Or so? For days, her touching, foolish lines[171]We mused on with conjectural fantasy,As if some riddle of a summer-cloudOn which one tries unlike similitudesOf now a spotted Hydra-skin cast off,And now a screen of carven ivoryThat shuts the heavens’ conventual secrets upFrom mortals over-bold. We sought the sense:She loved him so perhaps, (such words mean love,)That, worked on by some shrewd perfidious tongue,(And then I thought of Lady Waldemar)She left him, not to hurt him; or perhapsShe loved one in her class,—or did not love,But mused upon her wild bad tramping life,Until the free blood fluttered at her heart,And black bread eaten by the road-side hedgeSeemed sweeter than being put to Romney’s schoolOf philanthropical self-sacrifice,Irrevocably.—Girls are girls, beside,Thought I, and like a wedding by one rule.You seldom catch these birds, except with chaff:They feel it almost an immoral thingTo go out and be married in broad day,Unless some winning special flattery shouldExcuse them to themselves for’t, ... ‘No one partsHer hair with such a silver line as you,One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown!’Or else ... ‘You bite your lip in such a way,It spoils me for the smiling of the rest’—And so on. Then a worthless gaud or two,To keep for love,—a ribbon for the neck,[172]Or some glass pin,—they have their weight with girls.
And Romney sought her many days and weeks:He sifted all the refuse of the town,Explored the trains, enquired among the ships,And felt the country through from end to end;No Marian!—Though I hinted what I knew,—A friend of his had reasons of her ownFor throwing back the match—he would not hear:The lady had been ailing ever since,The shock had harmed her. Something in his toneRepressed me; something in me shamed my doubtTo a sigh, repressed too. He went on to sayThat, putting questions where his Marian lodged,He found she had received for visitors,Besides himself and Lady WaldemarAnd, that once, me—a dubious woman dressedBeyond us both. The rings upon her handsHad dazed the children when she threw them pence;‘She wore her bonnet as the queen might hers,To show the crown,’ they said,—‘a scarlet crownOf roses that had never been in bud.’
When Romney told me that,—for now and thenHe came to tell me how the search advanced,His voice dropped: I bent forward for the rest:The woman had been with her, it appeared,At first from week to week, then day by day,And last, ’twas sure ... I looked upon the ground [173]To escape the anguish of his eyes, and askedAs low as when you speak to mourners newOf those they cannot bear yet to call dead,‘If Marian had as much as named to himA certain Rose, an early friend of hers,A ruined creature.’ ‘Never,’—Starting up He strode from side to side about the room,Most like some prisoned lion sprung awake,Who has felt the desert sting him through his dreams.‘What was I to her, that she should tell me aught?A friend! was I a friend? I see all clear.Such devils would pull angels out of heaven,Provided they could reach them; ’tis their pride;And that’s the odds ’twixt soul and body-plague!The veriest slave who drops in Cairo’s street,Cries, ‘Stand off from me,’ to the passengers;While these blotched souls are eager to infect,And blow their bad breath in a sister’s faceAs if they got some ease by it.’ I broke through. ‘Some natures catch no plagues. I’ve read of babesFound whole and sleeping by the spotted breastOf one a full day dead. I hold it true,As I’m a woman and know womanhood,That Marian Erle, however lured from place,Deceived in way, keeps pure in aim and heart,As snow that’s drifted from the garden-bankTo the open road.’’Twas hard to hear him laugh.[174]‘The figure’s happy. Well—a dozen cartsAnd trampers will secure you presentlyA fine white snow-drift. Leave it there, your snow!’Twill pass for soot ere sunset. Pure in aim?She’s pure in aim, I grant you,—like myself,Who thought to take the world upon my backTo carry it o’er a chasm of social ill,And end by letting slip through impotenceA single soul, a child’s weight in a soul,Straight down the pit of hell! yes, I and sheHave reason to be proud of our pure aims.’Then softly, as the last repenting dropsOf a thunder-shower, he added, ‘The poor child;Poor Marian! ’twas a luckless day for her,When first she chanced on my philanthropy.’
He drew a chair beside me, and sate down;And I, instinctively, as women useBefore a sweet friend’s grief,—when, in his ear,They hum the tune of comfort, though themselvesMost ignorant of the special words of such,And quiet so and fortify his brainAnd give it time and strength for feeling outTo reach the availing sense beyond that sound,—Went murmuring to him, what, if written here,Would seem not much, yet fetched him better helpThan, peradventure, if it had been more.
I’ve known the pregnant thinkers of this time,And stood by breathless, hanging on their lips,[175]When some chromatic sequence of fine thoughtIn learned modulation phrased itselfTo an unconjectured harmony of truth.And yet I’ve been more moved, more raised, I say,By a simple word ... a broken easy thing,A three-years infant might say after you,—A look, a sigh, a touch upon the palm,Which meant less than ‘I love you’ ... than by allThe full-voiced rhetoric of those master-mouths.
‘Ah dear Aurora,’ he began at last,His pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile,‘Your printer’s devils have not spoilt your heart:That’s well. And who knows but, long years ago,When you and I talked, you were somewhat rightIn being so peevish with me? You, at least,Have ruined no one through your dreams! Instead,You’ve helped the facile youth to live youth’s dayWith innocent distraction, still perhapsSuggestive of things better than your rhymes.The little shepherd-maiden, eight years old,I’ve seen upon the mountains of Vaucluse,Asleep i’ the sun, her head upon her knees,The flocks all scattered,—is more laudableThan any sheep-dog trained imperfectly,Who bites the kids through too much zeal.’ ‘I look As if I had slept, then?’ He was touched at once By something in my face. Indeed ’twas sure[176]That he and I,—despite a year or twoOf younger life on my side, and on his,The heaping of the years’ work on the days,—The three-hour speeches from the member’s seat,The hot committees, in and out the House,The pamphlets, ‘Arguments,’ ‘Collective Views,’Tossed out as straw before sick houses, justTo show one’s sick and so be trod to dirt,And no more use,—through this world’s undergroundThe burrowing, groping effort, whence the armAnd heart come bleeding,—sure, that he and IWere, after all, unequally fatigued!That he, in his developed manhood, stoodA little sunburnt by the glare of life;While I ... it seemed no sun had shone on me,So many seasons I had forgot my Springs;My cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs,And all the youth-blood in them had grown whiteAs dew on autumn cyclamens: aloneMy eyes and forehead answered for my face.
He said ... ‘Aurora, you are changed—are ill!’
‘Not so, my cousin,—only not asleep!’I answered, smiling gently. ‘Let it be.You scarcely found the poet of VaucluseAs drowsy as the shepherds. What is art,But life upon the larger scale, the higher,When, graduating up in a spiral lineOf still expanding and ascending gyres,[177]It pushes toward the intense significanceOf all things, hungry for the Infinite?Art’s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil.’
He seemed to sift me with his painful eyes.‘Alas! you take it gravely; you refuseYour dreamland, right of common, and green rest.You break the mythic turf where danced the nymphs,With crooked ploughs of actual life,—let inThe axes to the legendary woods,To pay the head-tax. You are fallen indeedOn evil days, you poets, if yourselvesCan praise that art of yours no otherwise;And, if you cannot, ... better take a tradeAnd be of use! ’twere cheaper for your youth.’
‘Of use!’ I softly echoed, ‘there’s the pointWe sweep about for ever in argument;Like swallows, which the exasperate, dying yearSets spinning in black circles, round and round,Preparing for far flights o’er unknown seas.And we ... where tend we?’ ‘Where?’ he said, and sighed. ‘The whole creation, from the hour we are born,Perplexes us with questions. Not a stoneBut cries behind us, every weary step,‘Where, where?’ I leave stones to reply to stones.Enough for me and for my fleshly heartTo harken the invocations of my kind,When men catch hold upon my shuddering nerves[178]And shriek, ‘What help? what hope? what bread i’ the house,What fire i’ the frost?’ There must be some response,Though mine fail utterly. This social Sphinx,Who sits between the sepulchres and stews,Makes mock and mow against the crystal heavens,And bullies God,—exacts a word at leastFrom each man standing on the side of God,However paying a sphinx-price for it.We pay it also if we hold our peace,In pangs and pity. Let me speak and die.Alas! you’ll say, I speak and kill, instead.’
I pressed in there; ‘The best men, doing their best,Know peradventure least of what they do:Men usefullest i’ the world, are simply used;The nail that holds the wood, must pierce it first,And He alone who wields the hammer, seesThe work advanced by the earliest blow. Take heart.’
‘Ah, if I could have taken yours!’ he said,‘But that’s past now,’ Then rising ... ‘I will takeAt least your kindness and encouragement.I thank you. Dear, be happy. Sing your songs,If that’s your way! but sometimes slumber too,Nor tire too much with following, out of breath,The rhymes upon your mountains of Delight.Reflect, if Art be, in truth, the higher life,You need the lower life to stand upon,In order to reach up unto that higher;And none can stand a-tiptoe in the place[179]He cannot stand in with two stable feet.Remember then!—for Art’s sake, hold your life.’
We parted so. I held him in respect.I comprehended what he was in heartAnd sacrificial greatness. Ay, but heSupposed me a thing too small to deign to know:He blew me, plainly, from the crucible,As some intruding, interrupting flyNot worth the pains of his analysisAbsorbed on nobler subjects. Hurt a fly!He would not for the world: he’s pitifulTo flies even. ‘Sing,’ says he, ‘and teaze me still,If that’s your way, poor insect.’ That's your way![180]
[181]
FIFTH BOOK.
Aurora Leigh, be humble. Shall I hopeTo speak my poems in mysterious tuneWith man and nature,—with the lava-lymphThat trickles from successive galaxiesStill drop by drop adown the finger of God,In still new worlds?—with summer-days in this,That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?—With spring’s delicious trouble in the groundTormented by the quickened blood of roots,And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheavesIn token of the harvest-time of flowers?—With winters and with autumns,—and beyond,With the human heart’s large seasons,—when it hopesAnd fears, joys, grieves, and loves?—with all that strainOf sexual passion, which devours the fleshIn a sacrament of souls? with mother’s breasts,Which, round the new-made creatures hanging there,Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?—With multitudinous life, and finallyWith the great out-goings of ecstatic souls,[182]Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,Their radiant faces upward, burn awayThis dark of the body, issuing on a worldBeyond our mortal?—can I speak my verseSo plainly in tune to these things and the rest,That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,As having the same warrant over themTo hold and move them, if they will or no,Alike imperious as the primal rhythmOf that theurgic nature? I must fail,Who fail at the beginning to hold and moveOne man,—and he my cousin, and he my friend,And he born tender, made intelligent,Inclined to ponder the precipitous sidesOf difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,—Of me, incurious! likes me very well,And wishes me a paradise of good,Good looks, good means, and good digestion!—ay,But otherwise evades me, puts me offWith kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,—Too light a book for a grave man’s reading! Go,Aurora Leigh: be humble. There it is; We women are too apt to look to one,Which proves a certain impotence in art.We strain our natures at doing something great,Far less because it’s something great to do,Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselvesAs being not small, and more appreciableTo some one friend. We must have mediators[183]Betwixt our highest conscience and the judge;Some sweet saint’s blood must quicken in our palms,Or all the life in heaven seems slow and cold:Good only, being perceived as the end of good,And God alone pleased,—that’s too poor, we think,And not enough for us, by any means.Ay—Romney, I remember, told me onceWe miss the abstract, when we comprehend!We miss it most when we aspire, ... and fail.
Yet, so, I will not.—This vile woman’s wayOf trailing garments, shall not trip me up.I’ll have no traffic with the personal thoughtIn art’s pure temple. Must I work in vain,Without the approbation of a man?It cannot be; it shall not. Fame itself,That approbation of the general race,Presents a poor end, (though the arrow speed,Shot straight with vigorous finger to the white,)And the highest fame was never reached exceptBy what was aimed above it. Art for art,And good for God Himself, the essential Good!We’ll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,Although our woman-hands should shake and fail;And if we fail.... But must we?— Shall I fail? The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase,‘Let no one be called happy till his death.’To which I add,—Let no one till his deathBe called unhappy. Measure not the work[184]Until the day’s out and the labour done;Then bring your gauges. If the day’s work’s scant,Why, call it scant; affect no compromise;And, in that we have nobly striven at least,Deal with us nobly, women though we be,And honour us with truth, if not with praise.
My ballads prospered; but the ballad’s raceIs rapid for a poet who bears weightsOf thought and golden image. He can standLike Atlas, in the sonnet,—and supportHis own heavens pregnant with dynastic stars;But then he must stand still, nor take a step.
In that descriptive poem called ‘The Hills,’The prospects were too far and indistinct.’Tis true my critics said, ‘A fine view, that!’The public scarcely cared to climb the bookFor even the finest; and the public’s right,A tree’s mere firewood, unless humanised;Which well the Greeks knew, when they stirred the barkWith close-pressed bosoms of subsiding nymphs,And made the forest-rivers garrulousWith babble of gods. For us, we are called to markA still more intimate humanityIn this inferior nature,—or, ourselves,Must fall like dead leaves trodden underfootBy veritabler artists. Earth, shut upBy Adam, like a fakir in a boxLeft too long buried, remained stiff and dry,[185]A mere dumb corpse, till Christ the Lord came down,Unlocked the doors, forced open the blank eyes,And used his kingly chrisms to straighten outThe leathery tongue turned back into the throat:Since when, she lives, remembers, palpitatesIn every limb, aspires in every breath,Embraces infinite relations. Now,We want no half-gods, Panomphæan Joves,Fauns, Naiads, Tritons, Oreads and the rest,To take possession of a senseless worldTo unnatural vampire-uses. See the earth,The body of our body, the green earth,Indubitably human, like this fleshAnd these articulated veins through whichOur heart drives blood! there’s not a flower of spring,That dies ere June, but vaunts itself alliedBy issue and symbol, by significanceAnd correspondence, to that spirit-worldOutside the limits of our space and time,Whereto we are bound. Let poets give it voiceWith human meanings; else they miss the thought,And henceforth step down lower, stand confessedInstructed poorly for interpreters,—Thrown out by an easy cowslip in the text.
Even so my pastoral failed: it was a bookOf surface-pictures—pretty, cold, and falseWith literal transcript,—the worse done, I think,For being not ill-done. Let me set my markAgainst such doings, and do otherwise.[186]This strikes me.—If the public whom we know,Could catch me at such admissions, I should passFor being right modest. Yet how proud we are,In daring to look down upon ourselves!
The critics say that epics have died outWith Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods—I’ll not believe it. I could never dreamAs Payne Knight did, (the mythic mountaineerWho travelled higher than he was born to live,And showed sometimes the goitre in his throatDiscoursing of an image seen through fog,)That Homer’s heroes measured twelve feet high.They were but men!—his Helen’s hair turned greyLike any plain Miss Smith’s, who wears a front;And Hector’s infant blubbered at a plumeAs yours last Friday at a turkey-cock.All men are possible heroes: every age,Heroic in proportions, double-faced,Looks backward and before, expects a mornAnd claims an epos. Ay, but every age Appears to souls who live in it, (ask Carlyle)Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours!The thinkers scout it, and the poets aboundWho scorn to touch it with a finger-tip:A pewter age,—mixed metal, silver-washed;An age of scum, spooned off the richer past;An age of patches for old gaberdines;An age of mere transition, meaning nought,[187]Except that what succeeds must shame it quite,If God please. That’s wrong thinking, to my mind,And wrong thoughts make poor poems. Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discernedBy those who have not lived past it. We’ll supposeMount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed,To some colossal statue of a man:The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,Had guessed as little of any human formUp there, as would a flock of browsing goats.They’d have, in fact, to travel ten miles offOr ere the giant image broke on them,Full human profile, nose and chin distinct,Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky,And fed at evening with the blood of suns;Grand torso,—hand, that flung perpetuallyThe largesse of a silver river downTo all the country pastures. ’Tis even thusWith times we live in,—evermore too greatTo be apprehended near. But poets should Exert a double vision; should have eyesTo see near things as comprehensivelyAs if afar they took their point of sight,And distant things, as intimately deep,As if they touched them. Let us strive for this.I do distrust the poet who discernsNo character or glory in his times,And trundles back his soul five hundred years,[188]Past moat and drawbridge, into a castle-court,Oh not to sing of lizards or of toadsAlive i’ the ditch there!—’twere excusable;But of some black chief, half knight, half sheep-lifter,Some beauteous dame, half chattel and half queen,As dead as must be, for the greater part,The poems made on their chivalric bones.And that’s no wonder: death inherits death.
Nay, if there’s room for poets in the worldA little overgrown, (I think there is)Their sole work is to represent the age,Their age, not Charlemagne’s,—this live, throbbing age,That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,And spends more passion, more heroic heat,Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles.To flinch from modern varnish, coat or flounce,Cry out for togas and the picturesque,Is fatal,—foolish too. King Arthur’s selfWas commonplace to Lady Guenever;And Camelot to minstrels seemed as flat,As Regent Street to poets. Never flinch, But still, unscrupulously epic, catchUpon the burning lava of a song,The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age:That, when the next shall come, the men of thatMay touch the impress with reverent hand, and say‘Behold,—behold the paps we all have sucked![189]That bosom seems to beat still, or at leastIt sets ours beating. This is living art,Which thus presents, and thus records true life.’
What form is best for poems? Let me thinkOf forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit,As sovran nature does, to make the form;For otherwise we only imprison spirit,And not embody. Inward evermoreTo outward,—so in life, and so in art,Which still is life. Five acts to make a play. And why not fifteen? why not ten? or seven?What matter for the number of the leaves,Supposing the tree lives and grows? exactThe literal unities of time and place,When ’tis the essence of passion to ignoreBoth time and place? Absurd. Keep up the fire,And leave the generous flames to shape themselves.
’Tis true the stage requires obsequiousnessTo this or that convention; ‘exit’ hereAnd ‘enter’ there; the points for clapping, fixed,Like Jacob’s white-peeled rods before the rams;And all the close-curled imagery clippedIn manner of their fleece at shearing-time.Forget to prick the galleries to the heartPrecisely at the fourth act,—culminateOur five pyramidal acts with one act more,—We’re lost so! Shakspeare’s ghost could scarcely plead[190]Against our just damnation. Stand aside;We’ll muse for comfort that, last century,On this same tragic stage on which we have failed,A wigless Hamlet would have failed the same.
And whosoever writes good poetry,Looks just to art. He does not write for youOr me,—for London or for Edinburgh;He will not suffer the best critic knownTo step into his sunshine of free thoughtAnd self-absorbed conception, and exactAn inch-long swerving of the holy lines.If virtue done for popularityDefiles like vice, can art for praise or hireStill keep its splendor, and remain pure art?Eschew such serfdom. What the poet writes,He writes: mankind accepts it, if it suits,And that’s success: if not, the poem’s passedFrom hand to hand, and yet from hand to hand,Until the unborn snatch it, crying outIn pity on their fathers’ being so dull,And that’s success too. I will write no plays. Because the drama, less sublime in this,Makes lower appeals, defends more menially,Adopts the standard of the public tasteTo chalk its height on, wears a dog-chain roundIts regal neck, and learns to carry and fetchThe fashions of the day to please the day;Fawns close on pit and boxes, who clap hands,[191]Commending chiefly its docilityAnd humour in stage-tricks; or else indeedGets hissed at, howled at, stamped at like a dog,Or worse, we’ll say. For dogs, unjustly kicked,Yell, bite at need; but if your dramatist(Being wronged by some five hundred nobodiesBecause their grosser brains most naturallyMisjudge the fineness of his subtle wit)Shows teeth an almond’s breadth, protests the lengthOf a modest phrase,—‘My gentle countrymen,There’s something in it, haply, of your fault,’—Why then, besides five hundred nobodies,He’ll have five thousand, and five thousand more,Against him,—the whole public,—all the hoofsOf King Saul’s father’s asses, in full drove,—And obviously deserve it. He appealedTo these,—and why say more if they condemn,Than if they praised him?—Weep, my Æschylus,But low and far, upon Sicilian shores!For since ’twas Athens (so I read the myth)Who gave commission to that fatal weight,The tortoise, cold and hard, to drop on theeAnd crush thee,—better cover thy bald head;She’ll hear the softest hum of Hyblan beeBefore thy loud’st protesting.—For the rest,The risk’s still worse upon the modern stage:I could not, in so little, accept success,Nor would I risk so much, in ease and calm,For manifester gains; let those who prize,Pursue them: I stand off.[192] And yet, forbid, That any irreverent fancy or conceitShould litter in the Drama’s throne-room, whereThe rulers of our art, in whose full veinsDynastic glories mingle, sit in strengthAnd do their kingly work,—conceive, command,And, from the imagination’s crucial heat,Catch up their men and women all a-flameFor action, all alive, and forced to proveTheir life by living out heart, brain, and nerve,Until mankind makes witness, ‘These be menAs we are,’ and vouchsafes the kiss that’s dueTo Imogen and Juliet—sweetest kinOn art’s side. ’Tis that, honouring to its worth The drama, I would fear to keep it downTo the level of the footlights. Dies no moreThe sacrificial goat, for Bacchus slain,—His filmed eyes fluttered by the whirling whiteOf choral vestures,—troubled in his blood,While tragic voices that clanged keen as swords,Leapt high together with the altar-flame,And made the blue air wink. The waxen mask,Which set the grand still front of Themis’ sonUpon the puckered visage of a player;—The buskin, which he rose upon and moved,As some tall ship, first conscious of the wind,Sweeps slowly past the piers;—the mouthpiece, whereThe mere man’s voice with all its breaths and breaksWent sheathed in brass, and clashed on even heights[193]Its phrasèd thunders;—these things are no more,Which once were. And concluding, which is clear,The growing drama has outgrown such toysOf simulated stature, face, and speech,It also, peradventure, may outgrowThe simulation of the painted scene,Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume;And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,With all its grand orchestral silencesTo keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds.
Alas, I still see something to be done,And what I do falls short of what I seeThough I waste myself on doing. Long green days,Worn bare of grass and sunshine,—long calm nights,From which the silken sleeps were fretted out,—Be witness for me, with no amateur’sIrreverent haste and busy idlenessI’ve set myself to art! What then? what’s done?What’s done, at last? Behold, at last, a book. If life-blood’s necessary,—which it is,(By that blue vein athrob on Mahomet’s brow,Each prophet-poet’s book must show man’s blood!)If life-blood’s fertilising, I wrung mineOn every leaf of this,—unless the dropsSlid heavily on one side and left it dry.That chances often: many a fervid manWrites books as cold and flat as grave-yard stones[194]From which the lichen’s scraped; and if St. PreuxHad written his own letters, as he might,We had never wept to think of the little mole’Neath Julie’s drooping eyelid. Passion isBut something suffered, after all. While Art Sets action on the top of suffering:The artist’s part is both to be and do,Transfixing with a special, central powerThe flat experience of the common man,And turning outward, with a sudden wrench,Half agony, half ecstasy, the thingHe feels the inmost: never felt the lessBecause he sings it. Does a torch less burnFor burning next reflectors of blue steel,That he should be the colder for his place’Twixt two incessant fires,—his personal life’s,And that intense refraction which burns backPerpetually against him from the roundOf crystal conscience he was born intoIf artist-born? O sorrowful great giftConferred on poets, of a twofold life,When one life has been found enough for pain!We, staggering ’neath our burden as mere men,Being called to stand up straight as demi-gods,Support the intolerable strain and stressOf the universal, and send clearly upWith voices broken by the human sob,Our poems to find rhymes among the stars![195]But soft!—a ‘poet’ is a word soon said;A book’s a thing soon written. Nay, indeed,The more the poet shall be questionable,The more unquestionably comes his book!And this of mine—well, granting to myselfSome passion in it, furrowing up the flats,Mere passion will not prove a volume worthIts gall and rags even. Bubbles round a keelMean nought, excepting that the vessel moves.There’s more than passion goes to make a man,Or book, which is a man too. I am sad. I wonder if Pygmalion had these doubts,And, feeling the hard marble first relent,Grow supple to the straining of his arms,And tingle through its cold to his burning lip,Supposed his senses mocked, and that the toilOf stretching past the known and seen, to reachThe archetypal Beauty out of sight,Had made his heart beat fast enough for two,And with his own life dazed and blinded him!Not so; Pygmalion loved,—and whoso lovesBelieves the impossible. And I am sad: I cannot thoroughly love a work of mine,Since none seems worthy of my thought and hopeMore highly mated. He has shot them down,My Phœbus Apollo, soul within my soul,Who judges, by the attempted, what’s attained,And with the silver arrow from his height,[196]Has struck down all my works before my face,While I said nothing. Is there aught to say?I called the artist but a greatened man;He may be childless also, like a man.
I laboured on alone. The wind and dustAnd sun of the world beat blistering in my face;And hope, now for me, now against me, draggedMy spirits onward,—as some fallen balloon,Which, whether caught by blossoming tree or bare,Is torn alike. I sometimes touched my aim,Or seemed,—and generous souls cried out, ‘Be strong,Take courage; now you’re on our level,—now!The next step saves you!’ I was flushed with praise,But, pausing just a moment to draw breath,I could not choose but murmur to myself‘Is this all? all that’s done? and all that’s gained?If this then be success, ’tis dismallerThan any failure.’ O my God, my God, O supreme Artist, who as sole returnFor all the cosmic wonder of Thy work,Demandest of us just a word ... a name,‘My Father!’—thou hast knowledge, only thou,How dreary ’tis for women to sit stillOn winter nights by solitary fires,And hear the nations praising them far off,Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love,Our very heart of passionate womanhood,Which could not beat so in the verse without[197]Being present also in the unkissed lips,And eyes undried because there’s none to askThe reason they grew moist. To sit alone, And think, for comfort, how, that very night,Affianced lovers, leaning face to faceWith sweet half-listenings for each other’s breath,Are reading haply from some page of ours,To pause with a thrill, as if their cheeks had touched,When such a stanza, level to their mood,Seems floating their own thought out—‘So I feelFor thee,’—‘And I, for thee: this poet knowsWhat everlasting love is!’—how, that night,A father, issuing from the misty roadsUpon the luminous round of lamp and hearthAnd happy children, having caught up firstThe youngest there until it shrunk and shriekedTo feel the cold chin prick its dimples throughWith winter from the hills, may throw i’ the lapOf the eldest, (who has learnt to drop her lidsTo hide some sweetness newer than last year’s)Our book and cry, ... ‘Ah you, you care for rhymes;So here be rhymes to pore on under trees,When April comes to let you! I’ve been toldThey are not idle as so many are,But set hearts beating pure as well as fast:It’s yours, the book; I’ll write your name in it,—That so you may not lose, however lostIn poet’s lore and charming reverie,The thought of how your father thought of you[198]In riding from the town.’ To have our books Appraised by love, associated with love,While we sit loveless! is it hard, you think?At least ’tis mournful. Fame, indeed, ’twas said,Means simply love. It was a man said that.And then, there’s love and love: the love of all(To risk, in turn, a woman’s paradox,)Is but a small thing to the love of one.You bid a hungry child be satisfiedWith a heritage of many corn-fields: nay,He says he’s hungry,—he would rather haveThat little barley-cake you keep from himWhile reckoning up his harvests. So with us;(Here, Romney, too, we fail to generalise!)We’re hungry.Hungry! but it’s pitifulTo wail like unweaned babes and suck our thumbsBecause we’re hungry. Who, in all this world,(Wherein we are haply set to pray and fast,And learn what good is by its opposite)Has never hungered? Woe to him who has foundThe meal enough! if Ugolino’s full,His teeth have crunched some foul unnatural thing:For here satiety proves penuryMore utterly irremediable. And sinceWe needs must hunger,—better, for man’s love,Than God’s truth! better, for companions sweet,Than great convictions! let us bear our weights,Preferring dreary hearths to desert souls.[199]Well, well! they say we’re envious, we who rhyme;But I, because I am a woman perhaps,And so rhyme ill, am ill at envying.I never envied Graham his breadth of style,Which gives you, with a random smutch or two,(Near-sighted critics analyse to smutch)Such delicate perspectives of full life;Nor Belmore, for the unity of aimTo which he cuts his cedarn poems, fineAs sketchers do their pencils; nor Mark Gage,For that caressing colour and trancing toneWhereby you’re swept away and melted inThe sensual element, which, with a back wave,Restores you to the level of pure soulsAnd leaves you with Plotinus. None of these,For native gifts or popular applause,I’ve envied; but for this,—that when, by chance,Says some one,—‘There goes Belmore, a great man!He leaves clean work behind him, and requiresNo sweeper up of the chips,’ ... a girl I know,Who answers nothing, save with her brown eyes,Smiles unaware, as if a guardian saintSmiled in her:—for this, too,—that Gage comes homeAnd lays his last book’s prodigal reviewUpon his mother’s knees, where, years ago,He had laid his childish spelling-book and learnedTo chirp and peck the letters from her mouth,As young birds must. ‘Well done,’ she murmured then,She will not say it now more wonderingly;And yet the last ‘Well done’ will touch him more,[200]As catching up to-day and yesterdayIn a perfect chord of love; and so, Mark Gage.I envy you your mother!—and you, Graham,Because you have a wife who loves you so,She half forgets, at moments, to be proudOf being Graham’s wife, until a friend observes,‘The boy here, has his father’s massive brow,Done small in wax ... if we push back the curls.’
Who loves me? Dearest father,—mother sweet,—I speak the names out sometimes by myself,And make the silence shiver: they sound strange,As Hindostanee to an Ind-born manAccustomed many years to English speech;Or lovely poet-words grown obsolete,Which will not leave off singing. Up in heavenI have my father,—with my mother’s faceBeside him in a blotch of heavenly light;No more for earth’s familiar, household use,No more! The best verse written by this hand,Can never reach them where they sit, to seemWell-done to them. Death quite unfellows us,Sets dreadful odds betwixt the live and dead,And makes us part as those at Babel did,Through sudden ignorance of a common tongue.A living Cæsar would not dare to playAt bowls, with such as my dead father is.
And yet, this may be less so than appears,This change and separation. Sparrows five[201]For just two farthings, and God cares for each.If God is not too great for little cares,Is any creature, because gone to God?I’ve seen some men, veracious, nowise mad,Who have thought or dreamed, declared and testified,They’ve heard the Dead a-ticking like a clockWhich strikes the hours of the eternities,Beside them, with their natural ears,—and knownThat human spirits feel the human way,And hate the unreasoning awe which waves them offFrom possible communion. It may be.
At least, earth separates as well as heaven.For instance, I have not seen Romney LeighFull eighteen months ... add six, you get two years.They say he’s very busy with good works,—Has parted Leigh Hall into almshouses.He made an almshouse of his heart one day,Which ever since is loose upon the latchFor those who pull the string.—I never did.
It always makes me sad to go abroad;And now I’m sadder that I went to-nightAmong the lights and talkers at Lord Howe’s.His wife is gracious, with her glossy braids,And even voice, and gorgeous eyeballs, calmAs her other jewels. If she’s somewhat cold,Who wonders, when her blood has stood so longIn the ducal reservoir she calls her lineBy no means arrogantly? she’s not proud;[202]Not prouder than the swan is of the lakeHe has always swum in;—’tis her element,And so she takes it with a natural grace,Ignoring tadpoles. She just knows, perhaps,There are men, move on without outriders,Which isn’t her fault. Ah, to watch her face,When good Lord Howe expounds his theoriesOf social justice and equality—’Tis curious, what a tender, tolerant bendHer neck takes: for she loves him, likes his talk,‘Such clever talk—that dear, odd Algernon!’She listens on, exactly as if he talkedSome Scandinavian myth of Lemures,Too pretty to dispute, and too absurd.
She’s gracious to me as her husband’s friend,And would be gracious, were I not a Leigh,Being used to smile just so, without her eyes,On Joseph Strangways, the Leeds mesmerist,And Delia Dobbs, the lecturer from ‘the States’Upon the ‘Woman’s question.’ Then, for him,I like him ... he’s my friend. And all the roomsWere full of crinkling silks that swept aboutThe fine dust of most subtle courtesies.What then?—why then, we come home to be sad.
How lovely One I love not, looked to-night!She’s very pretty, Lady Waldemar.Her maid must use both hands to twist that coilOf tresses, then be careful lest the rich[203]Bronze rounds should slip:—she missed, though, a grey hair,A single one,—I saw it; otherwiseThe woman looked immortal. How they told,Those alabaster shoulders and bare breasts,On which the pearls, drowned out of sight in milk,Were lost, excepting for the ruby-clasp!They split the amaranth velvet-boddice downTo the waist, or nearly, with the audacious pressOf full-breathed beauty. If the heart withinWere half as white!—but, if it were, perhapsThe breast were closer covered, and the sightLess aspectable, by half, too. I heard The young man with the German student’s look—A sharp face, like a knife in a cleft stick,Which shot up straight against the parting lineSo equally dividing the long hair,—Say softly to his neighbour, (thirty-fiveAnd mediæval) ‘Look that way, Sir Blaise.She’s Lady Waldemar—to the left,—in red—Whom Romney Leigh, our ablest man just now,Is soon about to marry.’ Then replied Sir Blaise Delorme, with quiet, priestlike voice,Too used to syllable damnations roundTo make a natural emphasis worth while:‘Is Leigh your ablest man? the same, I think,Once jilted by a recreant pretty maidAdopted from the people? Now, in change,[204]He seems to have plucked a flower from the other sideOf the social hedge,’ ‘A flower, a flower,’ exclaimed My German student,—his own eyes full-blownBent on her. He was twenty, certainly.
Sir Blaise resumed with gentle arrogance,As if he had dropped his alms into a hat,And had the right to counsel,—‘My young friend,I doubt your ablest man’s abilityTo get the least good or help meet for him,For pagan phalanstery or Christian home,From such a flowery creature,’ ‘Beautiful!’ My student murmured, rapt,—‘Mark how she stirs!Just waves her head, as if a flower indeed,Touched far off by the vain breath of our talk.’
At which that bilious Grimwald, (he who writesFor the Renovator) who had seemed absorbedUpon the table-book of autographs,(I dare say mentally he crunched the bonesOf all those writers, wishing them aliveTo feel his tooth in earnest) turned short roundWith low carnivorous laugh,—‘A flower, of course!She neither sews nor spins,—and takes no thoughtOf her garments ... falling off.’ The student flinched, Sir Blaise, the same; then both, drawing back their chairsAs if they spied black-beetles on the floor,[205]Pursued their talk, without a word being thrownTo the critic.Good Sir Blaise’s brow is highAnd noticeably narrow: a strong wind,You fancy, might unroof him suddenly,And blow that great top attic off his headSo piled with feudal relics. You admireHis nose in profile, though you miss his chin;But, though you miss his chin, you seldom missHis golden cross worn innermostly, (carvedFor penance, by a saintly Styrian monkWhose flesh was too much with him,) slipping throughSome unaware unbuttoned casualtyOf the under-waistcoat. With an absent airSir Blaise sate fingering it and speaking low,While I, upon the sofa, heard it all.
‘My dear young friend, if we could bear our eyesLike blessedest St. Lucy, on a plate,They would not trick us into choosing wives,As doublets, by the colour. OtherwiseOur fathers chose,—and therefore, when they had hungTheir household keys about a lady’s waist,The sense of duty gave her dignity:She kept her bosom holy to her babes;And, if a moralist reproved her dress,’Twas, ‘Too much starch!’—and not, ‘Too little lawn!’'
‘Now, pshaw!’ returned the other in a heat,A little fretted by being called ‘young friend,’[206]Or so I took it,—‘for St. Lucy’s sake,If she’s the saint to curse by, let us leaveOur fathers,—plagued enough about our sons!’(He stroked his beardless chin) ‘yes, plagued, sir, plagued:The future generations lie on usAs heavy as the nightmare of a seer;Our meat and drink grow painful prophecy:I ask you,—have we leisure, if we liked,To hollow out our weary hands to keepYour intermittent rushlight of the pastFrom draughts in lobbies? Prejudice of sex,And marriage-laws ... the socket drops them throughWhile we two speak,—however may protestSome over-delicate nostrils, like your own,’Gainst odours thence arising.’ ‘You are young,’ Sir Blaise objected. ‘If I am,’ he said With fire,—‘though somewhat less so than I seem,The young run on before, and see the thingThat’s coming. Reverence for the young, I cry.In that new church for which the world’s near ripe,You’ll have the younger in the Elder’s chair,Presiding with his ivory front of hopeO’er foreheads clawed by cruel carrion-birdsOf life’s experience.’ ‘Pray your blessing, sir,’ Sir Blaise replied good-humouredly,—‘I pluckedA silver hair this morning from my beard,Which left me your inferior. Would I were[207]Eighteen, and worthy to admonish you!If young men of your order run beforeTo see such sights as sexual prejudiceAnd marriage-law dissolved,—in plainer words,A general concubinage expressedIn a universal pruriency,—the thingIs scarce worth running fast for, and you’d gainBy loitering with your elders.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Who, getting to the top of Pisgah-hill,Can talk with one at bottom of the view,To make it comprehensible? Why, LeighHimself, although our ablest man, I said,Is scarce advanced to see as far as this,Which some are: he takes up imperfectlyThe social question—by one handle—leavesThe rest to trail. A Christian socialist,Is Romney Leigh, you understand.’ ‘Not I. I disbelieve in Christian-pagans, muchAs you in women-fishes. If we mixTwo colours, we lose both, and make a thirdDistinct from either. Mark you! to mistakeA colour is the sign of a sick brain,And mine, I thank the saints, is clear and cool:A neutral tint is here impossible.The church,—and by the church, I mean, of course,The catholic, apostolic, mother-church,—Draws lines as plain and straight as her own wall;Inside of which, are Christians, obviously,[208]And outside ... dogs.’ ‘We thank you. Well I know The ancient mother-church would fain still bite,For all her toothless gums,—as Leigh himselfWould fain be a Christian still, for all his wit;Pass that; you two may settle it, for me.You’re slow in England. In a month I learntAt Göttingen, enough philosophyTo stock your English schools for fifty years;Pass that, too. Here, alone, I stop you short,—Supposing a true man like Leigh could standUnequal in the stature of his lifeTo the height of his opinions. Choose a wifeBecause of a smooth skin?—not he, not he!He’d rail at Venus’ self for creaking shoes,Unless she walked his way of righteousness:And if he takes a Venus Meretrix,(No imputation on the lady there)Be sure that, by some sleight of Christian art,He has metamorphosed and converted herTo a Blessed Virgin.’ ‘Soft!’ Sir Blaise drew breath As if it hurt him,—‘Soft! no blasphemy,I pray you!’‘The first Christians did the thing;Why not the last?’ asked he of Göttingen,With just that shade of sneering on the lip,Compensates for the lagging of the beard,—‘And so the case is. If that fairest fairIs talked of as the future wife of Leigh,[209]She’s talked of, too, at least as certainly,As Leigh’s disciple. You may find her nameOn all his missions and commissions, schools,Asylums, hospitals,—he has had her down,With other ladies whom her starry leadPersuaded from their spheres, to his country-placeIn Shropshire, to the famed phalansteryAt Leigh Hall, christianised from Fourier’s own,(In which he has planted out his sapling stocksOf knowledge into social nurseries)And there, they say, she has tarried half a week,And milked the cows, and churned, and pressed the curd,And said ‘my sister’ to the lowest drabOf all the assembled castaways; such girls!Ay, sided with them at the washing-tub—Conceive, Sir Blaise, those naked perfect arms,Round glittering arms, plunged elbow-deep in suds,Like wild swans hid in lilies all a-shake.’
Lord Howe came up. ‘What, talking poetrySo near the image of the unfavouring Muse?That’s you, Miss Leigh: I’ve watched you half an hour,Precisely as I watched the statue calledA Pallas in the Vatican;—you mindThe face, Sir Blaise?—intensely calm and sad,As wisdom cut it off from fellowship,—But that spoke louder. Not a word from you!And these two gentlemen were bold, I marked,And unabashed by even your silence.’ ‘Ah,’ [210]Said I, ‘my dear Lord Howe, you shall not speakTo a printing woman who has lost her place,(The sweet safe corner of the household fireBehind the heads of children) compliments,As if she were a woman. We who have cliptThe curls before our eyes, may see at leastAs plain as men do: speak out, man to man;No compliments, beseech you.’ ‘Friend to friend, Let that be. We are sad to-night, I saw,(—Good night, Sir Blaise! Ah, Smith—he has slipped away)I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh,To keep a crowd of lion-hunters off,With faces toward your jungle. There were three;A spacious lady, five feet ten and fat,Who has the devil in her (and there’s room)For walking to and fro upon the earth,From Chipewa to China; she requiresYour autograph upon a tinted leaf’Twixt Queen Pomare’s and Emperor Soulouque’s;Pray give it; she has energies, though fat:For me, I’d rather see a rick on fireThan such a woman angry. Then a youthFresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs,Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe,And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts,Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,—All which I saved you, and absorb next weekBoth manuscript and man,—because a lord[211]Is still more potent than a poetess,With any extreme republican. Ah, ah,You smile at last, then.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Leave the smile, I’ll lose the thanks for ’t,—ay, and throw you inMy transatlantic girl, with golden eyes,That draw you to her splendid whiteness, asThe pistil of a water-lily draws,Adust with gold. Those girls across the seaAre tyrannously pretty,—and I swore(She seemed to me an innocent, frank girl)To bring her to you for a woman’s kiss,Not now, but on some other day or week:—We’ll call it perjury; I give her up.’
‘No, bring her.’ ‘Now,’ said he, ‘you make it hard To touch such goodness with a grimy palm.I thought to tease you well, and fret you cross,And steel myself, when rightly vexed with you,For telling you a thing to tease you more.’
‘Of Romney?’‘No, no; nothing worse,’ he cried,‘Of Romney Leigh, than what is buzzed about,—That he is taken in an eye-trap too,Like many half as wise. The thing I meanRefers to you, not him.’ ‘Refers to me.’ [212]He echoed,—‘Me! You sound it like a stoneDropped down a dry well very listlessly,By one who never thinks about the toadAlive at the bottom. Presently perhapsYou’ll sound your ‘me’ more proudly—till I shrink.’
‘Lord Howe’s the toad, then, in this question?’ ‘Brief, We’ll take it graver. Give me sofa-room,And quiet hearing. You know Eglinton,John Eglinton, of Eglinton in Kent?’
‘Is he the toad?—he’s rather like the snail;Known chiefly for the house upon his back:Divide the man and house—you kill the man;That’s Eglinton of Eglinton, Lord Howe.’
He answered grave. ‘A reputable man,An excellent landlord of the olden stamp,If somewhat slack in new philanthropies;Who keeps his birthdays with a tenants’ dance,Is hard upon them when they miss the churchOr keep their children back from catechism,But not ungentle when the aged poorPick sticks at hedge-sides; nay, I’ve heard him say,‘The old dame has a twinge because she stoops:‘That’s punishment enough for felony.’’
‘O tender-hearted landlord! May I takeMy long lease with him, when the time arrives[213]For gathering winter-faggots!’ ‘He likes art, Buys books and pictures ... of a certain kind;Neglects no patent duty; a good son’....
‘To a most obedient mother. Born to wearHis father’s shoes, he wears her husband’s too:Indeed, I’ve heard it’s touching. Dear Lord Howe,You shall not praise me so against your heart,When I’m at worst for praise and faggots.’ ‘Be Less bitter with me, for ... in short,’ he said,‘I have a letter, which he urged me soTo bring you ... I could scarcely choose but yield;Insisting that a new love passing throughThe hand of an old friendship, caught from itSome reconciling perfume.’ ‘Love, you say? My lord, I cannot love. I only findThe rhymes for love,—and that’s not love, my lord.Take back your letter.’ ‘Pause: you’ll read it first?’
‘I will not read it: it is stereotyped;The same he wrote to,—anybody’s name,—Anne Blythe, the actress, when she had died so true,A duchess fainted in a private box:Pauline, the dancer, after the great pas,In which her little feet winked overheadLike other fire-flies, and amazed the pit:[214]Or Baldinacci, when her F in altHad touched the silver tops of heaven itselfWith such a pungent soul-dart, even the QueenLaid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms,And sighed for joy: or else (I thank your friend)Aurora Leigh,—when some indifferent rhymes,Like those the boys sang round the holy oxOn Memphis-road, have chanced, perhaps, to setOur Apis-public lowing. Oh, he wants,Instead of any worthy wife at home,A star upon his stage of Eglinton!Advise him that he is not overshrewdIn being so little modest: a dropped starMakes bitter waters, says a Book I’ve read,—And there’s his unread letter.’ ‘My dear friend,’ Lord Howe began....
In haste I tore the phrase. ‘You mean your friend of Eglinton, or me?’
‘I mean you, you,’ he answered with some fire.‘A happy life means prudent compromise;The tare runs through the farmer’s garnered sheaves;But though the gleaner’s apron holds pure wheat,We count her poorer. Tare with wheat, we cry,And good with drawbacks. You, you love your art,And, certain of vocation, set your soulOn utterance. Only, ... in this world we have made,(They say God made it first, but, if He did,[215]’Twas so long since, ... and, since, we have spoiled it so,He scarce would know it, if He looked this way,From hells we preach of, with the flames blown out,)In this bad, twisted, topsy-turvy world,Where all the heaviest wrongs get uppermost,—In this uneven, unfostering England here,Where ledger-strokes and sword-strokes count indeed,But soul-strokes merely tell upon the fleshThey strike from,—it is hard to stand for art,Unless some golden tripod from the seaBe fished up, by Apollo’s divine chance,To throne such feet as yours, my prophetess,At Delphi. Think,—the god comes down as fierceAs twenty bloodhounds! shakes you, strangles you,Until the oracular shriek shall ooze in froth!At best it’s not all ease,—at worst too hard:A place to stand on is a ’vantage gained,And here’s your tripod. To be plain, dear friend,You’re poor, except in what you richly give;You labour for your own bread painfully,Or ere you pour our wine. For art’s sake, pause.’
I answered slow,—as some wayfaring man,Who feels himself at night too far from home,Makes stedfast face against the bitter wind.‘Is art so less a thing than virtue is,That artists first must cater for their easeOr ever they make issue past themselvesTo generous use? alas, and is it so,That we, who would be somewhat clean, must sweep[216]Our ways as well as walk them, and no friendConfirm us nobly,—‘Leave results to God,But you, be clean?’ What! ‘prudent compromiseMakes acceptable life,’ you say instead,You, you, Lord Howe?—in things indifferent, well.For instance, compromise the wheaten breadFor rye, the meat for lentils, silk for serge,And sleep on down, if needs, for sleep on straw;But there, end compromise. I will not bateOne artist-dream, on straw or down, my lord,Nor pinch my liberal soul, though I be poor,Nor cease to love high, though I live thus low.’
So speaking, with less anger in my voiceThan sorrow, I rose quickly to depart;While he, thrown back upon the noble shameOf such high-stumbling natures, murmured words,The right words after wrong ones. Ah, the manIs worthy, but so given to entertainImpossible plans of superhuman life,—He sets his virtues on so raised a shelf,To keep them at the grand millennial height,He has to mount a stool to get at them;And, meantime, lives on quite the common way,With everybody’s morals. As we passed, Lord Howe insisting that his friendly armShould oar me across the sparkling brawling streamWhich swept from room to room,—we fell at onceOn Lady Waldemar. ‘Miss Leigh,’ she said,[217]And gave me such a smile, so cold and bright,As if she tried it in a ‘tiring glassAnd liked it; ‘all to-night I’ve strained at you,As babes at baubles held up out of reachBy spiteful nurses, (‘Never snatch,’ they say,)And there you sate, most perfectly shut inBy good Sir Blaise and clever Mister Smith,And then our dear Lord Howe! at last, indeed,I almost snatched. I have a world to speakAbout your cousin’s place in Shropshire, whereI’ve been to see his work ... our work,—you heardI went?... and of a letter, yesterday,In which, if I should read a page or two,You might feel interest, though you’re locked of courseIn literary toil.—You’ll like to hearYour last book lies at the phalanstery,As judged innocuous for the elder girlsAnd younger women who still care for books.We all must read, you see, before we live:But slowly the ineffable light comes up,And, as it deepens, drowns the written word,—So said your cousin, while we stood and feltA sunset from his favourite beech-tree seat:He might have been a poet if he would,But then he saw the higher thing at once,And climbed to it. I think he looks well now,Has quite got over that unfortunate ...Ah, ah ... I know it moved you. Tender-heart!You took a liking to the wretched girl.Perhaps you thought the marriage suitable,[218]Who knows? a poet hankers for romance,And so on. As for Romney Leigh, ’tis sureHe never loved her,—never. By the way,You have not heard of her ...? quite out of sight,And out of saving? lost in every sense?’
She might have gone on talking half-an-hour,And I stood still, and cold, and pale, I think,As a garden-statue a child pelts with snowFor pretty pastime. Every now and thenI put in ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I scarce knew why;The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls,And so I answered. Till Lord Howe broke in;‘What penance takes the wretch who interruptsThe talk of charming women? I, at last,Must brave it. Pardon, Lady Waldemar!The lady on my arm is tired, unwell,And loyally I’ve promised she shall sayNo harder word this evening, than ... goodnight;The rest her face speaks for her.’—Then we went.
And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that tiesMy hair ... now could I but unloose my soul!We are sepulchred alive in this close world,And want more room. The charming woman there— This reckoning up and writing down her talkAffects me singularly. How she talkedTo pain me! woman’s spite!—You wear steel-mail;[219]A woman takes a housewife from her breast,And plucks the delicatest needle outAs ’twere a rose, and pricks you carefully’Neath nails, ’neath eyelids, in your nostrils,—say,A beast would roar so tortured,—but a man,A human creature, must not, shall not flinch,No, not for shame.What vexes, after all,Is just that such as she, with such as I,Knows how to vex. Sweet heaven, she takes me upAs if she had fingered me and dog-eared meAnd spelled me by the fireside, half a life!She knows my turns, my feeble points.—What then?The knowledge of a thing implies the thing;Of course, she found that in me, she saw that,Her pencil underscored this for a fault,And I, still ignorant. Shut the book up! close!And crush that beetle in the leaves. O heart, At last we shall grow hard too, like the rest,And call it self-defence because we are soft.
And after all, now, ... why should I be pained,That Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouseThis Lady Waldemar? And, say, she heldHer newly-blossomed gladness in my face, ...’Twas natural surely, if not generous,Considering how, when winter held her fast,I helped the frost with mine, and pained her moreThan she pains me. Pains me!—but wherefore pained?[220]’Tis clear my cousin Romney wants a wife,—So, good!—The man’s need of the woman, here,Is greater than the woman’s of the man,And easier served; for where the man discernsA sex, (ah, ah, the man can generalise,Said he) we see but one, ideallyAnd really: where we yearn to lose ourselvesAnd melt like white pearls in another’s wine,He seeks to double himself by what he loves,And make his drink more costly by our pearls.At board, at bed, at work, and holiday,It is not good for man to be alone,—And that’s his way of thinking, first and last;And thus my cousin Romney wants a wife.
But then my cousin sets his dignityOn personal virtue. If he understandsBy love, like others, self-aggrandisement,It is that he may verily be greatBy doing rightly and kindly. Once he thought,For charitable ends set duly forthIn Heaven’s white judgment-book, to marry ... ah,We’ll call her name Aurora Leigh, althoughShe’s changed since then!—and once, for social ends,Poor Marian Erle, my sister Marian Erle,My woodland sister, sweet maid Marian,Whose memory moans on in me like the windThrough ill-shut casements, making me more sadThan ever I find reasons for. Alas,Poor pretty plaintive face, embodied ghost,[221]He finds it easy, then, to clap thee offFrom pulling at his sleeve and book and pen,—He locks thee out at night into the cold,Away from butting with thy horny eyesAgainst his crystal dreams,—that, now, he’s strongTo love anew? that Lady WaldemarSucceeds my Marian? After all, why not? He loved not Marian, more than once he lovedAurora. If he loves, at last, that Third,Albeit she prove as slippery as spilt oilOn marble floors, I will not augur himIll luck for that. Good love, howe’er ill-placed,Is better for a man’s soul in the end,Than if he loved ill what deserves love well.A pagan, kissing, for a step of Pan,The wild-goat’s hoof-print on the loamy down,Exceeds our modern thinker who turns backThe strata ... granite, limestone, coal, and clay,Concluding coldly with, ‘Here’s law! Where’s God?’
And then at worse,—if Romney loves her not,—At worst,—if he’s incapable of love,Which may be—then indeed, for such a manIncapable of love, she’s good enough;For she, at worst too, is a woman stillAnd loves him ... as the sort of woman can.
My loose long hair began to burn and creep,Alive to the very ends, about my knees:[222]I swept it backward as the wind sweeps flame,With the passion of my hands. Ah, Romney laughedOne day ... (how full the memories come up!)‘—Your Florence fire-flies live on in your hair,’He said, ‘it gleams so.’ Well, I wrung them out,My fire-flies; made a knot as hard as life,Of those loose, soft, impracticable curls,And then sat down and thought.... ‘She shall not thinkHer thought of me,’—and drew my desk and wrote.
‘Dear Lady Waldemar, I could not speakWith people round me, nor can sleep to-nightAnd not speak, after the great news I heardOf you and of my cousin. May you beMost happy; and the good he meant the world,Replenish his own life. Say what I say,And let my word be sweeter for your mouth,As you are you ... I only Aurora Leigh.’
That’s quiet, guarded! though she hold it upAgainst the light, she’ll not see through it moreThan lies there to be seen. So much for pride;And now for peace, a little! Let me stopAll writing back.... ‘Sweet thanks, my sweetest friend,‘You’ve made more joyful my great joy itself,’—No, that’s too simple! she would twist it thus,‘My joy would still be as sweet as thyme in drawers,However shut up in the dark and dry;But violets, aired and dewed by love like yours,Out-smell all thyme! we keep that in our clothes,[223]But drop the other down our bosoms, tillThey smell like’ ... ah, I see her writing backJust so. She’ll make a nosegay of her words,And tie it with blue ribbons at the endTo suit a poet;—pshaw! And then we’ll have The call to church; the broken, sad, bad dreamDreamed out at last; the marriage-vow completeWith the marriage-breakfast; praying in white gloves,Drawn off in haste for drinking pagan toastsIn somewhat stronger wine than any sippedBy gods, since Bacchus had his way with grapes.
A postscript stops all that, and rescues me.‘You need not write. I have been overworked,And think of leaving London, England even,And hastening to get nearer to the sun,Where men sleep better. So, adieu.’—I foldAnd seal,—— and now I’m out of all the coil;I breathe now; I spring upward like a branch,A ten-years school-boy with a crooked stickMay pull down to his level, in search of nuts,But cannot hold a moment. How we twangBack on the blue sky, and assert our height,While he stares after! Now, the wonder seemsThat I could wrong myself by such a doubt.We poets always have uneasy hearts;Because our hearts, large-rounded as the globe,Can turn but one side to the sun at once.We are used to dip our artist-hands in gall[224]And potash, trying potentialitiesOf alternated colour, till at lastWe get confused, and wonder for our skinHow nature tinged it first. Well—here’s the trueGood flesh-colour; I recognise my hand,—Which Romney Leigh may clasp as just a friend’s,And keep his clean. And now, my Italy. Alas, if we could ride with naked soulsAnd make no noise and pay no price at all,I would have seen thee sooner, Italy,—Forstill I have heard thee crying through my life,Thou piercing silence of extatic graves,Men call that name!
But even a witch, to-day, Must melt down golden pieces in the nardWherewith to anoint her broomstick ere she rides;And poets evermore are scant of gold,And, if they find a piece behind the door,It turns by sunset to a withered leaf.The Devil himself scarce trusts his patentedGold-making art to any who make rhymes,But culls his Faustus from philosophersAnd not from poets. ‘Leave my Job,’ said God;And so, the Devil leaves him without pence,And poverty proves, plainly, special grace.In these new, just, administrative timesMen clamour for an order of merit. Why?Here’s black bread on the table, and no wine![225]At least I am a poet in being poor;Thank God. I wonder if the manuscriptOf my long poem, if ’twere sold outright,Would fetch enough to buy me shoes, to goA-foot, (thrown in, the necessary patchFor the other side the Alps)? it cannot be:I fear that I must sell this residueOf my father’s books; although the ElzevirsHave fly-leaves over-written by his hand,In faded notes as thick and fine and brownAs cobwebs on a tawny monumentOf the old Greeks—conferenda hæc cum his—Corruptè citat—lege potiùs,And so on, in the scholar’s regal wayOf giving judgment on the parts of speech,As if he sate on all twelve thrones up-piled,Arraigning Israel. Ay, but books and notesMust go together. And this Proclus too,In quaintly dear contracted Grecian types,Fantastically crumpled, like his thoughtsWhich would not seem too plain; you go round twiceFor one step forward, then you take it back,Because you’re somewhat giddy! there’s the ruleFor Proclus. Ah, I stained this middle leafWith pressing in’t my Florence iris-bell,Long stalk and all: my father chided meFor that stain of blue blood,—I recollectThe peevish turn his voice took,—‘Silly girls,Who plant their flowers in our philosophyTo make it fine, and only spoil the book![226]No more of it, Aurora.’ Yes—no more!Ah, blame of love, that’s sweeter than all praiseOf those who love not! ’tis so lost to me,I cannot, in such beggared life, affordTo lose my Proclus. Not for Florence, even.
The kissing Judas, Wolff, shall go instead,Who builds us such a royal book as thisTo honour a chief-poet, folio-built,And writes above, ‘The house of Nobody:’Who floats in cream, as rich as any suckedFrom Juno’s breasts, the broad Homeric lines,And, while with their spondaic prodigious mouthsThey lap the lucent margins as babe-gods,Proclaims them bastards. Wolff’s an atheist;And if the Iliad fell out, as he says,By mere fortuitous concourse of old songs,We’ll guess as much, too, for the universe.
That Wolff, those Platos: sweep the upper shelvesAs clean as this, and so I am almost rich,Which means, not forced to think of being poorIn sight of ends. To-morrow: no delay.I’ll wait in Paris till good CarringtonDispose of such, and, having chaffered forMy book’s price with the publisher, directAll proceeds to me. Just a line to askHis help.And now I come, my Italy,My own hills! Are you ’ware of me, my hills,[227]How I burn toward you? do you feel to-nightThe urgency and yearning of my soul,As sleeping mothers feel the sucking babeAnd smile?—Nay, not so much as when, in heat,Vain lightnings catch at your inviolate tops,And tremble while ye are stedfast. Still, ye goYour own determined, calm, indifferent wayToward sunrise, shade by shade, and light by light;Of all the grand progression nought left out;As if God verily made you for yourselves,And would not interrupt your life with ours.[228]
[229]
SIXTH BOOK.
The English have a scornful insular wayOf calling the French light. The levityIs in the judgment only, which yet stands;For say a foolish thing but oft enough,(And here’s the secret of a hundred creeds,—Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,By re-iteration chiefly) the same thingShall pass at last for absolutely wise,And not with fools exclusively. And so,We say the French are light, as if we saidThe cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk:Say rather, cats are milked, and milch-cows mew;For what is lightness but inconsequence,Vague fluctuation ’twixt effect and cause,Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light,That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eyeWinks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itselfTo a wafer on the white speck on a wallA hundred paces off? Even so direct,So sternly undivertible of aim,[230]Is this French people. All, idealists Too absolute and earnest, with them allThe idea of a knife cuts real flesh;And still, devouring the safe intervalWhich Nature placed between the thought and act,With those too fiery and impatient souls,They threaten conflagration to the worldAnd rush with most unscrupulous logic onImpossible practice. Set your oratorsTo blow upon them with loud windy mouthsThrough watchword phrases, jest or sentiment,Which drive our burley brutal English mobsLike so much chaff, whichever way they blow,—This light French people will not thus be driven.They turn indeed; but then they turn uponSome central pivot of their thought and choice,And veer out by the force of holding fast.—That’s hard to understand, for EnglishmenUnused to abstract questions, and untrainedTo trace the involutions, valve by valve,In each orbed bulb-root of a general truth,And mark what subtly fine integumentDivides opposed compartments. Freedom’s selfComes concrete to us, to be understood,Fixed in a feudal form incarnatelyTo suit our ways of thought and reverence,The special form, with us, being still the thing.With us, I say, though I’m of ItalyBy mother’s birth and grave, by father’s grave[231]And memory; let it be,—a poet’s heartCan swell to a pair of nationalities,However ill-lodged in a woman’s breast.
And so I am strong to love this noble France,This poet of the nations, who dreams onAnd wails on (while the household goes to wreck)For ever, after some ideal good,—Some equal poise of sex, some unvowed loveInviolate, some spontaneous brotherhood,Some wealth, that leaves none poor and finds none tired,Some freedom of the many, that respectsThe wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams!Sublime, to dream so; natural, to wake:And sad, to use such lofty scaffoldings,Erected for the building of a church,To build instead, a brothel ... or a prison—May God save France! However she have sighed Her great soul up into a great man’s face,To flush his temples out so gloriouslyThat few dare carp at Cæsar for being bald,What then?—this Cæsar represents, not reigns,And is no despot, though twice absolute;This Head has all the people for a heart;This purple’s lined with the democracy,—Now let him see to it! for a rent withinMust leave irreparable rags without.
A serious riddle: find such anywhere[232]Except in France; and when it’s found in France,Be sure to read it rightly. So, I musedUp and down, up and down, the terraced streets,The glittering boulevards, the white colonnadesOf fair fantastic Paris who wears boughsLike plumes, as if man made them,—tossing upHer fountains in the sunshine from the squares,As dice i’ the game of beauty, sure to win;Or as she blew the down-balls of her dreams,And only waited for their falling back,To breathe up more, and count her festive hours.
The city swims in verdure, beautifulAs Venice on the waters, the sea-swan.What bosky gardens, dropped in close-walled courts,As plums in ladies’ laps, who start and laugh:What miles of streets that run on after trees,Still carrying the necessary shops,Those open caskets, with the jewels seen!And trade is art, and art’s philosophy,In Paris. There’s a silk, for instance, there,As worth an artist’s study for the folds,As that bronze opposite! nay, the bronze has faults;Art’s here too artful,—conscious as a maid,Who leans to mark her shadow on the wallUntil she lose a ’vantage in her step.Yet Art walks forward, and knows where to walk:The artists also, are idealists,Too absolute for nature, logicalTo austerity in the application of[233]The special theory: not a soul contentTo paint a crooked pollard and an ass,As the English will, because they find it so,And like it somehow.—Ah, the old TuileriesIs pulling its high cap down on its eyes,Confounded, conscience-stricken, and amazedBy the apparition of a new fair faceIn those devouring mirrors. Through the grate,Within the gardens, what a heap of babes,Swept up like leaves beneath the chestnut-trees,From every street and alley of the town,By the ghosts perhaps, that blow too bleak this wayA-looking for their heads! Dear pretty babes;I’ll wish them luck to have their ball-play outBefore the next change comes.—And, farther on,What statues, poised upon their columns fine,As if to stand a moment were a feat,Against that blue! What squares! what breathing-roomFor a nation that runs fast,—ay, runs againstThe dentist’s teeth at the corner, in pale rows,Which grin at progress in an epigram.
I walked the day out, listening to the chinkOf the first Napoleon’s dry bones, as they layIn his second grave beneath the golden domeThat caps all Paris like a bubble. ‘ShallThese dry bones live,’ thought Louis Philippe once,And lived to know. Herein is argumentFor kings and politicians, but still moreFor poets, who bear buckets to the well,[234]Of ampler draught.These crowds are very goodFor meditation, (when we are very strong)Though love of beauty makes us timorous,And draws us backward from the coarse town-sightsTo count the daisies upon dappled fields,And hear the streams bleat on among the hillsIn innocent and indolent repose;While still with silken elegiac thoughtsWe wind out from us the distracting world,And die into the chrysalis of a man,And leave the best that may, to come of us,In some brown moth. Be, rather, bold, and bearTo look into the swarthiest face of things,For God’s sake who has made them.
Seven days’ work; The last day shutting ’twixt its dawn and eve,The whole work bettered, of the previous six!Since God collected and resumed in manThe firmaments, the strata, and the lights,Fish, fowl, and beast, and insect,—all their trainsOf various life caught back upon His arm,Reorganised, and constituted MAN,The microcosm, the adding up of works;Within whose fluttering nostrils, then, at last,Consummating Himself, the Maker sighed,As some strong winner at the foot-race sighsTouching the goal. Humanity is great; [235]And, if I would not rather pore uponAn ounce of common, ugly, human dust,An artisan’s palm, or a peasant’s brow,Unsmooth, ignoble, save to me and God,Than track old Nilus to his silver roots,And wait on all the changes of the moonAmong the mountain-peaks of Thessaly,(Until her magic crystal round itselfFor many a witch to see in)—set it downAs weakness,—strength by no means. How is this,That men of science, osteologistsAnd surgeons, beat some poets, in respectFor nature,—count nought common or unclean,Spend raptures upon perfect specimensOf indurated veins, distorted joints,Or beautiful new cases of curved spine;While we, we are shocked at nature’s falling off,We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains,We will not, when she sneezes, look at her,Not even to say ‘God bless her’? That’s our wrong;For that, she will not trust us often withHer larger sense of beauty and desire,But tethers us to a lily or a roseAnd bids us diet on the dew inside,—Left ignorant that the hungry beggar-boy(Who stares unseen against our absent eyes,And wonders at the gods that we must be,To pass so careless for the oranges!)Bears yet a breastful of a fellow-worldTo this world, undisparaged, undespoiled,[236]And (while we scorn him for a flower or two,As being, Heaven help us, less poetical)Contains, himself, both flowers and firmamentsAnd surging seas and aspectable stars,And all that we would push him out of sightIn order to see nearer. Let us prayGod’s grace to keep God’s image in repute;That so, the poet and philanthropist,(Even I and Romney) may stand side by side,Because we both stand face to face with menContemplating the people in the rough,—Yet each so follow a vocation,—hisAnd mine.I walked on, musing with myselfOn life and art, and whether, after all,A larger metaphysics might not helpOur physics, a completer poetryAdjust our daily life and vulgar wants,More fully than the special outside plans,Phalansteries, material institutes,The civil conscriptions and lay monasteriesPreferred by modern thinkers, as they thoughtThe bread of man indeed made all his life,And washing seven times in the ‘People’s Baths’Were sovereign for a people’s leprosy,—Still leaving out the essential prophet’s wordThat comes in power. On which, we thunder down,We prophets, poets,—Virtue’s in the word!The maker burnt the darkness up with His,To inaugurate the use of vocal life;[237]And, plant a poet’s word even, deep enoughIn any man’s breast, looking presentlyFor offshoots, you have done more for the man,Than if you dressed him in a broad-cloth coatAnd warmed his Sunday potage at your fire.Yet Romney leaves me.... God! what face is that? O Romney, O Marian! Walking on the quays And pulling thoughts to pieces leisurely,As if I caught at grasses in a field,And bit them slow between my absent lips,And shred them with my hands.... What face is that? What a face, what a look, what a likeness! Full on mineThe sudden blow of it came down, till allMy blood swam, my eyes dazzled. Then I sprang—
It was as if a meditative manWere dreaming out a summer afternoonAnd watching gnats a-prick upon a pond,When something floats up suddenly, out there,Turns over ... a dead face, known once alive—So old, so new! It would be dreadful nowTo lose the sight and keep the doubt of this.He plunges—ha! he has lost it in the splash.
I plunged—I tore the crowd up, either side,And rushed on,—forward, forward ... after her.Her? whom?[238]A woman sauntered slow, in front,Munching an apple,—she left off amazedAs if I had snatched it: that’s not she, at least.A man walked arm-linked with a lady veiled,Both heads dropped closer than the need of talk:They started; he forgot her with his face,And she, herself,—and clung to him as ifMy look were fatal. Such a stream of folk,And all with cares and business of their own!I ran the whole quay down against their eyes;No Marian; nowhere Marian. Almost, now,I could call Marian, Marian, with the shriekOf desperate creatures calling for the Dead.Where is she, was she? was she anywhere?I stood still, breathless, gazing, straining outIn every uncertain distance, till, at last,A gentleman abstracted as myselfCame full against me, then resolved the clashIn voluble excuses,—obviouslySome learned member of the InstituteUpon his way there, walking, for his health,While meditating on the last ‘Discourse;’Pinching the empty air ’twixt finger and thumb,From which the snuff being ousted by that shock,Defiled his snow-white waistcoat, duly prickedAt the button-hole with honourable red;‘Madame, your pardon,’—there, he swerved from meA metre, as confounded as he had heardThat Dumas would be chosen to fill upThe next chair vacant, by his ‘men in us.’[239]Since when was genius found respectable?It passes in its place, indeed,—which meansThe seventh floor back, or else the hospital:Revolving pistols are ingenious things,But prudent men (Academicians are)Scarce keep them in the cupboard, next the prunes.
And so, abandoned to a bitter mirth,I loitered to my inn. O world, O world,O jurists, rhymers, dreamers, what you please,We play a weary game of hide-and-seek!We shape a figure of our fantasy,Call nothing something, and run after itAnd lose it, lose ourselves too in the search;Till, clash against us, comes a somebodyWho also has lost something and is lost,Philosopher against philanthropist,Academician against poet, manAgainst woman, against the living, the dead,—Then home, with a bad headache and worse jest!
To change the water for my heliotropesAnd yellow roses. Paris has such flowers.But England, also. ’Twas a yellow rose,By that south window of the little house,My cousin Romney gathered with his handOn all my birthdays for me, save the last;And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,For roses to stay after. Now, my maps. [240]I must not linger here from ItalyTill the last nightingale is tired of song,And the last fire-fly dies off in the maize.My soul’s in haste to leap into the sunAnd scorch and seethe itself to a finer mood,Which here, in this chill north, is apt to standToo stiffly in former moulds. That-face persists. It floats up, it turns over in my mind,As like to Marian, as one dead is likeThe same alive. In very deed a faceAnd not a fancy, though it vanished so;The small fair face between the darks of hair,I used to liken, when I saw her first,To a point of moonlit, water down a well:The low brow, the frank space between the eyes,Which always had the brown pathetic lookOf a dumb creature who had been beaten once,And never since was easy with the world.Ah, ah—now I remember perfectlyThose eyes, to-day,—how overlarge they seemed,As if some patient passionate despair(Like a coal dropt and forgot on tapestry,Which slowly burns a widening circle out)Had burnt them larger, larger. And those eyesTo-day, I do remember, saw me too,As I saw them, with conscious lids astrainIn recognition. Now, a fantasy,A simple shade or image of the brain,Is merely passive, does not retro-act,[241]Is seen, but sees not. ’Twas a real face, Perhaps a real Marian. Which being so, I ought to write to Romney, ‘Marian’s here.Be comforted for Marian.’ My pen fell, My hands struck sharp together, as hands doWhich hold at nothing. Can I write to himA half truth? can I keep my own soul blindTo the other half, ... the worse? What are our souls,If still, to run on straight a sober paceNor start at every pebble or dead leaf,They must wear blinkers, ignore facts, suppressSix tenths of the road? Confront the truth, my soul!And oh, as truly as that was Marian’s face,The arms of that same Marian clasped a thing... Not hid so well beneath the scanty shawl,I cannot name it now for what it was.
A child. Small business has a cast-awayLike Marian, with that crown of prosperous wives,At which the gentlest she grows arrogantAnd says, ‘my child.’ Who’ll find an emerald ringOn a beggar’s middle finger, and requireMore testimony to convict a thief?A child’s too costly for so mere a wretch;She filched it somewhere; and it means, with her,Instead of honour, blessing, ... merely shame.[242]I cannot write to Romney, ‘Here she is,Here’s Marian found! I’ll set you on her track:I saw her here, in Paris, ... and her child.She put away your love two years ago,But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then;And, now that you’ve forgot her utterlyAs any last year’s annual, in whose placeYou’ve planted a thick flowering evergreen,I choose, being kind, to write and tell you thisTo make you wholly easy—she’s not dead,But only ... damned.’ Stop there: I go too fast; I’m cruel like the rest,—in haste to takeThe first stir in the arras for a rat,And set my barking, biting thoughts upon’t.—A child! what then? Suppose a neighbour’s sickAnd asked her, ‘Marian, carry out my childIn this Spring air,’—I punish her for that?Or say, the child should hold her round the neckFor good child-reasons, that he liked it soAnd would not leave her—she had winning ways—I brand her therefore, that she took the child?Not so.I will not write to Romney Leigh.For now he’s happy,—and she may indeedBe guilty,—and the knowledge of her faultWould draggle his smooth time. But I, whose daysAre not so fine they cannot bear the rain,And who, moreover, having seen her face,Must see it again, ... will see it, by my hopes[243]Of one day seeing heaven too. The policeShall track her, hound her, ferret their own soil;We’ll dig this Paris to its catacombsBut certainly we’ll find her, have her out,And save her, if she will or will not—childOr no child,—if a child, then one to save!
The long weeks passed on without consequence.As easy find a footstep on the sandThe morning after spring-tide, as the traceOf Marian’s feet between the incessant surfsOf this live flood. She may have moved this way,—But so the star-fish does, and crosses outThe dent of her small shoe. The foiled policeRenounced me; ‘Could they find a girl and child,No other signalment but girl and child?No data shown, but noticeable eyesAnd hair in masses, low upon the brow,As if it were an iron crown and pressed?Friends heighten, and suppose they specify:Why, girls with hair and eyes, are everywhereIn Paris; they had turned me up in vainNo Marian Erle indeed, but certainlyMathildes, Justines, Victoires, ... or, if I soughtThe English, Betsies, Saras, by the score.They might as well go out into the fieldsTo find a speckled bean, that’s somehow specked,And somewhere in the pod.’—They left me so.Shall I leave Marian? have I dreamed a dream?[244]—I thank God I have found her! I must say‘Thank God,’ for finding her, although ’tis trueI find the world more sad and wicked for’t.But she—I’ll write about her, presently;My hand’s a-tremble as I had just caught upMy heart to write with, in the place of it.At least you’d take these letters to be writAt sea, in storm!—wait now.... A simple chance Did all. I could not sleep last night, and, tiredOf turning on my pillow and harder thoughts,Went out at early morning, when the airIs delicate with some last starry touch,To wander through the Market-place of Flowers(The prettiest haunt in Paris), and make sureAt worst, that there were roses in the world.So, wandering, musing, with the artist’s eye,That keeps the shade-side of the thing it loves,Half-absent, whole-observing, while the crowdOf young vivacious and black-braided headsDipped, quick as finches in a blossomed tree,Among the nosegays, cheapening this and thatIn such a cheerful twitter of rapid speech,—My heart leapt in me, startled by a voiceThat slowly, faintly, with long breaths that markedThe interval between the wish and word,Inquired in stranger’s French, ‘Would that be much,That branch of flowering mountain-gorse?’—‘So much?Too much for me, then!’ turning the face round[245]So close upon me, that I felt the sighIt turned with.‘Marian, Marian!’—face to face—‘Marian! I find you. Shall I let you go?’I held her two slight wrists with both my hands;‘Ah Marian, Marian, can I let you go?’—She fluttered from me like a cyclamen,As white, which, taken in a sudden wind,Beats on against the palisade.—‘Let pass,’She said at last. ‘I will not,’ I replied;‘I lost my sister Marian many days,And sought her ever in my walks and prayers,And, now I find her ... do we throw awayThe bread we worked and prayed for,—crumble itAnd drop it, ... to do even so by theeWhom still I’ve hungered after more than bread,My sister Marian?—can I hurt thee, dear?Then why distrust me? Never tremble so.Come with me rather, where we’ll talk and live,And none shall vex us. I’ve a home for youAnd me and no one else’.... She shook her head. ‘A home for you and me and no one elseIll-suits one of us: I prefer to such,A roof of grass on which a flower might spring,Less costly to me than the cheapest here;And yet I could not, at this hour, affordA like home, even. That you offer yours,I thank you. You are good as heaven itself—As good as one I knew before.... Farewell.’[246]I loosed her hands.—‘In his name, no farewell!’(She stood as if I held her.) ‘For his sake,For his sake, Romney’s! by the good he meant,Ay, always! by the love he pressed for once,—And by the grief, reproach, abandonment,He took in change’.... ‘He, Romney! who grieved him? Who had the heart for’t? what reproach touched him?Be merciful,—speak quickly.’ ‘Therefore come,’ I answered with authority,—‘I thinkWe dare to speak such things, and name such names,In the open squares of Paris!’ Not a word She said, but, in a gentle humbled way,(As one who had forgot herself in grief)Turned round and followed closely where I went,As if I led her by a narrow plank,Across devouring waters, step by step,—And so in silence we walked on a mile.
And then she stopped: her face was white as wax.‘We go much farther?’ ‘You are ill,’ I asked, ‘Or tired?’She looked the whiter for her smile.‘There’s one at home,’ she said, ‘has need of meBy this time,—and I must not let him wait.’
‘Not even,’ I asked, ‘to hear of Romney Leigh?’[247]‘Not even,’ she said, ‘to hear of Mister Leigh.’
‘In that case,’ I resumed, ‘I go with you,And we can talk the same thing there as here.None waits for me: I have my day to spend.’
Her lips moved in a spasm without a sound,—But then she spoke. ‘It shall be as you please;And better so—’tis shorter seen than told.And though you will not find me worth your pains,That even, may be worth some pains to know,For one as good as you are.’ Then she led The way, and I, as by a narrow plankAcross devouring waters, followed her,Stepping by her footsteps, breathing by her breath,And holding her with eyes that would not slip;And so, without a word, we walked a mile,And so, another mile, without a word.
Until the peopled streets being all dismissed,House-rows and groups all scattered like a flock,The market-gardens thickened, and the longWhite walls beyond, like spiders’ outside threads,Stretched, feeling blindly toward the country-fieldsThrough half-built habitations and half-dugFoundations,—intervals of trenchant chalk,That bite betwixt the grassy uneven turfsWhere goats (vine-tendrils trailing from their mouths)Stood perched on edges of the cellarage[248]Which should be, staring as about to leapTo find their coming Bacchus. All the placeSeemed less a cultivation than a waste:Men work here, only,—scarce begin to live:All’s sad, the country struggling with the town,Like an untamed hawk upon a strong man’s fist,That beats its wings and tries to get away,And cannot choose be satisfied so soonTo hop through court-yards with its right foot tied,The vintage plains and pastoral hills in sight!
We stopped beside a house too high and slimTo stand there by itself, but waiting tillFive others, two on this side, three on that,Should grow up from the sullen second floorThey pause at now, to build it to a row.The upper windows partly were unglazedMeantime,—a meagre, unripe house: a lineOf rigid poplars elbowed it behind,And, just in front, beyond the lime and bricksThat wronged the grass between it and the road,A great acacia, with its slender trunkAnd overpoise of multitudinous leaves,(In which a hundred fields might spill their dewAnd intense verdure, yet find room enough)Stood, reconciling all the place with green.
I followed up the stair upon her step.She hurried upward, shot across a face,A woman’s on the landing,—‘How now, now![249]Is no one to have holidays but you?You said an hour, and stay three hours, I think,And Julie waiting for your betters here?Why if he had waked, he might have waked, for me.’—Just murmuring an excusing word she passedAnd shut the rest out with the chamber-door,Myself shut in beside her. ’Twas a room Scarce larger than a grave, and near as bare;Two stools, a pallet-bed; I saw the room:A mouse could find no sort of shelter in’t,Much less a greater secret; curtainless,—The window fixed you with its torturing eye,Defying you to take a step apart,If peradventure you would hide a thing.I saw the whole room, I and Marian thereAlone.Alone? She threw her bonnet off,Then sighing as ’twere sighing the last time,Approached the bed, and drew a shawl away:You could not peel a fruit you fear to bruiseMore calmly and more carefully than so,—Nor would you find within, a rosier flushedPomegranate—There he lay, upon his back,The yearling creature, warm and moist with lifeTo the bottom of his dimples,—to the endsOf the lovely tumbled curls about his face;For since he had been covered over-muchTo keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks[250]Were hot and scarlet as the first live roseThe shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into,The faster for his love. And love was hereAs instant! in the pretty baby-mouth,Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;The little naked feet drawn up the wayOf nestled birdlings; everything so softAnd tender,—to the little holdfast hands,Which, closing on a finger into sleep,Had kept the mould of’t. While we stood there dumb,— For oh, that it should take such innocenceTo prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb;The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,And, staring out at us with all their blue,As half perplexed between the angelhoodHe had been away to visit in his sleep,And our most mortal presence,—graduallyHe saw his mother’s face, accepting itIn change for heaven itself, with such a smileAs might have well been learnt there,—never moved,But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy,So happy (half with her and half with heaven)He could not have the trouble to be stirred,But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said:As red and still indeed as any rose,That blows in all the silence of its leaves,Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.
She leaned above him (drinking him as wine)[251]In that extremity of love, ’twill passFor agony or rapture, seeing that loveIncludes the whole of nature, rounding itTo love ... no more,—since more can never beThan just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self,And drowning in the transport of the sight,Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes,One gaze, she stood! then, slowly as he smiled,She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware,And drawing from his countenance to hersA fainter red, as if she watched a flameAnd stood in it a-glow. ‘How beautiful,’Said she.I answered, trying to be cold.(Must sin have compensations, was my thought,As if it were a holy thing like grief?And is a woman to be fooled asideFrom putting vice down, with that woman’s toy,A baby?)—— ‘Ay! the child is well enough,’I answered. ‘If his mother’s palms are clean,They need be glad, of course, in clasping such:But if not,—I would rather lay my hand,Were I she,—on God’s brazen altar-barsRed-hot with burning sacrificial lambs,Than touch the sacred curls of such a child.’
She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks,As one who would not be afraid of fire;And then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,—‘My lamb, my lamb! although, through such as thou,[252]The most unclean got courage and approachTo God, once,—now they cannot, even with men,Find grace enough for pity and gentle words.’
‘My Marian,’ I made answer, grave and sad,‘The priest who stole a lamb to offer him,Was still a thief. And if a woman steals(Through God’s own barrier-hedges of true love,Which fence out licence in securing love)A child like this, that smiles so in her face,She is no mother, but a kidnapper,And he’s a dismal orphan ... not a son;Whom all her kisses cannot feed so fullHe will not miss hereafter a pure homeTo live in, a pure heart to lean against,A pure good mother’s name and memoryTo hope by, when the world grows thick and bad,And he feels out for virtue.’ ‘Oh,’ she smiled With bitter patience, ‘the child takes his chance,—Not much worse off in being fatherlessThan I was, fathered. He will say, belike,His mother was the saddest creature born;He’ll say his mother lived so contraryTo joy, that even the kindest, seeing her,Grew sometimes almost cruel: he’ll not sayShe flew contrarious in the face of GodWith bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child,—My flower of earth, my only flower on earth,My sweet, ray beauty!’ ... Up she snatched the child,[253]And, breaking on him in a storm of tears,Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots,Until he took it for a game, and stretchedHis feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings,And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh:‘Mine, mine,’ she said; ‘I have as sure a rightAs any glad proud mother in the world,Who sets her darling down to cut his teethUpon her church-ring. If she talks of law,I talk of law! I claim my mother-duesBy law,—the law which now is paramount;The common law, by which the poor and weakAre trodden underfoot by vicious men,And loathed for ever after by the good.Let pass! I did not filch ... I found the child.’
‘You found him, Marian?’ ‘Ay, I found him where I found my curse,—in the gutter, with my shame!What have you, any of you, to say to that,Who all are happy, and sit safe and high,And never spoke before to arraign my rightTo grief itself? What, what, ... being beaten downBy hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch,Half-dead, whole mangled ... when a girl, at last,Breathes, sees ... and finds there, bedded in her flesh,Because of the overcoming shock perhaps,Some coin of price!... and when a good man comes(That’s God! the best men are not quite as good)And says, ‘I dropped the coin there: take it, you,[254]And keep it,—it shall pay you for the loss,’—You all put up your finger—‘See the thief!Observe that precious thing she has come to filch!How bad those girls are!’ Oh, my flower, my pet,I dare forget I have you in my arms,And fly off to be angry with the world,And fright you, hurt you with my tempers, tillYou double up your lip? Ah, that indeedIs bad: a naughty mother!’ ‘You mistake,’ I interrupted; ‘if I loved you not,I should not, Marian, certainly be here.’
‘Alas,’ she said, ‘you are so very good;And yet I wish, indeed, you had never comeTo make me sob until I vex the child.It is not wholesome for these pleasure-platsTo be so early watered by our brine.And then, who knows? he may not like me nowAs well, perhaps, as ere he saw me fret,—One’s ugly fretting! he has eyes the sameAs angels, but he cannot see as deep,And so I’ve kept for ever in his sightA sort of smile to please him,—as you placeA green thing from the garden in a cup,To make believe it grows there. Look, my sweet,My cowslip-ball! we’ve done with that cross face,And here’s the face come back you used to like.Ah, ah! he laughs! he likes me. Ah, Miss Leigh,You’re great and pure; but were you purer still,—[255]As if you had walked, we’ll say, no otherwhereThan up and down the new Jerusalem,And held your trailing lutestring up yourselfFrom brushing the twelve stones, for fear of someSmall speck as little as a needle-prick,White stitched on white,—the child would keep to me,Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,As we do, when God says it’s time to dieAnd bids us go up higher. Leave us, then;We two are happy. Does he push me off?He’s satisfied with me, as I with him.’
‘So soft to one, so hard to others! Nay,’I cried, more angry that she melted me,‘We make henceforth a cushion of our faultsTo sit and practise easy virtues on?I thought a child was given to sanctifyA woman,—set her in the sight of allThe clear-eyed Heavens, a chosen ministerTo do their business and lead spirits upThe difficult blue heights. A woman lives,Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and goodThrough being a mother?... then she’s none! althoughShe damps her baby’s cheeks by kissing them,As we kill roses.’‘Kill! O Christ,’ she said,And turned her wild sad face from side to sideWith most despairing wonder in it—‘What,What have you in your souls against me then,[256]All of you? am I wicked, do you think?God knows me, trusts me with the child! but you,You think me really wicked?’ ‘Complaisant,’ I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done,Because of certain profits,—which is wrongBeyond the first wrong, Marian. When you leftThe pure place and the noble heart, to takeThe hand of a seducer’.... ‘Whom? whose hand? I took the hand of’.... Springing up erect, And lifting up the child at full arm’s length,As if to bear him like an oriflammeUnconquerable to armies of reproach,—‘By him’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls,By those blue eyes no woman born could dareA perjury on, I make my mother’s oath,That if I left that Heart, to lighten it,The blood of mine was still, except for grief!No cleaner maid than I was, took a stepTo a sadder end,—no matron-mother nowLooks backward to her early maidenhoodThrough chaster pulses. I speak steadily:And if I lie so, ... if, being fouled in willAnd paltered with in soul by devil’s lust,I dared to bid this angel take my part, ...Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven,Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak:He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’’s your word?[257]Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France?Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws,Seduce it into carrion? So with me.I was not ever, as you say, seduced,But simply, murdered.’ There she paused, and sighed, With such a sigh as drops from agonyTo exhaustion,—sighing while she let the babeSlide down upon her bosom from her arms,And all her face’s light fell after him,Like a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank,And sate upon the bedside with the child.
But I, convicted, broken utterly,With woman’s passion clung about her waist,And kissed her hair and eyes,—‘I have been wrong,Sweet Marian’ ... (weeping in a tender rage)‘Sweet holy Marian! And now, Marian, now,I’ll use your oath although my lips are hard,And by the child, my Marian, by the child,I’ll swear his mother shall be innocentBefore my conscience, as in the open BookOf Him who reads for judgement. Innocent,My sister! let the night be ne’er so dark,The moon is surely somewhere in the sky;So surely is your whiteness to be foundThrough all dark facts. But pardon, pardon me,And smile a little, Marian,—for the child,If not for me, my sister.’ The poor lip [258]Just motioned for the smile and let it go:And then, with scarce a stirring of the mouth,As if a statue spoke that could not breathe,But spoke on calm between its marble lips,—‘I’m glad, I’m very glad you clear me so.I should be sorry that you set me downWith harlots, or with even a better nameWhich misbecomes his mother. For the rest,I am not on a level with your love,Nor ever was, you know,—but now am worse,Because that world of yours has dealt with meAs when the hard sea bites and chews a stoneAnd changes the first form of it. I’ve markedA shore of pebbles bitten to one shapeFrom all the various life of madrepores;And so, that little stone, called Marian Erle,Picked up and dropped by you and another friend,Was ground and tortured by the incessant seaAnd bruised from what she was,—changed! death’s a change,And she, I said, was murdered; Marian’s dead.What can you do with people when they are dead,But, if you are pious, sing a hymn and go,Or, if you are tender, heave a sigh and go,But go by all means,—and permit the grassTo keep its green feud up ’twixt them and you?Then leave me,—let me rest. I’m dead, I say.And if, to save the child from death as well,The mother in me has survived the rest,Why, that’s God’s miracle you must not tax,—[259]I’m not less dead for that: I’m nothing moreBut just a mother. Only for the child,I’m warm, and cold, and hungry, and afraid,And smell the flowers a little, and see the sun,And speak still, and am silent,—just for him!I pray you therefore to mistake me not,And treat me, haply, as I were alive;For though you ran a pin into my soul,I think it would not hurt nor trouble me.Here’s proof, dear lady,—in the market-placeBut now, you promised me to say a wordAbout ... a friend, who once, long years ago,Took God’s place toward me, when He draws and lovesAnd does not thunder, ... whom at last I left,As all of us leave God. You thought perhaps,I seemed to care for hearing of that friend?Now, judge me! we have sate here half-an-hourAnd talked together of the child and me,And I not asked as much as, ‘What’s the thingYou had to tell me of the friend ... the friend?’He’s sad, I think you said,—he’s sick perhaps?It’s nought to Marian if he’s sad or sick.Another would have crawled beside your footAnd prayed your words out. Why, a beast, a dog,A starved cat, if he had fed it once with milk,Would show less hardness. But I’m dead, you see,And that explains it.’ Poor, poor thing, she spoke And shook her head, as white and calm as frostOn days too cold for raining any more,[260]But still with such a face, so much alive,I could not choose but take it on my armAnd stroke the placid patience of its cheeks,—Then told my story out, of Romney Leigh,How, having lost her, sought her, missed her still,He, broken-hearted for himself and her,Had drawn the curtains of the world awhileAs if he had done with morning. There I stopped,For when she gasped, and pressed me with her eyes,‘And now ... how is it with him? tell me now,’—I felt the shame of compensated grief,And chose my words with scruple—slowly steppedUpon the slippery stones set here and thereAcross the sliding water. ‘Certainly,As evening empties morning into night,Another morning takes the evening upWith healthful, providential interchange;And, though he thought still of her,’— ‘Yes, she knew, She understood: she had supposed, indeed,That, as one stops a hole upon a flute,At which a new note comes and shapes the tune,Excluding her would bring a worthier in,And, long ere this, that Lady WaldemarHe loved so’ ...‘Loved,’ I started,—‘loved her so!Now tell me’ ...‘I will tell you,’ she replied:‘But since we’re taking oaths, you’ll promise firstThat he, in England, he, shall never learn[261]In what a dreadful trap his creature here,Round whose unworthy neck he had meant to tieThe honourable ribbon of his name,Fell unaware, and came to butchery:Because,—I know him,—as he takes to heartThe grief of every stranger, he’s not likeTo banish mine as far as I should chooseIn wishing him most happy. Now he leavesTo think of me, perverse, who went my way,Unkind, and left him,—but if once he knew ...Ah, then, the sharp nail of my cruel wrongWould fasten me for ever in his sight,Like some poor curious bird, through each spread wingNailed high up over a fierce hunter’s fire,To spoil the dinner of all tenderer folkCome in by chance. Nay, since your Marian’s dead,You shall not hang her up, but dig a holeAnd bury her in silence! ring no bells.’
I answered gaily, though my whole voice wept;‘We’ll ring the joy-bells, not the funeral-bells,Because we have her back, dead or alive.’
She never answered that, but shook her head;Then low and calm, as one who, safe in heaven,Shall tell a story of his lower life,Unmoved by shame or anger,—so she spoke.She told me she had loved upon her knees,As others pray, more perfectly absorbedIn the act and aspiration. She felt his,[262]For just his uses, not her own at all,His stool, to sit on, or put up his foot,His cup, to fill with wine or vinegar,Whichever drink might please him at the chance,For that should please her always: let him writeHis name upon her ... it seemed natural;It was most precious, standing on his shelf,To wait until he chose to lift his hand.Well, well,—I saw her then, and must have seenHow bright her life went, floating on her love,Like wicks the housewives send afloat on oil,Which feeds them to a flame that lasts the night.
To do good seemed so much his business,That, having done it, she was fain to think,Must fill up his capacity for joy.At first she never mooted with herselfIf he was happy, since he made her so,Or if he loved her, being so much beloved:Who thinks of asking if the sun is light,Observing that it lightens? who’s so bold,To question God of His felicity?Still less. And thus she took for granted first,What first of all she should have put to proof,And sinned against him so, but only so.‘What could you hope,’ she said, ‘of such as she?You take a kid you like, and turn it outIn some fair garden; though the creature’s fondAnd gentle, it will leap upon the bedsAnd break your tulips, bite your tender trees:[263]The wonder would be if such innocenceSpoiled less. A garden is no place for kids.’
And, by degrees, when he who had chosen her,Brought in his courteous and benignant friendsTo spend their goodness on her, which she tookSo very gladly, as a part of his,—By slow degrees, it broke on her slow sense,That she, too, in that Eden of delightWas out of place, and, like the silly kid,Still did most mischief where she meant most love.A thought enough to make a woman mad,(No beast in this, but she may well go mad)That, saying ‘I am thine to love and use,’May blow the plague in her protesting breathTo the very man for whom she claims to die,—That, clinging round his neck, she pulls him downAnd drowns him,—and that, lavishing her soul,She hales perdition on him. ‘So, being mad,’Said Marian ...‘Ah—who stirred such thoughts, you ask?Whose fault it was, that she should have such thoughts?None’s fault, none’s fault. The light comes, and we see:But if it were not truly for our eyes,There would be nothing seen, for all the light;And so with Marian. If she saw at last,The sense was in her,—Lady WaldemarHad spoken all in vain else.’ ‘O my heart, O prophet in my heart,’ I cried aloud,[264]‘Then Lady Waldemar spoke!’ ‘Did she speak,’ Mused Marian softly—‘or did she only sign?Or did she put a word into her faceAnd look, and so impress you with the word?Or leave it in the foldings of her gown,Like rosemary smells, a movement will shake outWhen no one’s conscious? who shall say, or guess?One thing alone was certain,—from the dayThe gracious lady paid a visit first,She, Marian, saw things different,—felt distrustOf all that sheltering roof of circumstanceHer hopes were building into with clay nests:Her heart was restless, pacing up and downAnd fluttering, like dumb creatures before storms,Not knowing wherefore she was ill at ease.’
‘And still the lady came,’ said Marian Erle,‘Much oftener than he knew it, Mister Leigh.She bade me never tell him that she had come,She liked to love me better than he knew,So very kind was Lady Waldemar:And every time she brought with her more light,And every light made sorrow clearer ... Well,Ah, well! we cannot give her blame for that;’Twould be the same thing if an angel came,Whose right should prove our wrong. And every timeThe lady came, she looked more beautiful,And spoke more like a flute among green trees,Until at last, as one, whose heart being sad[265]On hearing lovely music, suddenlyDissolves in weeping, I brake out in tearsBefore her ... asked her counsel ... ‘had I erredIn being too happy? would she set me straight?For she, being wise and good and born aboveThe flats I had never climbed from, could perceiveIf such as I, might grow upon the hills;And whether such poor herb sufficed to grow,For Romney Leigh to break his fast upon ’t,—Or would he pine on such, or haply starve?’She wrapt me in her generous arms at once,And let me dream a moment how it feelsTo have a real mother, like some girls:But when I looked, her face was younger ... ay,Youth’s too bright not to be a little hard,And beauty keeps itself still uppermost,That’s true!—Though Lady Waldemar was kind,She hurt me, hurt, as if the morning-sunShould smite us on the eyelids when we sleep,And wake us up with headache. Ay, and soonWas light enough to make my heart ache too:She told me truths I asked for ... ’twas my fault ...‘That Romney could not love me, if he would,As men call loving; there are bloods that flowTogether, like some rivers, and not mix,Through contraries of nature. He indeedWas set to wed me, to espouse my class,Act out a rash opinion,—and, once wed,So just a man and gentle, could not chooseBut make my life as smooth as marriage-ring,[266]Bespeak me mildly, keep me a cheerful house,With servants, broaches, all the flowers I liked,And pretty dresses, silk the whole year round’ ...At which I stopped her,—‘This for me. And now‘For him.’—She murmured,—truth grew difficult;She owned, ‘’Twas plain a man like Romney LeighRequired a wife more level to himself.If day by day he had to bend his heightTo pick up sympathies, opinions, thoughts,And interchange the common talk of lifeWhich helps a man to live as well as talk,His days were heavily taxed. Who buys a staffTo fit the hand, that reaches but the knee?He’d feel it bitter to be forced to missThe perfect joy of married suited pairs,Who, bursting through the separating hedgeOf personal dues with that sweet eglantineOf equal love, keep saying, ‘So we think,It strikes us,—that’s our fancy.’‘—When I askedIf earnest will, devoted love, employedIn youth like mine, would fail to raise me up,—As two strong arms will always raise a childTo a fruit hung overhead? she sighed and sighed ...‘That could not be,’ she feared. ‘You take a pink,You dig about its roots and water it,And so improve it to a garden-pink,But will not change it to a heliotrope,The kind remains. And then, the harder truth—This Romney Leigh, so rash to leap a pale,So bold for conscience, quick for martyrdom,[267]Would suffer steadily and never flinch,But suffer surely and keenly, when his classTurned shoulder on him for a shameful match,And set him up as nine-pin in their talk,To bowl him down with jestings.’—There, she paused;And when I used the pause in doubting thatWe wronged him after all in what we feared—‘Suppose such things should never touch him, moreIn his high conscience, (if the things should be,)Than, when the queen sits in an upper room,The horses in the street can spatter her!’—A moment, hope came,—but the lady closedThat door and nicked the lock, and shut it out,Observing wisely that, ‘the tender heartWhich made him over-soft to a lower class,Could scarcely fail to make him sensitive‘To a higher,—how they thought, and what they felt.’
‘Alas, alas,’ said Marian, rocking slowThe pretty baby who was near asleep,The eyelids creeping over the blue balls,—‘She made it clear, too clear—I saw the whole!And yet who knows if I had seen my wayStraight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear,Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this,Had set her own house all a-fire for me,To light me forwards? Leaning on my faceHer heavy agate eyes which crushed my will,She told me tenderly, (as when men comeTo a bedside to tell people they must die)[268]‘She knew of knowledge,—ay, of knowledge, knew,That Romney Leigh had loved her formerly;And she loved him, she might say, now the chanceWas past ... but that, of course, he never guessed,—For something came between them ... something thinAs a cobweb ... catching every fly of doubtTo hold it buzzing at the window-paneAnd help to dim the daylight. Ah, man’s prideOr woman’s—which is greatest? most averseTo brushing cobwebs? Well, but she and heRemained fast friends; it seemed not more than so,Because he had bound his hands and could not stir:An honourable man, if somewhat rash;And she, not even for Romney, would she spillA blot ... as little even as a tear ...Upon his marriage-contract,—not to gainA better joy for two than came by that!For, though I stood between her heart and heaven,She loved me wholly.’ Did I laugh or curse? I think I sate there silent, hearing all,Ay, hearing double,—Marian’s tale, at once,And Romney’s marriage-vow, ‘I’ll keep tothee,’Which means that woman-serpent. Is it timeFor church now?‘Lady Waldemar spoke more,’Continued Marian, ‘but, as when a soulWill pass out through the sweetness of a songBeyond it, voyaging the uphill road,—Even so, mine wandered from the things I heard,[269]To those I suffered. It was afterwardI shaped the resolution to the act.For many hours we talked. What need to talk?The fate was clear and close; it touched my eyes;But still the generous lady tried to keepThe case afloat, and would not let it go,And argued, struggled upon Marian’s side,Which was not Romney’s! though she little knewWhat ugly monster would take up the end,—What griping death within the drowning deathWas ready to complete my sum of death.’
I thought,—Perhaps he’s sliding now the ringUpon that woman’s finger.... She went on: ‘The lady, failing to prevail her way,Upgathered my torn wishes from the ground,And pieced them with her strong benevolence;And, as I thought I could breathe freer airAway from England, going without pause,Without farewell,—just breaking with a jerkThe blossomed offshoot from my thorny life,—She promised kindly to provide the means,With instant passage to the coloniesAnd full protection,—‘would commit me straight‘To one who once had been her waiting-maidAnd had the customs of the world, intentOn changing England for AustraliaHerself, to carry out her fortune so.’For which I thanked the Lady Waldemar,[270]As men upon their death-beds thank last friendsWho lay the pillow straight: it is not much,And yet ’tis all of which they are capable,This lying smoothly in a bed to die.And so, ’twas fixed;—and so, from day to day,The woman named, came in to visit me.’
Just then, the girl stopped speaking,—sate erect,And stared at me as if I had been a ghost,(Perhaps I looked as white as any ghost)With large-eyed horror. ‘Does God make,’ she said,‘All sorts of creatures, really, do you think?Or is it that the Devil slavers themSo excellently, that we come to doubtWho’s strongest, He who makes, or he who mars?I never liked the woman’s face, or voice,Or ways: it made me blush to look at her;It made me tremble if she touched my hand;And when she spoke a fondling word, I shrank,As if one hated me, who had power to hurt;And, every time she came, my veins ran cold,As somebody were walking on my grave.At last I spoke to Lady Waldemar:‘Could such an one be good to trust?’ I asked.Whereat the lady stroked my cheek and laughedHer silver-laugh—(one must be born to laugh,To put such music in it) ‘Foolish girl,‘Your scattered wits are gathering wool beyondThe sheep-walk reaches!—leave the thing to me.’And therefore, half in trust, and half in scorn[271]That I had heart still for another fearIn such a safe despair, I left the thing.
‘The rest is short. I was obedient:I wrote my letter which delivered himFrom Marian, to his own prosperities,And followed that bad guide. The lady?—hush,—I never blame the lady. Ladies whoSit high, however willing to look down,Will scarce see lower than their dainty feet:And Lady Waldemar saw less than I,With what a Devil’s daughter I went forthThe swine’s road, headlong over a precipice,In such a curl of hell-foam caught and choked,No shriek of soul in anguish could pierce throughTo fetch some help. They say there’s help in heavenFor all such cries. But if one cries from hell ...What then?—the heavens are deaf upon that side.
‘A woman ... hear me,—let me make it plain,—A woman ... not a monster ... both her breastsMade right to suckle babes ... she took me off,A woman also, young and ignorant,And heavy with my grief, my two poor eyesNear washed away with weeping, till the trees,The blessed unaccustomed trees and fields,Ran either side the train, like stranger dogsUnworthy of any notice,—took me off,So dull, so blind, and only half alive,Not seeing by what road, nor by what ship,[272]Nor toward what place, nor to what end of all.—Men carry a corpse thus,—past the doorway, pastThe garden-gate, the children’s playground, upThe green lane,—then they leave it in the pit,To sleep and find corruption, cheek to cheekWith him who stinks since Friday. ‘But suppose; To go down with one’s soul into the grave,—To go down half dead, half alive, I say,And wake up with corruption, ... cheek to cheekWith him who stinks since Friday! There it is,And that’s the horror of ’t, Miss Leigh. ‘You feel? You understand?—no, do not look at me,But understand. The blank, blind, weary wayWhich led ... where’er it led ... away, at least;The shifted ship ... to Sydney or to France ...Still bound, wherever else, to another land;The swooning sickness on the dismal sea,The foreign shore, the shameful house, the night,The feeble blood, the heavy-headed grief, ...No need to bring their damnable drugged cup,And yet they brought it! Hell’s so prodigalOf devil’s gifts ... hunts liberally in packs,Will kill no poor small creature of the wildsBut fifty red wide throats must smoke at it,—As HIS at me ... when waking up at last ...I told you that I waked up in the grave.
‘Enough so!—it is plain enough so. True,[273]We wretches cannot tell out all our wrong,Without offence to decent happy folk.I know that we must scrupulously hintWith half-words, delicate reserves, the thingWhich no one scrupled we should feel in full.Let pass the rest, then; only leave my oathUpon this sleeping child,—man’s violence,Not man’s seduction, made me what I am,As lost as ... I told him I should be lost;When mothers fail us, can we help ourselves?That’s fatal!—And you call it being lost,That down came next day’s noon and caught me thereHalf gibbering and half raving on the floor,And wondering what had happened up in heaven,That suns should dare to shine when God himselfWas certainly abolished. ‘I was mad,— How many weeks, I know not,—many weeks.I think they let me go, when I was mad,They feared my eyes and loosed me, as boys mightA mad dog which they had tortured. Up and downI went by road and village, over tractsOf open foreign country, large and strange,Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-linesLike fingers of some ghastly skeleton HandThrough sunlight and through moonlight evermorePushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,And resolute to get me, slow and sure;While every roadside Christ upon his crossHung reddening through his gory wounds at me,[274]And shook his nails in anger, and came downTo follow a mile after, wading upThe low vines and green wheat, crying ‘Take the girl!‘She’s none of mine from henceforth,’ Then, I knew,(But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest)The charitable peasants gave me breadAnd leave to sleep in straw: and twice they tied,At parting, Mary’s image round my neck—How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone;A woman has been strangled with less weight:I threw it in a ditch to keep it cleanAnd ease my breath a little, when none looked;I did not need such safeguards:—brutal menStopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seenMy face,—I must have had an awful look.And so I lived: the weeks passed on,—I lived.’Twas living my old tramp-life o’er again,But, this time, in a dream, and hunted roundBy some prodigious Dream-fear at my backWhich ended, yet: my brain cleared presently,And there I sate, one evening, by the road,I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone,Facing a sunset low upon the flats,As if it were the finish of all time,—The great red stone upon my sepulchre,Which angels were too weak to roll away.[275]
SEVENTH BOOK.
‘The woman’s motive? shall we daub ourselvesWith finding roots for nettles? ’tis soft clayAnd easily explored. She had the means,The monies, by the lady’s liberal grace,In trust for that Australian scheme and me,Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,She served me (after all it was not strange;’Twas only what my mother would have done)A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.
‘Well, after. There are nettles everywhere,But smooth green grasses are more common still;The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;A miller’s wife at Clichy took me inAnd spent her pity on me,—made me calmAnd merely very reasonably sad.She found me a servant’s place in Paris whereI tried to take the cast-off life again,And stood as quiet as a beaten ass[276]Who, having fallen through overloads, stands upTo let them charge him with another pack.
‘A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,Was easy with me, less for kindness thanBecause she led, herself, an easy timeBetwixt her lover and her looking-glass,Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.She felt so pretty and so pleased all dayShe could not take the trouble to be cross,But, sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,Would tap me softly with her slender foot,Still restless with the last night’s dancing in’t,And say, ‘Fie, pale-face! are you English girlsAll grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?And first-communion colours on your cheeks,Worn past the time for’t? little fool, be gay!’At which she vanished, like a fairy, throughA gap of silver laughter. ‘Came an hour When all went otherwise. She did not speak,But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyesAs if a viper with a pair of tongs,Too far for any touch, yet near enoughTo view the writhing creature,—then at last;‘Stand still there, in the holy Virgin’s name,Thou Marian; thou’rt no reputable girl,Although sufficient dull for twenty saints!I think thou mock’st me and my house,’ she said;‘Confess, thou’lt be a mother in a month,[277]Thou mask of saintship.’ ‘Could I answer her? The light broke in so: it meant that then, that?I had not thought of that, in all my thoughts,—Through all the cold, numb aching of my brow,Through all the heaving of impatient lifeWhich threw me on death at intervals,—through allThe upbreak of the fountains of my heartThe rains had swelled too large: it could mean that?Did God make mothers out of victims, then,And set such pure amens to hideous deeds?Why not? He overblows an ugly graveWith violets which blossom in the spring.And I could be a mother in a month!I hope it was not wicked to be glad.I lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed,To heaven, not her, until it tore my throat.‘Confess, confess!’ what was there to confess,Except man’s cruelty, except my wrong?Except this anguish, or this ecstasy?This shame, or glory? The light woman thereWas small to take it in: an acorn-cupWould take the sea in sooner. ‘Good,’ she cried; Unmarried and a mother, and she laughs!These unchaste girls are always impudent.Get out, intriguer! leave my house, and trot:I wonder you should look me in the face,With such a filthy secret.’ ‘Then I rolled [278]My scanty bundle up, and went my way,Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and footWith blind hysteric passion, staggering forthBeyond those doors. ’Twas natural, of course,She should not ask me where I meant to sleep;I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,Like others of my sort; the bed was laidFor us. But any woman, womanly,Had thought of him who should be in a month,The sinless babe that should be in a month,And if by chance he might be warmer housedThan underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.’
I broke on Marian there. ‘Yet she herself,A wife, I think, had scandals of her own,A lover, not her husband.’ ‘Ay,’ she said, ‘But gold and meal are measured otherwise;I learnt so much at school,’ said Marian Erle.
‘O crooked world,’ I cried, ‘ridiculousIf not so lamentable! It’s the wayWith these light women of a thrifty vice,My Marian,—always hard upon the rentIn any sister’s virtue! while they keepTheir chastity so darned with perfidy,That, though a rag itself, it looks as wellAcross a street, in balcony or coach,As any stronger stuff might. For my part,I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews[279]Than touch such women with my finger-end!They top the poor street-walker by their lie,And look the better for being so much worse:The devil’s most devilish when respectable.But you, dear, and your story.’ ‘All the rest Is here,’ she said, and signed upon the child.‘I found a mistress-sempstress who was kindAnd let me sew in peace among her girls;And what was better than to draw the threadsAll day and half the night, for him, and him?And so I lived for him, and so he lives,And so I know, by this time, God lives too.’
She smiled beyond the sun, and ended so,And all my soul rose up to take her partAgainst the world’s successes, virtues, fames.‘Come with me, sweetest sister,’ I returned,‘And sit within my house, and do me goodFrom henceforth, thou and thine! ye are my ownFrom henceforth. I am lonely in the world,And thou art lonely, and the child is halfAn orphan. Come,—and, henceforth, thou and IBeing still together, will not miss a friend,Nor he a father, since two mothers shallMake that up to him. I am journeying south,And, in my Tuscan home I’ll find a niche,And set thee there, my saint, the child and thee,And burn the lights of love before thy face,And ever at thy sweet look cross myself[280]From mixing with the world’s prosperities;That so, in gravity and holy calm,We two may live on toward the truer life.’
She looked me in the face and answered not,Nor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks,But took the sleeping child and held it outTo meet my kiss, as if requiting meAnd trusting me at once. And thus, at once,I carried him and her to where I lived;She’s there now, in the little room, asleep,I hear the soft child-breathing through the door;And all three of us, at to-morrow’s break,Pass onward, homeward, to our Italy.Oh, Romney Leigh, I have your debts to pay,And I’ll be just and pay them. But yourself! To pay your debts is scarcely difficult;To buy your life is nearly impossible,Being sold away to Lamia. My head aches;I cannot see my road along this dark;Nor can I creep and grope, as fits the dark,For these foot-catching robes of womanhood:A man might walk a little ... but I!—He lovesThe Lamia-woman,—and I, write to himWhat stops his marriage, and destroys his peace,—Or what, perhaps, shall simply trouble him,Until she only need to touch his sleeveWith just a finger’s tremulous white flame,Saying, ‘Ah,—Aurora Leigh! a pretty tale,[281]A very pretty poet! I can guessThe motive’—then, to catch his eyes in hers,And vow she does not wonder,—and they twoTo break in laughter, as the sea alongA melancholy coast, and float up higher,In such a laugh, their fatal weeds of love!Ay, fatal, ay. And who shall answer meFate has not hurried tides; and if to-nightMy letter would not be a night too late,—An arrow shot into a man that’s dead,To prove a vain intention? Would I showThe new wife vile, to make the husband mad?No, Lamia! shut the shutters, bar the doorsFrom every glimmer on thy serpent-skin!I will not let thy hideous secret outTo agonise the man I love—I meanThe friend I love ... as friends love. It is strange, To-day while Marian told her story, likeTo absorb most listeners, how I listened chiefTo a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy’s,Nor God’s in wrath, ... but one that mixed with mineLong years ago, among the garden-trees,And said to me, to me too, ‘Be my wife,Aurora!’ It is strange, with what a swellOf yearning passion, as snow of ghostsMight beat against the impervious doors of heaven,I thought, ‘Now, if I had been a woman, suchAs God made women, to save men by love,—By just my love I might have saved this man,[282]And made a nobler poem for the worldThan all I have failed in.’ But I failed besidesIn this; and now he’s lost! through me alone!And, by my only fault, his empty houseSucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hellTo keep his hearth cold, make his casements creakFor ever to the tune of plague and sin—O Romney, O my Romney, O my friend!My cousin and friend! my helper, when I would,My love, that might be! mine! Why, how one weeps When one’s too weary! Were a witness by,He’d say some folly ... that I loved the man,Who knows?... and make me laugh again for scorn.At strongest, women are as weak in flesh,As men, at weakest, vilest, are in soul:So, hard for women to keep pace with men!As well give up at once, sit down at once,And weep as I do. Tears, tears! why, we weep?’Tis worth enquiry?—That we’ve shamed a life,Or lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps?By no means. Simply, that we’ve walked too far,Or talked too much, or felt the wind i’ the east,—And so we weep, as if both body and soulBroke up in water—this way. Poor mixed rags Forsooth we’re made of, like those other dollsThat lean with pretty faces into fairs.It seems as if I had a man in me,Despising such a woman.[283] Yet indeed, To see a wrong or suffering moves us allTo undo it, though we should undo ourselves;Ay, all the more, that we undo ourselves;That’s womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved.A natural movement, therefore, on my part,To fill the chair up of my cousin’s wife,And save him from a devil’s company!We’re all so,—made so—’tis our woman’s tradeTo suffer torment for another’s ease.The world’s male chivalry has perished out,But women are knights-errant to the last;And, if Cervantes had been greater still,He had made his Don a Donna. So it clears, And so we rain our skies blue. Put away This weakness. If, as I have just now said,A man’s within me,—let him act himself,Ignoring the poor conscious trouble of bloodThat’s called the woman merely. I will writePlain words to England,—if too late, too late,—If ill-accounted, then accounted ill;We’ll trust the heavens with something. ‘Dear Lord Howe, You’ll find a story on another leafThat’s Marian Erle’s,—what noble friend of yoursShe trusted once, through what flagitious meansTo what disastrous ends;—the story’s true.I found her wandering on the Paris quays,[284]A babe upon her breast,—unnaturalUnseasonable outcast on such snowsUnthawed to this time. I will tax in thisYour friendship, friend,—if that convicted SheBe not his wife yet, to denounce the factsTo himself,—but, otherwise, to let them passOn tip-toe like escaping murderers,And tell my cousin, merely—Marian lives,Is found, and finds her home with such a friend,Myself, Aurora. Which good news, ‘She’s found,’Will help to make him merry in his love:I send it, tell him, for my marriage gift,As good as orange-water for the nerves,Or perfumed gloves for headaches,—though awareThat he, except of love, is scarcely sick;I mean the new love this time, ... since last year.Such quick forgetting on the part of men!Is any shrewder trick upon the cardsTo enrich them? pray instruct me how it’s done.First, clubs,—and while you look at clubs, it’s spades;That’s prodigy. The lightning strikes a man,And when we think to find him dead and charred ...Why, there he is on a sudden, playing pipesBeneath the splintered elm-tree! Crime and shameAnd all their hoggery trample your smooth world,Nor leave more foot-marks than Apollo’s kine,Whose hoofs were muffled by the thieving godIn tamarisk-leaves and myrtle. I’m so sad,So weary and sad to-night, I’m somewhat sour,—Forgive me. To be blue and shrew at once,[285]Exceeds all toleration except yours;But yours, I know, is infinite. Farewell.To-morrow we take train for Italy.Speak gently of me to your gracious wife,As one, however far, shall yet be nearIn loving wishes to your house.’ I sign. And now I’ll loose my heart upon a page,This—‘Lady Waldemar, I’m very gladI never liked you; which you knew so well,You spared me, in your turn, to like me much.Your liking surely had done worse for meThan has your loathing, though the last appearsSufficiently unscrupulous to hurt,And not afraid of judgment. Now, there’s spaceBetween our faces,—I stand off, as ifI judged a stranger’s portrait and pronouncedIndifferently the type was good or bad:What matter to me that the lines are false,I ask you? Did I ever ink my lipsBy drawing your name through them as a friend’s,Or touch your hands as lovers do? thank GodI never did: and, since you’re proved so vile,Ay, vile, I say,—we’ll show it presently,—I’m not obliged to nurse my friend in you,Or wash out my own blots, in counting yours,Or even excuse myself to honest soulsWho seek to touch my lip or clasp my palm,—‘Alas, but Lady Waldemar came first!’[286]‘’Tis true, by this time, you may near me soThat you’re my cousin’s wife. You’ve gambled deepAs Lucifer, and won the morning-starIn that case,—and the noble house of LeighMust henceforth with its good roof shelter you:I cannot speak and burn you up betweenThose rafters, I who am born a Leigh,—nor speakAnd pierce your breast through Romney’s, I who liveHis friend and cousin!—so, you are safe. You twoMust grow together like the tares and wheatTill God’s great fire.—But make the best of time.
‘And hide this letter! let it speak no moreThan I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,And set her own love digging her own graveWithin her green hope’s pretty garden-ground;Ay, sent her forth with some one of your sortTo a wicked house in France,—from which she fledWith curses in her eyes and ears and throat,Her whole soul choked with curses,—mad, in short,And madly scouring up and down for weeksThe foreign hedgeless country, lone and lost,—So innocent, male-fiends might slink withinRemote hell-corners, seeing her so defiled!
‘But you,—you are a woman and more bold.To do you justice, you’d not shrink to face ...We’ll say, the unfledged life in the other room,Which, treading down God’s corn, you trod in sightOf all the dogs, in reach of all the guns,—[287]Ay, Marian’s babe, her poor unfathered child,Her yearling babe!—you’d face him when he wakesAnd opens up his wonderful blue eyes:You’d meet them and not wink perhaps, nor fearGod’s triumph in them and supreme revenge,So, righting His creation’s balance-scale(You pulled as low as Tophet) to the topOf most celestial innocence! For meWho am not as bold, I own those infant eyesHave set me praying. ‘While they look at heaven, No need of protestation in my wordsAgainst the place you’ve made them! let them look!They’ll do your business with the heavens, be sure:I spare you common curses. ‘Ponder this. If haply you’re the wife of Romney Leigh,(For which inheritance beyond your birthYou sold that poisonous porridge called your soul)I charge you, be his faithful and true wife!Keep warm his hearth and clean his board, and, whenHe speaks, be quick with your obedience;Still grind your paltry wants and low desiresTo dust beneath his heel; though, even thus,The ground must hurt him,—it was writ of old,‘Ye shall not yoke together ox and ass,’The nobler and ignobler. Ay, but youShall do your part as well as such ill thingsCan do aught good. You shall not vex him,—mark,You shall not vex him, ... jar him when he’s sad,[288]Or cross him when he’s eager. UnderstandTo trick him with apparent sympathies,Nor let him see thee in the face too nearAnd unlearn thy sweet seeming. Pay the priceOf lies, by being constrained to lie on still;’Tis easy for thy sort: a million moreWill scarcely damn thee deeper. ‘Doing which, You are very safe from Marian and myself:We’ll breathe as softly as the infant here,And stir no dangerous embers. Fail a point,And show our Romney wounded, ill-content,Tormented in his home, ... we open mouth,And such a noise will follow, the last trump’sWill scarcely seem more dreadful, even to you;You’ll have no pipers after: Romney will(I know him) push you forth as none of his,All other men declaring it well done;While women, even the worst, your like, will drawTheir skirts back, not to brush you in the street;And so I warn you. I’m ... Aurora Leigh.’
The letter written, I felt satisfied.The ashes, smouldering in me, were thrown outBy handfuls from me: I had writ my heartAnd wept my tears, and now was cool and calm;And, going straightway to the neighbouring room,I lifted up the curtains of the bedWhere Marian Erle, the babe upon her arm,Both faces leaned together like a pair[289]Of folded innocences, self-complete,Each smiling from the other, smiled and slept.There seemed no sin, no shame, no wrath, no grief.I felt, she too, had spoken words that night,But softer certainly, and said to God,—Who laughs in heaven perhaps, that such as IShould make ado for such as she.—‘Defiled’I wrote? ‘defiled’ I thought her? Stoop,Stoop lower, Aurora! get the angels’ leaveTo creep in somewhere, humbly, on your knees,Within this round of sequestration whiteIn which they have wrapt earth’s foundlings, heaven’s elect!
The next day, we took train to ItalyAnd fled on southward in the roar of steam.The marriage-bells of Romney must be loud,To sound so clear through all! I was not well;And truly, though the truth is like a jest,I could not choose but fancy, half the way,I stood alone i’ the belfry, fifty bellsOf naked iron, mad with merriment,(As one who laughs and cannot stop himself)All clanking at me, in me, over me,Until I shrieked a shriek I could not hear,And swooned with noise,—but still, along my swoon,Was ’ware the baffled changes backward rang,Prepared, at each emerging sense, to beatAnd crash it out with clangour. I was weak;I struggled for the posture of my soulIn upright consciousness of place and time,[290]But evermore, ’twixt waking and asleep,Slipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marian’s eyesA moment, (it is very good for strengthTo know that some one needs you to be strong)And so recovered what I called myself,For that time.I just knew it when we sweptAbove the old roofs of Dijon. Lyons droppedA spark into the night, half trodden outUnseen. But presently the winding RhoneWashed out the moonlight large along his banks,Which strained their yielding curves out clear and cleanTo hold it,—shadow of town and castle blurredUpon the hurrying river. Such an airBlew thence upon the forehead,—half an airAnd half a water,—that I leaned and looked;Then, turning back on Marian, smiled to markThat she looked only on her child, who slept,His face towards the moon too. So we passed The liberal open country and the close,And shot through tunnels, like a lightning-wedgeBy great Thor-hammers driven through the rock,Which, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits,And lets it in at once: the train swept inAthrob with effort, trembling with resolve,The fierce denouncing whistle wailing onAnd dying off smothered in the shuddering dark,While we, self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressedAs other Titans, underneath the pile[291]And nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last,To catch the dawn afloat upon the land!—Hills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywhere,Not crampt in their foundations, pushing wideRich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn,(As if they entertained i’ the name of France)While, down their straining sides, streamed manifestA soil as red as Charlemagne’s knightly blood,To consecrate the verdure. Some one said,‘Marseilles!’ And lo, the city of Marseilles,With all her ships behind her, and beyond,The scimitar of ever-shining sea,For right-hand use, bared blue against the sky!
That night we spent between the purple heavenAnd purple water: I think Marian slept;But I, as a dog a-watch for his master’s foot,Who cannot sleep or eat before he hears,I sate upon the deck and watched all night,And listened through the stars for Italy.Those marriage-bells I spoke of, sounded far,As some child’s go-cart in the street beneathTo a dying man who will not pass the day,And knows it, holding by a hand he loves.I, too, sate quiet, satisfied with death,Sate silent: I could hear my own soul speak,And had my friend,—for Nature comes sometimesAnd says, ‘I am ambassador for God.’I felt the wind soft from the land of souls;The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,[292]One straining past another along the shore,The way of grand dull Odyssean ghostsAthirst to drink the cool blue wine of seasAnd stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peakThey stood: I watched beyond that Tyrian beltOf intense sea betwixt them and the ship,Down all their sides the misty olive-woodsDissolving in the weak congenial moon,And still disclosing some brown convent-towerThat seems as if it grew from some brown rock,—Or many a little lighted village, droptLike a fallen star, upon so high a point,You wonder what can keep it in its placeFrom sliding headlong with the waterfallsWhich drop and powder all the myrtle-grovesWith spray of silver. Thus my ItalyWas stealing on us. Genoa broke with day;The Doria’s long pale palace striking out,From green hills in advance of the white town,A marble finger dominant to ships,Seen glimmering through the uncertain grey of dawn.
But then I did not think, ‘my Italy,’I thought, ‘my father!’ O my father’s house,Without his presence!—Places are too muchOr else too little, for immortal man;Too little, when love’s May o’ergrows the ground,—Too much, when that luxuriant wealth of greenIs rustling to our ankles in dead leaves.’Tis only good to be, or here or there,[293]Because we had a dream on such a stone,Or this or that,—but, once beings wholly waked,And come back to the stone without the dream,We trip upon’t,—alas! and hurt ourselves;Or else it falls on us and grinds us flat,The heaviest grave-stone on this burying earth.—But while I stood and mused, a quiet touchFell light upon my arm, and, turning round,A pair of moistened eyes convicted mine.‘What, Marian! is the babe astir so soon?’‘He sleeps,’ she answered; ‘I have crept up thrice,And seen you sitting, standing, still at watch.I thought it did you good till now, but now’ ...‘But now,’ I said, ‘you leave the child alone.’‘And you’re alone,’ she answered,—and she lookedAs if I, too, were something. Sweet the helpOf one we have helped! Thanks, Marian, for that help.
I found a house, at Florence, on the hillOf Bellosguardo. ’Tis a tower that keepsA post of double-observation o’erThe valley of Arno (holding as a handThe outspread city) straight toward FiesoleAnd Mount Morello and the setting sun,—The Vallombrosan mountains to the right,Which sunrise fills as full as crystal cupsWine-filled, and red to the brim because it’s red.No sun could die, nor yet be born, unseenBy dwellers at my villa: morn and eveWere magnified before us in the pure[294]Illimitable space and pause of sky,Intense as angels’ garments blanched with God,Less blue than radiant. From the outer wallOf the garden, dropped the mystic floating greyOf olive-trees, (with interruptions greenFrom maize and vine) until ’twas caught and tornOn that abrupt black line of cypressesWhich signed the way to Florence. BeautifulThe city lay along the ample vale,Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street;The river trailing like a silver cordThrough all, and curling loosely, both beforeAnd after, over the whole stretch of landSown whitely up and down its opposite slopes,With farms and villas. Many weeks had passed, No word was granted.—Last, a letter cameFrom Vincent Carrington:—‘My dear Miss Leigh,You’ve been as silent as a poet should,When any other man is sure to speak.If sick, if vexed, if dumb, a silver-pieceWill split a man’s tongue,—straight he speaks and says,‘Received that cheque.’ But you!... I send you fundsTo Paris, and you make no sign at all.Remember I’m responsible and waitA sign of you, Miss Leigh. ‘Meantime your book Is eloquent as if you were not dumb;And common critics, ordinarily deafTo such fine meanings, and, like deaf men, loth[295]To seem deaf, answering chance-wise, yes or no,‘It must be,’ or ‘it must not,’ (most pronouncedWhen least convinced) pronounce for once aright:You’d think they really heard,—and so they do ...The burr of three or four who really hearAnd praise your book aright: Fame’s smallest trumpIs a great ear-trumpet for the deaf as posts,No other being effective. Fear not, friend;We think, here, you have written a good book,And you, a woman! It was in you—yes,I felt ’twas in you: yet I doubted halfIf that od-force of German ReichenbachWhich still from female finger-tips burns blue,Could strike out, as our masculine white heats,To quicken a man. Forgive me. All my heartIs quick with yours, since, just a fortnight since,I read your book and loved it. ‘Will you love My wife, too? Here’s my secret, I might keepA month more from you! but I yield it upBecause I know you’ll write the sooner for’t,—Most women (of your height even) counting loveLife’s only serious business. Who’s my wifeThat shall be in a month? you ask? nor guess?Remember what a pair of topaz eyesYou once detected, turned against the wall,That morning, in my London painting-room;The face half-sketched, and slurred; the eyes alone!But you ... you caught them up with yours, and said‘Kate Ward’s eyes, surely.’—Now, I own the truth,[296]I had thrown them there to keep them safe from Jove;They would so naughtily find out their wayTo both the heads of both my Danaës,Where just it made me mad to look at them.Such eyes! I could not paint or think of eyesBut those,—and so I flung them into paintAnd turned them to the wall’s care. Ay, but nowI’ve let them out, my Kate’s! I’ve painted her,(I’ll change my style, and leave mythologies)The whole sweet face; it looks upon my soulLike a face on water, to beget itself.A half-length portrait, in a hanging cloakLike one you wore once; ’tis a little frayed;I pressed, too, for the nude harmonious arm—But she ... she’d have her way, and have her cloak;She said she could be like you only so,And would not miss the fortune. Ah, my friend,You’ll write and say she shall not miss your loveThrough meeting mine? in faith, she would not change:She has your books by heart, more than my words,And quotes you up against me till I’m pushedWhere, three months since, her eyes were! nay, in fact,Nought satisfied her but to make me paintYour last book folded in her dimpled hands,Instead of my brown palette, as I wished,(And, grant me, the presentment had been newer)She’d grant me nothing: I’ve compounded forThe naming of the wedding-day next month,And gladly too. ’Tis pretty, to remarkHow women can love women of your sort,[297]And tie their hearts with love-knots to your feet,Grow insolent about you against men,And put us down by putting up the lip,As if a man,—there are such, let us own,Who write not ill,—remains a man, poor wretch,While you——! Write far worse than Aurora Leigh,And there’ll be women who believe of you(Besides my Kate) that if you walked on sandYou would not leave a foot-print. ‘Are you put To wonder by my marriage, like poor Leigh?‘Kate Ward!’ he said. ‘Kate Ward!’ he said anew.‘I thought ...’ he said, and stopped,—‘I did not think....’And then he dropped to silence. ‘Ah, he’s changed. I had not seen him, you’re aware, for long,But went of course. I have not touched on thisThrough all this letter,—conscious of your heart,And writing lightlier for the heavy fact,As clocks are voluble with lead. ‘How weak, To say I’m sorry. Dear Leigh, dearest Leigh!In those old days of Shropshire,—pardon me,—When he and you fought many a field of goldOn what you should do, or you should not do,Make bread or verses, (it just came to that)I thought you’d one day draw a silken peaceThrough a golden ring. I thought so. Foolishly,The event proved,—for you went more oppositeTo each other, month by month, and year by year,[298]Until this happened. God knows best, we say,But hoarsely. When the fever took him first,Just after I had writ to you in France,They tell me Lady Waldemar mixed drinksAnd counted grains, like any salaried nurse,Excepting that she wept too. Then Lord Howe,You’re right about Lord Howe! Lord Howe’s a trump;And yet, with such in his hand, a man like LeighMay lose, as he does. There’s an end to all,—Yes, even this letter, though the second sheetMay find you doubtful. Write a word for Kate:Even now she reads my letters like a wife,And, if she sees her name, I’ll see her smile,And share the luck. So, bless you, friend of two!I will not ask you what your feeling isAt Florence, with my pictures. I can hearYour heart a-flutter over the snow-hills;And, just to pace the Pitti with you once,I’d give a half-hour of to-morrow’s walkWith Kate ... I think so. Vincent Carrington.’
The noon was hot; the air scorched like the sun,And was shut out. The closed persiani threwTheir long-scored shadows on my villa-floor,And interlined the golden atmosphereStraight, still,—across the pictures on the wall,The statuette on the console, (of young LoveAnd Psyche made one marble by a kiss)The low couch where I leaned, the table near,The vase of lilies, Marian pulled last night,[299](Each green leaf and each white leaf ruled in blackAs if for writing some new text of fate)And the open letter, rested on my knee,—But there, the lines swerved, trembled, though I sateUntroubled ... plainly, ... reading it againAnd three times. Well, he’s married; that is clear.No wonder that he’s married, nor much moreThat Vincent’s therefore, ‘sorry.’ Why, of course,The lady nursed him when he was not well,Mixed drinks,—unless nepenthe was the drink,’Twas scarce worth telling. But a man in loveWill see the whole sex in his mistress’ hood,The prettier for its lining of fair rose;Although he catches back, and says at last,‘I’m sorry.’ Sorry. Lady WaldemarAt prettiest, under the said hood, preservedFrom such a light as I could hold to her faceTo flare its ugly wrinkles out to shame,—Is scarce a wife for Romney, as friends judge,Aurora Leigh, or Vincent Carrington,—That’s plain. And if he’s ‘conscious of my heart’ ...Perhaps it’s natural, though the phrase is strong;(One’s apt to use strong phrases, being in love)And even that stuff of ‘fields of gold,’ ‘gold rings,’And what he ‘thought,’ poor Vincent! what he ‘thought,’May never mean enough to ruffle me.—Why, this room stifles. Better burn than choke;Best have air, air, although it comes with fire,Throw open blinds and windows to the noon[300]And take a blister on my brow insteadOf this dead weight! best, perfectly be stunnedBy those insufferable cicale, sickAnd hoarse with rapture of the summer-heat,That sing like poets, till their hearts break, ... singTill men say, ‘It’s too tedious.’ Books succeed, And lives fail. Do I feel it so, at last?Kate loves a worn-out cloak for being like mine,While I live self-despised for being myself,And yearn toward some one else, who yearns awayFrom what he is, in his turn. Strain a stepFor ever, yet gain no step? Are we such,We cannot, with our admirations even,Our tip-toe aspirations, touch a thingThat’s higher than we? is all a dismal flat,And God alone above each,—as the sunO’er level lagunes, to make them shine and stink,—Laying stress upon us with immediate flame,While we respond with our miasmal fog,And call it mounting higher, because we growMore highly fatal?Tush, Aurora Leigh!You wear your sackcloth looped in Cæsar’s way,And brag your failings as mankind’s. Be still.There is what’s higher, in this very world,Than you can live, or catch at. Stand aside,And look at others—instance little Kate!She’ll make a perfect wife for Carrington.She always has been looking round the earth[301]For something good and green to alight uponAnd nestle into, with those soft-winged eyesSubsiding now beneath his manly hand’Twixt trembling lids of inexpressive joy:I will not scorn her, after all, too much,That so much she should love me. A wise manCan pluck a leaf, and find a lecture in ’t;And I, too, ... God has made me,—I’ve a heartThat’s capable of worship, love, and loss;We say the same of Shakspeare’s. I’ll be meek,And learn to reverence, even this poor myself.
The book, too—pass it. ‘A good book,’ says he,‘And you a woman.’ I had laughed at that,But long since. I’m a woman,—it is true;Alas, and woe to us, when we feel it most!Then, least care have we for the crowns and goals,And compliments on writing our good books.
The book has some truth in it, I believe:And truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.I know we talk our Phædons to the endThrough all the dismal faces that we make,O’er-wrinkled with dishonouring agonyFrom any mortal drug. I have written truth,And I a woman; feebly, partially,Inaptly in presentation, Romney’ll add,Because a woman. For the truth itself,That’s neither man’s nor woman’s, but just God’s;None else has reason to be proud of truth:[302]Himself will see it sifted, disenthralled,And kept upon the height and in the light,As far as, and no farther, than ’tis truth;For,—now He has left off calling firmamentsAnd strata, flowers and creatures, very good,—He says it still of truth, which is His own.
Truth, so far, in my book;—the truth which drawsThrough all things upwards; that a twofold worldMust go to a perfect cosmos. Natural thingsAnd spiritual,—who separates those twoIn art, in morals, or the social drift,Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,Is wrong, in short, at all points. We divideThis apple of life, and cut it through the pips,—The perfect round which fitted Venus’ handHas perished utterly as if we ateBoth halves. Without the spiritual, observe,The natural’s impossible;—no form,No motion! Without sensuous, spiritualIs inappreciable;—no beauty or power!And in this twofold sphere the twofold man(And still the artist is intensely a man)Holds firmly by the natural, to reachThe spiritual beyond it,—fixes stillThe type with mortal vision, to pierce through,With eyes immortal, to the antetypeSome call the ideal,—better called the real,[303]And certain to be called so presentlyWhen things shall have their names. Look long enoughOn any peasant’s face here, coarse and lined,You’ll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay,As perfect-featured as he yearns at RomeFrom marble pale with beauty; then persist,And, if your apprehension’s competent,You’ll find some fairer angel at his back,As much exceeding him, as he the boor,And pushing him with empyreal disdainFor ever out of sight. Ay, CarringtonIs glad of such a creed! an artist must,Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone,With just his hand, and finds it suddenlyA-piece with and conterminous to his soul.Why else do these things move him, leaf or stone?The bird’s not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot;Nor yet the horse, before a quarry, a-graze:But man, the two-fold creature, apprehendsThe two-fold manner, in and outwardly,And nothing in the world comes single to him,A mere itself,—cup, column, or candlestick,All patterns of what shall be in the Mount;The whole temporal show related royally,And built up to eterne significanceThrough the open arms of God. ‘There’s nothing greatNor small,’ has said a poet of our day,(Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eveAnd not be thrown out by the matin’s bell)And truly, I reiterate, ... nothing’s small![304]No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:And,—glancing on my own thin, veinéd wrist,—In such a little tremour of the bloodThe whole strong clamour of a vehement soulDoth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven,And every common bush afire with God:But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,And daub their natural faces unawareMore and more, from the first similitude.
Truth, so far, in my book! a truth which drawsFrom all things upwards. I, Aurora, stillHave felt it hound me through the wastes of lifeAs Jove did Io: and, until that HandShall overtake me wholly, and, on my head,Lay down its large unfluctuating peace,The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down,It must be. Art’s the witness of what IsBehind this show. If this world’s show were all,Then imitation would be all in Art;There, Jove’s hand gripes us!—For we stand here, we,If genuine artists, witnessing for God’sComplete, consummate, undivided work:—That not a natural flower can grow on earth,Without a flower upon the spiritual side,Substantial, archetypal, all a-glow[305]With blossoming causes,—not so far away,That we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared,May not catch something of the bloom and breath,—Too vaguely apprehended, though indeedStill apprehended, consciously or not,And still transferred to picture, music, verse,For thrilling audient and beholding soulsBy signs and touches which are known to souls,—How known, they know not,—why, they cannot find,So straight call out on genius, say, ‘A manProduced this,’—when much rather they should say,‘’Tis insight, and he saw this.’ Thus is Art Self-magnified in magnifying a truthWhich, fully recognised, would change the worldAnd shift its morals. If a man could feel,Not one day, in the artist’s ecstasy,But every day, feast, fast, or working-day,The spiritual significance burn throughThe hieroglyphic of material shows,Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings,And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree,And even his very body as a man,—Which now he counts so vile, that all the townsMake offal of their daughters for its useOn summer-nights, when God is sad in heavenTo think what goes on in his recreant worldHe made quite other; while that moon He madeTo shine there, at the first love’s covenant,Shines still, convictive as a marriage-ring[306]Before adulterous eyes. How sure it is, That, if we say a true word, instantlyWe feel ’tis God’s, not ours, and pass it onAs bread at sacrament, we taste and passNor handle for a moment, as indeedWe dared to set up any claim to such!And I—my poem;—let my readers talk;I’m closer to it—I can speak as well:I’ll say, with Romney, that the book is weak,The range uneven, the points of sight obscure,The music interrupted. Let us go. The end of woman (or of man, I think)Is not a book. Alas, the best of booksIs but a word in Art, which soon grows cramped,Stiff, dubious-statured with the weight of years,And drops an accent or digamma downSome cranny of unfathomable time,Beyond the critic’s reaching. Art itself,We’ve called the higher life, still must feel the soulLive past it. For more’s felt than is perceived,And more’s perceived than can be interpreted,And Love strikes higher with his lambent flameThan Art can pile the faggots. Is it so? When Jove’s hand meets us with composing touch,And when, at last, we are hushed and satisfied,—Then, Io does not call it truth, but love?[307]Well, well! my father was an Englishman:My mother’s blood in me is not so strongThat I should bear this stress of Tuscan noonAnd keep my wits. The town, there, seems to seetheIn this Medæan boil-pot of the sun,And all the patient hills are bubbling roundAs if a prick would leave them flat. Does heavenKeep far off, not to set us in a blaze?Not so,—let drag your fiery fringes, heaven,And burn us up to quiet! Ah, we knowToo much here, not to know what’s best for peace;We have too much light here, not to want more fireTo purify and end us. We talk, talk,Conclude upon divine philosophies,And get the thanks of men for hopeful books;Whereat we take our own life up, and ... pshaw!Unless we piece it with another’s life,(A yard of silk to carry out our lawn)As well suppose my little handkerchiefWould cover Samminiato, church and all,If out I threw it past the cypresses,As, in this ragged, narrow life of mine,Contain my own conclusions. But at least We’ll shut up the persiani, and sit down,And when my head’s done aching, in the cool,Write just a word to Kate and Carrington.May joy be with them! she has chosen well,And he not ill.I should be glad, I think,[308]Except for Romney. Had he married Kate,I surely, surely, should be very glad.This Florence sits upon me easily,With native air and tongue. My graves are calm,And do not too much hurt me. Marian’s good,Gentle and loving,—lets me hold the child,Or drags him up the hills to find me flowersAnd fill those vases, ere I’m quite awake,—The grandiose red tulips, which grow wild,Or else my purple lilies, Dante blewTo a larger bubble with his prophet-breath;Or one of those tall flowering reeds which standIn Arno like a sheaf of sceptres, leftBy some remote dynasty of dead gods,To suck the stream for ages and get green,And blossom wheresoe’er a hand divineHad warmed the place with ichor. Such I’ve foundAt early morning, laid across my bed,And woke up pelted with a childish laughWhich even Marian’s low precipitous ‘hush’Had vainly interposed to put away,—While I, with shut eyes, smile and motion forThe dewy kiss that’s very sure to comeFrom mouth and cheeks, the whole child’s face at onceDissolved on mine,—as if a nosegay burstIts string with the weight of roses overblown,And dropt upon me. Surely I should be glad.The little creature almost loves me now,And calls my name ... ‘Alola,’ stripping offThe rs like thorns, to make it smooth enough[309]To take between his dainty, milk-fed lips,God love him! I should certainly be glad,Except, God help me, that I’m sorrowful,Because of Romney. Romney, Romney! Well, This grows absurd!—too like a tune that runsI’ the head, and forces all things in the world,Wind, rain, the creaking gnat or stuttering fly,To sing itself and vex you;—yet perhapsA paltry tune you never fairly liked,Some ‘I’d be a butterfly,’ or ‘C’est l’amour:’We’re made so,—not such tyrants to ourselves,We are not slaves to nature. Some of usAre turned, too, overmuch like some poor verseWith a trick of ritournelle: the same thing goesAnd comes back ever. Vincent Carrington Is ‘sorry,’ and I’m sorry; but he’s strongTo mount from sorrow to his heaven of love,And when he says at moments, ‘Poor, poor Leigh,Who’ll never call his own, so true a heart,So fair a face even,’—he must quickly loseThe pain of pity in the blush he has madeBy his very pitying eyes. The snow, for him,Has fallen in May, and finds the whole earth warm,And melts at the first touch of the green grass.
But Romney,—he has chosen, after all.I think he had as excellent a sunTo see by, as most others, and perhaps[310]Has scarce seen really worse than some of us,When all’s said. Let him pass. I’m not too muchA woman, not to be a man for once,And bury all my Dead like Alaric,Depositing the treasures of my soulIn this drained water-course, and, letting flowThe river of life again, with commerce-shipsAnd pleasure-barges, full of silks and songs.Blow, winds, and help us. Ah, we mock ourselves With talking of the winds! perhaps as muchWith other resolutions. How it weighs,This hot, sick air! and how I covet hereThe Dead’s provision on the river’s couch,With silver curtains drawn on tinkling rings!Or else their rest in quiet crypts,—laid byFrom heat and noise!—from those cicale, say,And this more vexing heart-beat. So it is: We covet for the soul, the body’s part,To die and rot. Even so, Aurora, endsOur aspiration, who bespoke our placeSo far in the east. The occidental flatsHad fed us fatter, therefore? we have climbedWhere herbage ends? we want the beast’s part now,And tire of the angel’s?—Men define a man,The creature who stands front-ward to the stars,The creature who looks inward to himself,The tool-wright, laughing creature. ’Tis enough:We’ll say instead, the inconsequent creature, man,—[311]For that’s his specialty. What creature elseConceives the circle, and then walks the square?Loves things proved bad, and leaves a thing proved good?You think the bee makes honey half a year,To loathe the comb in winter, and desireThe little ant’s food rather? But a man—Note men!—they are but women after all,As women are but Auroras!—there are menBorn tender, apt to pale at a trodden worm,Who paint for pastime, in their favourite dream,Spruce auto-vestments flowered with crocus-flames:There are, too, who believe in hell, and lie:There are, who waste their souls in working outLife’s problem on these sands betwixt two tides,And end,—‘Now give us the beast’s part, in death.’
Alas, long-suffering and most patient God,Thou need’st be surelier God to bear with usThan even to have made us! thou, aspire, aspireFrom henceforth for me! thou who hast, thyself,Endured this fleshhood, knowing how, as a soakedAnd sucking vesture, it would drag us downAnd choke us in the melancholy Deep,Sustain me, that, with thee, I walk these waves,Resisting!—breathe me upward, thou for meAspiring, who art the way, the truth, the life,—That no truth henceforth seem indifferent,No way to truth laborious, and no life,Not even this life I live, intolerable![312]The days went by. I took up the old daysWith all their Tuscan pleasures, worn and spoiled,—Like some lost book we dropt in the long grassOn such a happy summer-afternoonWhen last we read it with a loving friend,And find in autumn, when the friend is gone,The grass cut short, the weather changed, too late,And stare at, as at something wonderfulFor sorrow,—thinking how two hands, before,Had held up what is left to only one,And how we smiled when such a vehement nailImpressed the tiny dint here, which presentsThis verse in fire for ever! TenderlyAnd mournfully I lived. I knew the birdsAnd insects,—which look fathered by the flowersAnd emulous of their hues: I recognisedThe moths, with that great overpoise of wingsWhich makes a mystery of them how at allThey can stop flying: butterflies, that bearUpon their blue wings such red embers round,They seem to scorch the blue air into holesEach flight they take: and fire-flies, that suspireIn short soft lapses of transported flameAcross the tingling Dark, while overheadThe constant and inviolable starsOutburn those lights-of-love: melodious owls,(If music had but one note and was sad,’Twould sound just so) and all the silent swirlOf bats, that seem to follow in the airSome grand circumference of a shadowy dome[313]To which we are blind: and then, the nightingales,Which pluck our heart across a garden-wall,(When walking in the town) and carry itSo high into the bowery almond-trees,We tremble and are afraid, and feel as ifThe golden flood of moonlight unawareDissolved the pillars of the steady earthAnd made it less substantial. And I knewThe harmless opal snakes, and large-mouthed frogs,(Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams)And lizards, the green lightnings of the wall,Which, if you sit down still, nor sigh too loud,Will flatter you and take you for a stone,And flash familiarly about your feetWith such prodigious eyes in such small heads!—I knew them, though they had somewhat dwindled fromMy childish imagery,—and kept in mindHow last I sate among them equally,In fellowship and mateship, as a childWill bear him still toward insect, beast, and bird,Before the Adam in him has foregoneAll privilege of Eden,—making friendsAnd talk, with such a bird or such a goat,And buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cageTo let out the caged cricket on a tree,Saying, ‘Oh, my dear grillino, were you cramped?And are you happy with the ilex-leaves?And do you love me who have let you go?Say yes in singing, and I’ll understand.’[314]But now the creatures all seemed farther off,No longer mine, nor like me; only there,A gulph between us. I could yearn indeed,Like other rich men, for a drop of dewTo cool this heat,—a drop of the early dew,The irrecoverable child-innocence(Before the heart took fire and withered life)When childhood might pair equally with birds;But now ... the birds were grown too proud for us!Alas, the very sun forbids the dew.
And I, I had come back to an empty nest,Which every bird’s too wise for. How I heardMy father’s step on that deserted ground,His voice along that silence, as he toldThe names of bird and insect, tree and flower,And all the presentations of the starsAcross Valdarno, interposing still‘My child,’ ‘my child.’ When fathers say ‘my child,’’Tis easier to conceive the universe,And life’s transitions down the steps of law.
I rode once to the little mountain-houseAs fast as if to find my father there,But, when in sight of’t, within fifty yards,I dropped my horse’s bridle on his neckAnd paused upon his flank. The house’s frontWas cased with lingots of ripe Indian cornIn tesselated order, and deviceOf golden patterns: not a stone of wall[315]Uncovered,—not an inch of room to growA vine-leaf. The old porch had disappeared;And, in the open doorway, sate a girlAt plaiting straws,—her black hair strained awayTo a scarlet kerchief caught beneath her chinIn Tuscan fashion,—her full ebon eyes,Which looked too heavy to be lifted so,Still dropt and lifted toward the mulberry-treeOn which the lads were busy with their stavesIn shout and laughter, stripping all the boughsAs bare as winter, of those summer leavesMy father had not changed for all the silkIn which the ugly silkworms hide themselves.Enough. My horse recoiled before my heart—I turned the rein abruptly. Back we wentAs fast, to Florence.That was trial enoughOf graves. I would not visit, if I could,My father’s, or my mother’s any more,To see if stone-cutter or lichen beatSo early in the race, or throw my flowers,Which could not out-smell heaven, or sweeten earth.They live too far above, that I should lookSo far below to find them: let me thinkThat rather they are visiting my grave,This life here, (undeveloped yet to life)And that they drop upon me, now and then,For token or for solace, some small weedLeast odorous of the growths of paradise,To spare such pungent scents as kill with joy.[316]My old Assunta, too, was dead, was dead—O land of all men’s past! for me alone,It would not mix its tenses. I was past,It seemed, like others,—only not in heaven.And, many a Tuscan eve, I wandered downThe cypress alley, like a restless ghostThat tries its feeble ineffectual breathUpon its own charred funeral-brands put outToo soon,—where, black and stiff, stood up the treesAgainst the broad vermilion of the skies.Such skies!—all clouds abolished in a sweepOf God’s skirt, with a dazzle to ghosts and men,As down I went, saluting on the bridgeThe hem of such, before ’twas caught awayBeyond the peaks of Lucca. Underneath,The river, just escaping from the weightOf that intolerable glory, ranIn acquiescent shadow murmurously:And up, beside it, streamed the festa-folkWith fellow-murmurs from their feet and fans,(With issimo and ino and sweet poiseOf vowels in their pleasant scandalous talk)Returning from the grand-duke’s dairy-farmBefore the trees grew dangerous at eight,(For, ‘trust no tree by moonlight,’ Tuscans say)To eat their ice at Doni’s tenderly,—Each lovely lady close to a cavalierWho holds her dear fan while she feeds her smileOn meditative spoonfuls of vanille,He breathing hot protesting vows of love,[317]Enough to thaw her cream, and scorch his beard.’Twas little matter. I could pass them byIndifferently, not fearing to be known.No danger of being wrecked upon a friend,And forced to take an iceberg for an isle!The very English, here, must wait to learnTo hang the cobweb of their gossip outAnd catch a fly. I’m happy. It’s sublime,This perfect solitude of foreign lands!To be, as if you had not been till then,And were then, simply that you chose to be:To spring up, not be brought forth from the ground,Like grasshoppers at Athens, and skip thriceBefore a woman makes a pounce on youAnd plants you in her hair!—possess, yourself,A new world all alive with creatures new,New sun, new moon, new flowers, new people—ah,And be possessed by none of them! no rightIn one, to call your name, enquire your where,Or what you think of Mister Some-one’s book,Or Mister Other’s marriage, or decease,Or how’s the headache which you had last week,Or why you look so pale still, since it’s gone?—Such most surprising riddance of one’s lifeComes next one’s death; it’s disembodimentWithout the pang. I marvel, people chooseTo stand stock-still like fakirs, till the mossGrows on them, and they cry out, self-admired,‘How verdant and how virtuous!’ Well, I’m glad:Or should be, if grown foreign to myself[318]As surely as to others. Musing so, I walked the narrow unrecognising streets,Where many a palace-front peers gloomilyThrough stony vizors iron-barred, (preparedAlike, should foe or lover pass that way,For guest or victim) and came wandering outUpon the churches with mild open doorsAnd plaintive wail of vespers, where a few,Those chiefly women, sprinkled round in blotsUpon the dusky pavement, knelt and prayedToward the altar’s silver glory. Oft a ray(I liked to sit and watch) would tremble out,Just touch some face more lifted, more in need,Of course a woman’s—while I dreamed a taleTo fit its fortunes. There was one who lookedAs if the earth had suddenly grown too largeFor such a little humpbacked thing as she;The pitiful black kerchief round her neckSole proof she had had a mother. One, again,Looked sick for love,—seemed praying some soft saintTo put more virtue in the new fine scarfShe spent a fortnight’s meals on, yesterday,That cruel Gigi might return his eyesFrom Giuliana. There was one, so old,So old, to kneel grew easier than to stand,—So solitary, she accepts at lastOur Lady for her gossip, and frets onAgainst the sinful world which goes its roundsIn marrying and being married, just the same[319]As when ’twas almost good and had the right,(Her Gian alive, and she herself eighteen).And yet, now even, if Madonna willed,She’d win a tern in Thursday’s lottery,And better all things. Did she dream for nought,That, boiling cabbage for the fast-day’s soup,It smelt like blessed entrails? such a dreamFor nought? would sweetest Mary cheat her so,And lose that certain candle, straight and whiteAs any fair grand-duchess in her teens,Winch otherwise should flare here in a week?Benigna sis, thou beauteous Queen of heaven!
I sate there musing, and imaginingSuch utterance from such faces: poor blind soulsThat writhed toward heaven along the devil’s trail,—Who knows, I thought, but He may stretch his handAnd pick them up? ’tis written in the Book,He heareth the young ravens when they cry;And yet they cry for carrion.—O my God,—And we, who make excuses for the rest,We do it in our measure. Then I knelt,And dropped my head upon the pavement too,And prayed, since I was foolish in desireLike other creatures, craving offal-food,That He would stop his ears to what I said,And only listen to the run and beatOf this poor, passionate, helpless blood— And then I lay, and spoke not. But He heard in heaven.[320]So many Tuscan evenings passed the same!I could not lose a sunset on the bridge,And would not miss a vigil in the church,And liked to mingle with the out-door crowdSo strange and gay and ignorant of my face,For men you know not, are as good as trees.And only once, at the Santissima,I almost chanced upon a man I knew,Sir Blaise Delorme. He saw me certainly,And somewhat hurried, as he crossed himself,The smoothness of the action,—then half bowed,But only half, and merely to my shade,I slipped so quick behind the porphyry plinth,And left him dubious if ’twas really I,Or peradventure Satan’s usual trickTo keep a mounting saint uncanonised.But I was safe for that time, and he too;The argent angels in the altar-flareAbsorbed his soul, next moment. The good man!In England we were scarce acquaintances,That here in Florence he should keep my thoughtBeyond the image on his eye, which cameAnd went: and yet his thought disturbed my life:For, after that, I oftener sate at homeOn evenings, watching how they fined themselvesWith gradual conscience to a perfect night,Until the moon, diminished to a curve,Lay out there, like a sickle for His handWho cometh down at last to reap the earth.At such times, ended seemed my trade of verse;[321]I feared to jingle bells upon my robeBefore the four-faced silent cherubim:With God so near me, could I sing of God?I did not write, nor read, nor even think,But sate absorbed amid the quickening glooms,Most like some passive broken lump of saltDropt in by chance to a bowl of œnomel,To spoil the drink a little, and lose itself,Dissolving slowly, slowly, until lost.[322]
[323]
EIGHTH BOOK.
One eve it happened, when I sate alone,Alone, upon the terrace of my tower,A book upon my knees, to counterfeitThe reading that I never read at all,While Marian, in the garden down below,Knelt by the fountain (I could just hear thrillThe drowsy silence of the exhausted day)And peeled a new fig from that purple heapIn the grass beside her,—turning out the redTo feed her eager child, who sucked at itWith vehement lips across a gap of airAs he stood opposite, face and curls a-flameWith that last sun-ray, crying, ‘give me, give,’And stamping with imperious baby-feet,(We’re all born princes)—something startled me,—The laugh of sad and innocent souls, that breaksAbruptly, as if frightened at itself;’Twas Marian laughed. I saw her glance aboveIn sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,And straightway dropped my eyes upon my book,[324]And knew, the first time, ’twas Boccaccio’s tales,The Falcon’s,—of the lover who for loveDestroyed the best that loved him. Some of usDo it still, and then we sit and laugh no more.Laugh you, sweet Marian! you’ve the right to laugh,Since God himself is for you, and a child!For me there’s somewhat less,—and so, I sigh.
The heavens were making room to hold the night,The sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gatesTo let the stars out slowly (prophesiedIn close-approaching advent, not discerned),While still the cue-owls from the cypressesOf the Poggio called and counted every pulseOf the skyey palpitation. GraduallyThe purple and transparent shadows slowHad filled up the whole valley to the brim,And flooded all the city, which you sawAs some drowned city in some enchanted sea,Cut off from nature,—drawing you who gaze,With passionate desire, to leap and plunge,And find a sea-king with a voice of waves,And treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locksYou cannot kiss but you shall bring awayTheir salt upon your lips. The duomo-bellStrikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,So deep; and fifty churches answer itThe same, with fifty various instances.Some gaslights tremble along squares and streets;The Pitti’s palace-front is drawn in fire;[325]And, past the quays, Maria Novella’s Place,In which the mystic obelisks stand upTriangular, pyramidal, each basedOn a single trine of brazen tortoises,To guard that fair church, Buonarroti’s Bride,That stares out from her large blind dial-eyes,Her quadrant and armillary dials, blackWith rhythms of many suns and moons, in vainEnquiry for so rich a soul as his,—Methinks I have plunged, I see it all so clear....And, oh my heart, ... the sea-king!
In my ears The sound of waters. There he stood, my king!
I felt him, rather than beheld him. UpI rose, as if he were my king indeed,And then sate down, in trouble at myself,And struggling for my woman’s empery.’Tis pitiful; but women are so made:We’ll die for you, perhaps,—’tis probable;But we’ll not spare you an inch of our full height:We’ll have our whole just stature,—five feet four,Though laid out in our coffins: pitiful!—‘You, Romney!—— Lady Waldemar is here?’
He answered in a voice which was not his.‘I have her letter; you shall read it soon:But first, I must be heard a little, I,Who have waited long and travelled far for that,[326]Although you thought to have shut a tedious bookAnd farewell. Ah, you dog-eared such a page,And here you find me.’ Did he touch my hand, Or but my sleeve? I trembled, hand and foot,—He must have touched me.—‘Will you sit?’ I asked,And motioned to a chair; but down he sate,A little slowly, as a man in doubt,Upon the couch beside me,—couch and chairBeing wheeled upon the terrace. ‘You are come, My cousin Romney?—this is wonderful.But all is wonder on such summer-nights;And nothing should surprise us any more,Who see that miracle of stars. Behold.’
I signed above, where all the stars were out,As if an urgent heat had started thereA secret writing from a sombre page,A blank last moment, crowded suddenlyWith hurrying splendours. ‘Then you do not know’— He murmured.‘Yes, I know,’ I said, ‘I know.I had the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet I did not think you’d leave the workIn England, for so much even,—though, of course,You’ll make a work-day of your holiday,And turn it to our Tuscan people’s use,—Who much need helping since the Austrian boar[327](So bold to cross the Alp by LombardyAnd dash his brute front unabashed againstThe steep snow-bosses of that shield of GodWho soon shall rise in wrath and shake it clear,)Came hither also,—raking up our vinesAnd olive-gardens with his tyrannous tusks,And rolling on our maize with all his swine,’
‘You had the news from Vincent Carrington,’He echoed,—picking up the phrase beyond,As if he knew the rest was merely talkTo fill a gap and keep out a strong wind,—‘You had, then, Vincent’s personal news?’ ‘His own,’ I answered. ‘All that ruined world of yoursSeems crumbling into marriage. CarringtonHas chosen wisely.’‘Do you take it so?’He cried, ‘and is it possible at last’ ...He paused there,—and then, inward to himself,‘Too much at last, too late!—yet certainly’ ...(And there his voice swayed as an Alpine plankThat feels a passionate torrent underneath)‘The knowledge, if I had known it, first or last,Had never changed the actual case for me.And best, for her, at this time.’ Nay, I thought, He loves Kate Ward, it seems, now, like a man,Because he has married Lady Waldemar.Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was moved[328]To hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wellsIn this world! Then I spoke,—‘I did not think,My cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.’
‘In fact I never knew her. ’Tis enoughThat Vincent did, before he chose his wifeFor other reasons than those topaz eyesI’ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,For all that. One takes up the world with eyes.’
—Including Romney Leigh, I thought again,Albeit he knows them only by repute.How vile must all men be, since he’s a man.
His deep pathetic voice, as if he guessedI did not surely love him, took the word;‘You never got a letter from Lord HoweA month back, dear Aurora?’
‘None,’ I said.
‘I felt it was so,’ he replied: ‘Yet, strange!Sir Blaise Delorme has passed through Florence?’ ‘Ay, By chance I saw him in Our Lady’s church,(I saw him, mark you, but he saw not me)Clean-washed in holy water from the countOf things terrestrial,—letters and the rest;He had crossed us out together with his sins.[329]Ay, strange; but only strange that good Lord HowePreferred him to the post because of pauls.For me I’m sworn to never trust a man—At least with letters.’
‘There were facts to tell,— To smooth with eye and accent. Howe supposed ...Well, well, no matter! there was dubious need;You heard the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet perhaps you had been startled lessTo see me, dear Aurora, if you had readThat letter.’—Now he sets me down as vexed.I think I’ve draped myself in woman’s prideTo a perfect purpose. Oh, I’m vexed, it seems!My friend Lord Howe deputes his friend Sir Blaise,To break as softly as a sparrow’s eggThat lets a bird out tenderly, the newsOf Romney’s marriage to a certain saint;To smooth with eye and accent,—indicateHis possible presence. Excellently wellYou’ve played your part, my Lady Waldemar,—As I’ve played mine.‘Dear Romney,’ I began,‘You did not use, of old, to be so likeA Greek king coming from a taken Troy,’Twas needful that precursors spread your pathWith three-piled carpets, to receive your footAnd dull the sound of’t. For myself, be sure,Although it frankly ground the gravel here,[330]I still could bear it. Yet I’m sorry, too,To lose this famous letter, which Sir BlaiseHas twisted to a lighter absentlyTo fire some holy taper with: Lord HoweWrites letters good for all things but to lose;And many a flower of London gossipryHas dropt wherever such a stem broke off,—Of course I know that, lonely among my vines,Where nothing’s talked of, save the blight again,And no more Chianti! Still the letter’s useAs preparation ... Did I start indeed?Last night I started at a cockchafer,And shook a half-hour after. Have you learntNo more of women, ’spite of privilege,Than still to take account too seriouslyOf such weak flutterings? Why, we like it, sir,—We get our powers and our effects that way.The trees stand stiff and still at time of frost,If no wind tears them; but, let summer come,When trees are happy,—and a breath availsTo set them trembling through a million leavesIn luxury of emotion. Something lessIt takes to move a woman: let her startAnd shake at pleasure,—nor conclude at yours,The winter’s bitter,—but the summer’s green.’
He answered, ‘Be the summer ever greenWith you, Aurora!—though you sweep your sexWith somewhat bitter gusts from where you liveAbove them,—whirling downward from your heights[331]Your very own pine-cones, in a grand disdainOf the lowland burrs with which you scatter them.So high and cold to others and yourself,A little less to Romney, were unjust,And thus, I would not have you. Let it pass:I feel content, so. You can bear indeedMy sudden step beside you: but for me,’Twould move me sore to hear your softened voice,—Aurora’s voice,—if softened unawareIn pity of what I am.’ Ah friend, I thought, As husband of the Lady WaldemarYou’re granted very sorely pitiable!And yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voiceFrom softening in the pity of your case,As if from lie or licence. CertainlyWe’ll soak up all the slush and soil of lifeWith softened voices, ere we come to you.
At which I interrupted my own thoughtAnd spoke out calmly. ‘Let us ponder, friend,Whate’er our state, we must have made it first;And though the thing displease us, ay, perhapsDisplease us warrantably, never doubtThat other states, thought possible once, and thenRejected by the instinct of our lives,—If then adopted, had displeased us moreThan this, in which the choice, the will, the love,Has stamped the honour of a patent actFrom henceforth. What we choose, may not be good;[332]But, that we choose it, proves it good for usPotentially, fantastically, nowOr last year, rather than a thing we saw,And saw no need for choosing. Moths will burnTheir wings,—which proves that light is good for moths,Or else they had flown not, where they agonise,’
‘Ay, light is good,’ he echoed, and there paused.And then abruptly, ... ‘Marian. Marian’s well?’
I bowed my head, but found no word. ’Twas hardTo speak of her to Lady Waldemar’sNew husband. How much did he know, at last?How much? how little?—— He would take no sign,But straight repeated,—‘Marian. Is she well?’
‘She’s well,’ I answered.
She was there in sight An hour back, but the night had drawn her home;Where still I heard her in an upper room,Her low voice singing to the child in bed,Who restless with the summer-heat and playAnd slumber snatched at noon, was long sometimesAt falling off, and took a score of songsAnd mother-hushes, ere she saw him sound.
‘She’s well,’ I answered.
‘Here?’ he asked. [333] ‘Yes, here.’
He stopped and sighed. ‘That shall be presently,But now this must be. I have words to say,And would be alone to say them, I with you,And no third troubling.’
‘Speak then,’ I returned, ‘She will not vex you.’
At which, suddenly He turned his face upon me with its smile,As if to crush me. ‘I have read your book,Aurora.’‘You have read it,’ I replied,‘And I have writ it,—we have done with it.And now the rest?’ ‘The rest is like the first,’ He answered,—‘for the book is in my heart,Lives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me:My daily bread tastes of it,—and my wineWhich has no smack of it, I pour it out;It seems unnatural drinking.’ Bitterly I took the word up; ‘Never waste your wine.The book lived in me ere it lived in you;I know it closer than another does,And that it’s foolish, feeble, and afraid,And all unworthy so much compliment.Beseech you, keep your wine,—and, when you drink,[334]Still wish some happier fortune to your friend,Than even to have written a far better book.’
He answered gently, ‘That is consequent:The poet looks beyond the book he has made,Or else he had not made it. If a manCould make a man, he’d henceforth be a godIn feeling what a little thing is man:It is not my case. And this special book,I did not make it, to make light of it:It stands above my knowledge, draws me up;’Tis high to me. It may be that the bookIs not so high, but I so low, instead;Still high to me. I mean no compliment:I will not say there are not, young or old,Male writers, ay, or female,—let it pass,Who’ll write us richer and completer books.A man may love a woman perfectly,And yet by no means ignorantly maintainA thousand women have not larger eyes:Enough that she alone has looked at himWith eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.And so, this book, Aurora,—so, your book.’
‘Alas,’ I answered, ‘is it so, indeed?’And then was silent.
‘Is it so, indeed,’ He echoed, ‘that alas is all your word?’[335]I said,—‘I’m thinking of a far-off June,When you and I, upon my birthday once,Discoursed of life and art, with both untried.I’m thinking, Romney, how ’twas morning then,And now ’tis night.’
‘And now,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’
‘I’m thinking,’ I resumed, ‘’tis somewhat sadThat if I had known, that morning in the dew,My cousin Romney would have said such wordsOn such a night, at close of many years,In speaking of a future book of mine,It would have pleased me better as a hope,Than as an actual grace it can at all.That’s sad, I’m thinking.’ ‘Ay,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’
‘And there,’ I added lightly, ‘are the stars!And here, we’ll talk of stars, and not of books.’
‘You have the stars,’ he murmured,—‘it is well:Be like them! shine, Aurora, on my dark,Though high and cold and only like a star,And for this short night only,—you, who keepThe same Aurora of the bright June dayThat withered up the flowers before my face,And turned me from the garden evermoreBecause I was not worthy. Oh, deserved,Deserved! That I, who verily had not learnt[336]God’s lesson half, attaining as a dunceTo obliterate good words with fractious thumbsAnd cheat myself of the context,—I should pushAside, with male ferocious impudence,The world’s Aurora who had conned her partOn the other side the leaf! ignore her so,Because she was a woman and a queen,And had no beard to bristle through her song,—My teacher, who has taught me with a book,My Miriam, whose sweet mouth, when nearly drownedI still heard singing on the shore! Deserved,That here I should look up unto the starsAnd miss the glory’ ... ‘Can I understand?’ I broke in. ‘You speak wildly, Romney Leigh,Or I hear wildly. In that morning-timeWe recollect, the roses were too red,The trees too green, reproach too naturalIf one should see not what the other saw:And now, it’s night, remember; we have shadesIn place of colours; we are now grown cold,And old, my cousin Romney. Pardon me,—I’m very happy that you like my book,And very sorry that I quoted backA ten years’ birthday; ’twas so mad a thingIn any woman, I scarce marvel muchYou took it for a venturous piece of spite,Provoking such excuses, as indeedI cannot call you slack in.’ ‘Understand,’ [337]He answered sadly, ‘something, if but so.This night is softer than an English day,And men may well come hither when they’re sick,To draw in easier breath from larger air.’Tis thus with me; I’ve come to you,—to you,My Italy of women, just to breatheMy soul out once before you, ere I go,As humble as God makes me at the last,(I thank Him) quite out of the way of men,And yours, Aurora,—like a punished child,His cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness,To silence in a corner. I am comeTo speak, beloved’.... ‘Wisely, cousin Leigh, And worthily of us both!’ ‘Yes, worthily; For this time I must speak out and confessThat I, so truculent in assumption once,So absolute in dogma, proud in aim,And fierce in expectation,—I, who feltThe whole world tugging at my skirts for help,As if no other man than I, could pull,Nor woman, but I led her by the hand,Nor cloth hold, but I had it in my coat,—Do know myself to-night for what I wasOn that June-day, Aurora. Poor bright day,Which meant the best ... a woman and a rose, ...And which I smote upon the cheek with words,Until it turned and rent me! Young you were,That birthday, poet, but you talked the right:[338]While I, ... I built up follies like a wallTo intercept the sunshine and your face.Your face! that’s worse.’ ‘Speak wisely, cousin Leigh.’
‘Yes, wisely, dear Aurora, though too late:But then, not wisely. I was heavy then,And stupid, and distracted with the criesOf tortured prisoners in the polished brassOf that Phalarian bull, society,—Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,But, if you listen, moans and cries insteadDespairingly, like victims tossed and goredAnd trampled by their hoofs. I heard the criesToo close: I could not hear the angels liftA fold of rustling air, nor what they saidTo help my pity. I beheld the worldAs one great famishing carnivorous mouth,—A huge, deserted, callow, black, bird Thing,With piteous open beak that hurt my heart,Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped,And tore the violets up to get the worms.Worms, worms, was all my cry: an open mouth,A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips,No more! That poor men narrowed their demandsTo such an end, was virtue, I supposed,Adjudicating that to see it soWas reason. Oh, I did not push the caseUp higher, and ponder how it answers, whenThe rich take up the same cry for themselves,[339]Professing equally,—‘an open mouthA gross want, food to fill us, and no more!’Why that’s so far from virtue, only viceFinds reason for it! That makes libertines:That slurs our cruel streets from end to endWith eighty thousand women in one smile,Who only smile at night beneath the gas:The body’s satisfaction and no more,Being used for argument against the soul’s,Here too! the want, here too, implying the right.—How dark I stood that morning in the sun,My best Aurora, though I saw your eyes,—When first you told me ... oh, I recollectThe words ... and how you lifted your white hand,And how your white dress and your burnished curlsWent greatening round you in the still blue air,As if an inspiration from withinHad blown them all out when you spoke the same,Even these,—‘You will not compass your poor endsOf barley-feeding and material ease,Without the poet’s individualismTo 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 an inch insideThe dust of the actual: and your Fouriers failed,Because not poets enough to understandThat life develops from within.’ I sayYour words,—I could say other words of yours;For none of all your words has been more lost[340]Than sweet verbena, which, being brushed against,Will hold you three hours after by the smell,In spite of long walks on the windy hills.But these words dealt in sharper perfume,—theseWere ever on me, stinging through my dreams,And saying themselves for ever o’er my actsLike some unhappy verdict. That I failed,Is certain. Stye or no stye, to contriveThe swine’s propulsion toward the precipice,Proved easy and plain. I subtly organisedAnd ordered, built the cards up high and higher,Till, some one breathing, all fell flat again;In setting right society’s wide wrong,Mere life’s so fatal! So I failed indeedOnce, twice, and oftener,—hearing through the rentsOf obstinate purpose, still those words of yours,‘You will not compass your poor ends, not you!’But harder than you said them; every timeStill farther from your voice, until they cameTo overcrow me with triumphant scornWhich vexed me to resistance. Set down thisFor condemnation,—I was guilty here:I stood upon my deed and fought my doubt,As men will,—for I doubted,—till at lastMy deed gave way beneath me suddenly,And left me what I am. The curtain dropped,My part quite ended, all the footlights quenched,My own soul hissing at me through the dark,I, ready for confession,—I was wrong,I’ve sorely failed; I’ve slipped the ends of life,[341]I yield; you have conquered.’ ‘Stay,’ I answered him; ‘I’ve something for your hearing, also. IHave failed too.’‘You!’ he said, ‘you’re very great;The sadness of your greatness fits you well:As if the plume upon a hero’s casqueShould nod a shadow upon his victor face.’
I took him up austerely,—‘You have readMy book, but not my heart; for recollect,’Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at.I’ve surely failed, I know; if failure meansTo look back sadly on work gladly done,—To wander on my mountains of Delight,So called, (I can remember a friend’s wordsAs well as you, sir,) weary and in wantOf even a sheep-path, thinking bitterly....Well, well! no matter. I but say so much,To keep you, Romney Leigh, from saying more,And let you feel I am not so high indeed,That I can bear to have you at my foot,—Or safe, that I can help you. That June-day,Too deeply sunk in craterous sunsets nowFor you or me to dig it up alive;To pluck it out all bleeding with spent flameAt the roots, before those moralising starsWe have got instead,—that poor lost day, you saidSome words as truthful as the thing of mineYou care to keep in memory: and I hold[342]If I, that day, and, being the girl I was,Had shown a gentler spirit, less arrogance,It had not hurt me. Ah, you’ll not mistakeThe point here. I but only think, you see,More justly, that’s more humbly, of myself,Than when I tried a crown on and supposed....Nay, laugh, sir,—I’ll laugh with you!—pray you, laugh.I’ve had so many birthdays since that day,I’ve learnt to prize mirth’s opportunities,Which come too seldom. Was it you who saidI was not changed? the same Aurora? Ah,We could laugh there, too! Why, Ulysses’ dogKnew him, and wagged his tail and died: but ifI had owned a dog, I too, before my Troy,And, if you brought him here, ... I warrant youHe’d look into my face, bark lustily,And live on stoutly, as the creatures willWhose spirits are not troubled by long loves.A dog would never know me, I’m so changed;Much less a friend ... except that you’re misledBy the colour of the hair, the trick of the voice,Like that Aurora Leigh’s.’ ‘Sweet trick of voice! I would be a dog for this, to know it at last,And die upon the falls of it. O love,O best Aurora! are you then so sad,You scarcely had been sadder as my wife?’
‘Your wife, sir! I must certainly be changed,If I, Aurora, can have said a thing[343]So light, it catches at the knightly spursOf a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh,And trips him from his honourable senseOf what befits’ ... ‘You wholly misconceive,’ He answered.I returned,—‘I’m glad of it;But keep from misconception, too, yourself:I am not humbled to so low a point,Nor so far saddened. If I am sad at all,Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head,Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth,Though ne’er so merry: I’m perforce more wise,And that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest,Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole,That birthday morning. ’Tis impossibleTo get at men excepting through their souls,However open their carnivorous jaws;And poets get directlier at the soul,Than any of your œconomists:—for which,You must not overlook the poet’s workWhen scheming for the world’s necessities.The soul’s the way. Not even Christ HimselfCan save man else than as He holds man’s soul;And therefore did He come into our flesh,As some wise hunter creeping on his kneesWith a torch, into the blackness of some cave,To face and quell the beast there,—take the soul,And so possess the whole man, body and soul.I said, so far, right, yes; not farther, though:[344]We both were wrong that June-day,—both as wrongAs an east wind had been. I who talked of art,And you who grieved for all men’s griefs ... what then?We surely made too small a part for GodIn these things. What we are, imports us moreThan what we eat; and life, you’ve granted me,Develops from within. But innermostOf the inmost, most interior of the interne,God claims his own, Divine humanityRenewing nature,—or the piercingest verse,Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keepAs much upon the outside of a man,As the very bowl, in which he dips his beard.—And then, ... the rest. I cannot surely speak.Perhaps I doubt more than you doubted then,If I, the poet’s veritable charge,Have borne upon my forehead. If I have,It might feel somewhat liker to a crown,The foolish green one even.—Ah, I think,And chiefly when the sun shines, that I’ve failed.But what then, Romney? Though we fail indeed,You ... I ... a score of such weak workers, ... HeFails never. If He cannot work by us,He will work over us. Does He want a man,Much less a woman, think you? Every timeThe star winks there, so many souls are born,Who all shall work too. Let our own be calm:We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,Impatient that we’re nothing.’ ‘Could we sit [345]Just so for ever, sweetest friend,’ he said,‘My failure would seem better than success.And yet, indeed, your book has dealt with meMore gently, cousin, than you ever will!The book brought down entire the bright June-day,And set me wandering in the garden-walks,And let me watch the garland in a place,You blushed so ... nay, forgive me; do not stir:I only thank the book for what it taught,And what, permitted. Poet, doubt yourself;But never doubt that you’re a poet to meFrom henceforth. Ah, you’ve written poems, sweet,Which moved me in secret, as the sap is movedIn still March-branches, signless as a stone:But this last book o’ercame me like soft rainWhich falls at midnight, when the tightened barkBreaks out into unhesitating buds,And sudden protestations of the spring.In all your other books, I saw but you:A man may see the moon so, in a pond,And not be nearer therefore to the moon,Nor use the sight ... except to drown himself:And so I forced my heart back from the sight;For what had I, I thought, to do with her,—Aurora ... Romney? But, in this last book,You showed me something separate from yourself,Beyond you; and I bore to take it in,And let it draw me. You have shown me truths,O June-day friend, that help me now at night,When June is over! truths not yours, indeed,[346]But set within my reach by means of you:Presented by your voice and verse the wayTo take them clearest. Verily I was wrong;And verily, many thinkers of this age,Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,Are wrong in just my sense, who understoodOur natural world too insularly, as ifNo spiritual counterpart completed itConsummating its meaning, rounding allTo justice and perfection, line by line,Form by form, nothing single, nor alone,—The great below clenched by the great above;Shade here authenticating substance there;The body proving spirit, as the effectThe cause: we, meantime, being too grossly aptTo hold the natural, as dogs a bone,(Though reason and nature beat us in the face);So obstinately, that we’ll break our teethOr ever we let go. For everywhereWe’re too materialistic,—eating clay,(Like men of the west) instead of Adam’s cornAnd Noah’s wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,Until we’re filled up to the throat with clay,And grow the grimy colour of the groundOn which we are feeding. Ay, materialistThe age’s name is. God himself, with some,Is apprehended as the bare resultOf what his hand materially has made,Expressed in such an algebraic sign,Called God;—that is, to put it otherwise,[347]They add up nature to a naught of GodAnd cross the quotient. There are many, even,Whose names are written in the Christian churchTo no dishonour,—diet still on mud,And splash the altars with it. You might thinkThe clay, Christ laid upon their eyelids when,Still blind, he called them to the use of sight,Remained there to retard its exerciseWith clogging incrustations. Close to heaven,They see, for mysteries, through the open doors,Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware;And fain would enter, when their time shall come,With quite a different body than St. PaulHas promised,—husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn,Or where’s the resurrection?’ ‘Thus it is,’ I sighed. And he resumed with mournful face.‘Beginning so, and filling up with clayThe wards of this great key, the natural world,And fumbling vainly therefore at the lockOf the spiritual,—we feel ourselves shut inWith all the wild-beast roar of struggling life,The terrors and compunctions of our souls,As saints with lions,—we who are not saints,And have no heavenly lordship in our stareTo awe them backward! Ay, we are forced, so pent,To judge the whole too partially, ... confoundConclusions. Is there any common phraseSignificant, when the adverb’s heard alone,The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?[348]But we, distracted in the roar of life,Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,And bruit against Him that his thought is void,His meaning hopeless;—cry, that everywhereThe government is slipping from his hand,Unless some other Christ ... say Romney Leigh ...Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world,For which the First has proved inadequate,However we talk bigly of His workAnd piously of His person. We blasphemeAt last, to finish that doxology,Despairing on the earth for which He died.’
‘So now,’ I asked, ‘you have more hope of men?’
‘I hope,’ he answered: ‘I am come to thinkThat God will have his work done, as you said,And that we need not be disturbed too muchFor Romney Leigh or others having failedWith this or that quack nostrum,—recipesFor keeping summits by annulling depths,For learning wrestling with long lounging sleeves,And perfect heroism without a scratch.We fail,—what, then? Aurora, if I smiledTo see you, in your lovely morning-pride,Try on the poet’s wreath which suits the noon,—(Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stainBefore they grow the ivy!) certainlyI stood myself there worthier of contempt,Self-rated, in disastrous arrogance,[349]As competent to sorrow for mankindAnd even their odds. A man may well despair,Who counts himself so needful to success.I failed. I throw the remedy back on God,And sit down here beside you, in good hope.’
‘And yet, take heed,’ I answered, ‘lest we leanToo dangerously on the other side,And so fail twice. Be sure, no earnest workOf any honest creature, howbeit weak,Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,It is not gathered as a grain of sandTo enlarge the sum of human action usedFor carrying out God’s end. No creature worksSo ill, observe, that therefore he’s cashiered.The honest earnest man must stand and work;The woman also; otherwise she dropsAt once below the dignity of man,Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work:Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.’
He cried, ‘True. After Adam, work was curse;The natural creature labours, sweats and frets.But, after Christ, work turns to privilege;And henceforth one with our humanity,The Six-day Worker, working still in us,Has called us freely to work on with HimIn high companionship. So, happiest!I count that Heaven itself is only workTo a surer issue. Let us work, indeed,—[350]But, no more, work as Adam ... nor as LeighErewhile, as if the only man on earth,Responsible for all the thistles blownAnd tigers couchant,—struggling in amazeAgainst disease and winter,—snarling onFor ever, that the world’s not paradise.Oh cousin, let us be content, in work,To do the thing we can, and not presumeTo fret because it’s little. ’Twill employSeven men, they say, to make a perfect pin:Who makes the head, content to miss the point,—Who makes the point, agreed to leave the join:And if a man should cry, ‘I want a pin,And I must make it straightway, head and point,’—His wisdom is not worth the pin he wants.Seven men to a pin,—and not a man too much!Seven generations, haply, to this world,To right it visibly, a finger’s breadth,And mend its rents a little. Oh, to stormAnd say,—‘This world here is intolerable;I will not eat this corn, nor drink this wine,Nor love this woman, flinging her my soulWithout a bond for’t, as a lover should,Nor use the generous leave of happinessAs not too good for using generously’—(Since virtue kindles at the touch of joy,Like a man’s cheek laid on a woman’s hand;And God, who knows it, looks for quick returnsFrom joys)!—to stand and claim to have a lifeBeyond the bounds of the individual man,[351]And raze all personal cloisters of the soulTo build up public stores and magazines,As if God’s creatures otherwise were lost,The builder surely saved by any means!To think,—I have a pattern on my nail,And I will carve the world new after it,And solve so, these hard social questions,—nay,Impossible social questions,—since their rootsStrike deep in Evil’s own existence here,Which God permits because the question’s hardTo abolish evil nor attaint free-will.Ay, hard to God, but not to Romney Leigh!For Romney has a pattern on his nail,(Whatever may be lacking on the Mount)And not being overnice to separateWhat’s element from what’s convention, hastesBy line on line, to draw you out a world,Without your help indeed, unless you takeHis yoke upon you and will learn of him,—So much he has to teach! so good a world!The same, the whole creation’s groaning for!No rich nor poor, no gain nor loss nor stint,No potage in it able to excludeA brother’s birthright, and no right of birth,The potage,—both secured to every man;And perfect virtue dealt out like the rest,Gratuitously, with the soup at six,To whoso does not seek it.’ ‘Softly, sir,’ I interrupted,—‘I had a cousin once[352]I held in reverence. If he strained too wide,It was not to take honour, but give help;The gesture was heroic. If his handAccomplished nothing ... (well, it is not proved)That empty hand thrown impotently outWere sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven,Than many a hand that reaped a harvest inAnd keeps the scythe’s glow on it. Pray you, then,For my sake merely, use less bitternessIn speaking of my cousin.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Aurora! when the prophet beats the ass,The angel intercedes.’ He shook his head—‘And yet to mean so well, and fail so foul,Expresses ne’er another beast than man;The antithesis is human. Harken, dear;There’s too much abstract willing, purposing,In this poor world. We talk by aggregates,And think by systems; and, being used to faceOur evils in statistics, are inclinedTo cap them with unreal remediesDrawn out in haste on the other side the slate.’
‘That’s true,’ I answered, fain to throw up thought,And make a game of’t; ‘Oh, we generaliseEnough to please you. If we pray at all,We pray no longer for our daily bread,But next centenary’s harvests. If we give,Our cup of water is not tendered tillWe lay down pipes and found a Company[353]With Branches. Ass or angel, ’tis the same:A woman cannot do the thing she ought,Which means whatever perfect thing she can,In life, in art, in science, but she fearsTo let the perfect action take her partAnd rest there: she must prove what she can doBefore she does it,—prate of woman’s rights,Of woman’s mission, woman’s function, tillThe men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,‘A woman’s function plainly is ... to talk.’Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!They cannot hear each other speak.’ ‘And you, An artist, judge so?’‘I, an artist,—yes,Because, precisely, I’m an artist, sir,And woman,—if another sate in sight,I’d whisper,—Soft, my sister! not a word!By speaking we prove only we can speak;Which he, the man here, never doubted. WhatHe doubts, is whether we can do the thingWith decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all:Now, do it; bring your statue,—you have room!He’ll see it even by the starlight here;And if ’tis e’er so little like the godWho looks out from the marble silentlyAlong the track of his own shining dartThrough the dusk of ages,—there’s no need to speak;The universe shall henceforth speak for you,And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was born[354]To do it,—claims her license in her work.’—And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech:Who rights a land’s finances, is excusedFor touching coppers, though her hands be white,—But we, we talk!’‘It is the age’s mood,’He said; ‘we boast, and do not. We put upHostelry signs where’er we lodge a day,—Some red colossal cow, with mighty papsA Cyclops’ fingers could not strain to milk;Then bring out presently our saucer-fullOf curds. We want more quiet in our works,More knowledge of the bounds in which we work;More knowledge that each individual manRemains an Adam to the general race,Constrained to see, like Adam, that he keepHis personal state’s condition honestly,Or vain all thoughts of his to help the world,Which still must be developed from its one,If bettered in its many. We, indeed,Who think to lay it out new like a park,We take a work on us which is not man’s;For God alone sits far enough above,To speculate so largely. None of us(Not Romney Leigh) is mad enough to say,We’ll have a grove of oaks upon that slopeAnd sink the need of acorns. Government,If veritable and lawful, is not givenBy imposition of the foreign hand,—[355]Nor chosen from a pretty pattern-bookOf some domestic idealogue, who sitsAnd coldly chooses empire, where as wellHe might republic. Genuine governmentIs but the expression of a nation, goodOr less good,—even as all society,Howe’er unequal, monstrous, crazed, and cursed,Is but the expression of men’s single lives,The loud sum of the silent units. What,We’d change the aggregate and yet retainEach separate figure? Whom do we cheat by that?Now, not even Romney.’ ‘Cousin, you are sad. Did all your social labour at Leigh HallAnd elsewhere, come to nought then?’ ‘It was nought,’ He answered mildly. ‘There is room indeed,For statues still, in this large world of God’s,But not for vacuums,—so I am not sad:Not sadder than is good for what I am.My vain phalanstery dissolved itself;My men and women of disordered lives,I brought in orderly to dine and sleep,Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,With fierce contortions of the natural face;And cursed me for my tyrannous constraintIn forcing crooked creatures to live straight;And set the country hounds upon my backTo bite and tear me for my wicked deedOf trying to do good without the church[356]Or even the squires, Aurora. Do you mindYour ancient neighbours? The great book-club teemsWith ‘sketches,’ ‘summaries,’ and ‘last tracts’ but twelve,On socialistic troublers of close bondsBetwixt the generous rich and grateful poor.The vicar preached from ‘Revelations,’ (tillThe doctor woke) and found me with ‘the frogs’On three successive Sundays; ay, and stoppedTo weep a little (for he’s getting old)That such perdition should o’ertake a manOf such fair acres,—in the parish, too!He printed his discourses ‘by request;’And if your book shall sell as his did, thenYour verses are less good than I suppose.The women of the neighbourhood subscribed,And sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk,Tooled edges, blazoned with the arms of Leigh:I own that touched me.’ ‘What, the pretty ones? Poor Romney!’‘Otherwise the effect was small.I had my windows broken once or twiceBy liberal peasants, naturally incensedAt such a vexer of Arcadian peace,Who would not let men call their wives their ownTo kick like Britons,—and made obstaclesWhen things went smoothly as a baby drugged,Toward freedom and starvation; bringing downThe wicked London tavern-thieves and drabs,To affront the blessed hillside drabs and thieves[357]With mended morals, quotha,—fine new lives!—My windows paid for’t. I was shot at, once,By an active poacher who had hit a hareFrom the other barrel, tired of springeing gameSo long upon my acres, undisturbed,And restless for the country’s virtue, (yetHe missed me)—ay, and pelted very oftIn riding through the village. ‘There he goes,Who’d drive away our Christian gentlefolks,To catch us undefended in the trapHe baits with poisonous cheese, and lock us upIn that pernicious prison of Leigh HallWith all his murderers! Give another name,And say Leigh Hell, and burn it up with fire.’And so they did, at last, Aurora.’ ‘Did?’
‘You never heard it, cousin? Vincent’s newsCame stinted, then.’ ‘They did? they burnt Leigh Hall?’
‘You’re sorry, dear Aurora? Yes indeed,They did it perfectly: a thorough work,And not a failure, this time. Let us grant’Tis somewhat easier, though, to burn a houseThan build a system:—yet that’s easy, too,In a dream. Books, pictures,—ay, the pictures! what,You think your dear Vandykes would give them pause?Our proud ancestral Leighs with those peaked beards,Or bosoms white as foam thrown up on rocks[358]From the old-spent wave. Such calm defiant looksThey flared up with! now, nevermore they’ll twitThe bones in the family-vault with ugly death.Not one was rescued, save the Lady Maud,Who threw you down, that morning you were born,The undeniable lineal mouth and chin,To wear for ever for her gracious sake;For which good deed I saved her: the rest went:And you, you’re sorry, cousin. Well, for me,With all my phalansterians safely out,(Poor hearts, they helped the burners, it was said,And certainly a few clapped hands and yelled)The ruin did not hurt me as it might,—As when for instance I was hurt one day,A certain letter being destroyed. In fact,To see the great house flare so ... oaken floors,Our fathers made so fine with rushes once,Before our mothers furbished them with trains,—Carved wainscoats, panelled walls, the favourite slideFor draining off a martyr, (or a rogue)The echoing galleries, half a half-mile long,And all the various stairs that took you upAnd took you down, and took you round aboutUpon their slippery darkness, recollect,All helping to keep up one blazing jest;The flames through all the casements pushing forth,Like red-hot devils crinkled into snakes,All signifying,—‘Look you, Romney Leigh,We save the people from your saving, here,Yet so as by fire! we make a pretty show[359]Besides,—and that’s the best you’ve ever done.’——To see this, almost moved myself to clap!The ‘vale et plaude’ came, too, with effect,When, in the roof fell, and the fire, that paused,Stunned momently beneath the stroke of slatesAnd tumbling rafters, rose at once and roared,And wrapping the whole house, (which disappearedIn a mounting whirlwind of dilated flame,)Blew upward, straight, its drift of fiery chaffIn the face of Heaven, ... which blenched, and ran up higher.’
‘Poor Romney!’‘Sometimes when I dream,’ he said,‘I hear the silence after; ’twas so still.For all those wild beasts, yelling, cursing round,Were suddenly silent, while you counted five!So silent, that you heard a young bird fallFrom the top-nest in the neighbouring rookeryThrough edging over-rashly toward the light.The old rooks had already fled too far,To hear the screech they fled with, though you sawSome flying on still, like scatterings of dead leavesIn autumn-gusts, seen dark against the sky:All flying,—ousted, like the House of Leigh.’
‘Dear Romney!’‘Evidently ’twould have beenA fine sight for a poet, sweet, like you,To make the verse blaze after. I myself,Even I, felt something in the grand old trees,[360]Which stood that moment like brute Druid godsAmazed upon the rim of ruin, where,As into a blackened socket, the great fireHad dropped,—still throwing up splinters now and then,To show them grey with all their centuries,Left there to witness that on such a dayThe house went out.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘While you counted five I seemed to feel a little like a Leigh,—But then it passed, Aurora. A child cried;And I had enough to think of what to doWith all those houseless wretches in the dark,And ponder where they’d dance the next time, theyWho had burnt the viol.’ ‘Did you think of that? Who burns his viol will not dance, I know,To cymbals, Romney.’ ‘O my sweet sad voice,’ He cried,—‘O voice that speaks and overcomes!The sun is silent, but Aurora speaks.’
‘Alas,’ I said; ‘I speak I know not what:I’m back in childhood, thinking as a child,A foolish fancy—will it make you smile?I shall not from the window of my roomCatch sight of those old chimneys any more.’
‘No more,’ he answered. ‘If you pushed one dayThrough all the green hills to our fathers’ house,[361]You’d come upon a great charred circle whereThe patient earth was singed an acre round;With one stone-stair, symbolic of my life,Ascending, winding, leading up to nought!’Tis worth a poet’s seeing. Will you go?’
I made no answer. Had I any rightTo weep with this man, that I dared to speak?A woman stood between his soul and mine,And waved us off from touching evermoreWith those unclean white hands of hers. Enough.We had burnt our viols and were silent. So, The silence lengthened till it pressed. I spoke,To breathe: ‘I think you were ill afterward.’
‘More ill,’ he answered, ‘had been scarcely ill.I hoped this feeble fumbling at life’s knotMight end concisely,—but I failed to die,As formerly I failed to live,—and thusGrew willing, having tried all other ways,To try just God’s. Humility’s so good,When pride’s impossible. Mark us, how we makeOur virtues, cousin, from our worn-out sins,Which smack of them from henceforth. Is it right,For instance, to wed here, while you love there?And yet because a man sins once, the sinCleaves to him, in necessity to sin;That if he sin not so, to damn himself,He sins so, to damn others with himself:[362]And thus, to wed here, loving there, becomesA duty. Virtue buds a dubious leafRound mortal brows; your ivy’s better, dear.—Yet she, ’tis certain, is my very wife;The very lamb left mangled by the wolvesThrough my own bad shepherding: and could I chooseBut take her on my shoulder past this stretchOf rough, uneasy wilderness, poor lamb,Poor child, poor child?—Aurora, my belov’d,I will not vex you any more to-night;But, having spoken what I came to say,The rest shall please you. What she can, in me,—Protection, tender liking, freedom, ease,She shall have surely, liberally, for herAnd hers, Aurora. Small amends they’ll makeFor hideous evils (which she had not knownExcept by me) and for this imminent loss,This forfeit presence of a gracious friend,Which also she must forfeit for my sake,Since, ... drop your hand in mine a moment, sweet,We’re parting!—— Ah, my snowdrop, what a touch,As if the wind had swept it off! you grudgeYour gelid sweetness on my palm but so,A moment? angry, that I could not bearYou ... speaking, breathing, living, side by sideWith some one called my wife ... and live, myself?Nay, be not cruel—you must understand!Your lightest footfall on a floor of mineWould shake the house, my lintel being uncrossed’Gainst angels: henceforth it is night with me,[363]And so, henceforth, I put the shutters up;Auroras must not come to spoil my dark.’
He smiled so feebly, with an empty handStretched sideway from me,—as indeed he lookedTo any one but me to give him help,—And, while the moon came suddenly out full,The double-rose of our Italian moons,Sufficient, plainly, for the heaven and earth,(The stars, struck dumb and washed away in dewsOf golden glory, and the mountains steepedIn divine languor) he, the man, appearedSo pale and patient, like the marble manA sculptor puts his personal sadness inTo join his grandeur of ideal thought,—As if his mallet struck me from my heightOf passionate indignation, I who had risenPale,—doubting, paused, ... Was Romney mad indeed?Had all this wrong of heart made sick the brain?
Then quiet, with a sort of tremulous pride,‘Go, cousin,’ I said coldly. ‘A farewellWas sooner spoken ’twixt a pair of friendsIn those old days, than seems to suit you now:And if, since then, I’ve writ a book or two,I’m somewhat dull still in the manly artOf phrase and metaphrase. Why, any manCan carve a score of white Loves out of snow,As Buonarroti down in Florence there,And set them on the wall in some safe shade,[364]As safe, sir, as your marriage! very good;Though if a woman took one from the ledgeTo put it on the table by her flowers,And let it mind her of a certain friend,’Twould drop at once, (so better,) would not bearHer nail-mark even, where she took it upA little tenderly; so best, I say:For me, I would not touch so light a thing,And risk to spoil it half an hour beforeThe sun shall shine to melt it: leave it there.I’m plain at speech, direct in purpose: whenI speak, you’ll take the meaning as it is,And not allow for puckerings in the silksBy clever stitches. I’m a woman, sir,And use the woman’s figures naturally,As you, the male license. So, I wish you well.I’m simply sorry for the griefs you’ve had—And not for your sake only, but mankind’s.This race is never grateful: from the first,One fills their cup at supper with pure wine,Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge,In bitter vinegar.’‘If gratefuller,’He murmured,—‘by so much less pitiable!God’s self would never have come down to die,Could man have thanked him for it.’ ‘Happily ’Tis patent that, whatever,’ I resumed,‘You suffered from this thanklessness of men,You sink no more than Moses’ bulrush-boat,[365]When once relieved of Moses; for you’re light,You’re light, my cousin! which is well for you,And manly. For myself,—now mark me, sir,They burnt Leigh Hall; but if, consummatedTo devils, heightened beyond Lucifers,They had burnt instead a star or two, of thoseWe saw above there just a moment back,Before the moon abolished them,—destroyedAnd riddled them in ashes through a sieveOn the head of the foundering universe,—what then?If you and I remained still you and I,It would not shift our places as mere friends,Nor render decent you should toss a phraseBeyond the point of actual feeling!—nay,You shall not interrupt me: as you said,We’re parting. Certainly, not once or twice,To-night you’ve mocked me somewhat, or yourself;And I, at least, have not deserved it soThat I should meet it unsurprised. But now,Enough: we’re parting ... parting. Cousin Leigh,I wish you well through all the acts of lifeAnd life’s relations, wedlock, not the least;And it shall ‘please me,’ in your words, to knowYou yield your wife, protection, freedom, ease,And very tender liking. May you liveSo happy with her, Romney, that your friendsMay praise her for it. Meantime, some of usAre wholly dull in keeping ignorantOf what she has suffered by you, and what debtOf sorrow your rich love sits down to pay:[366]But if ’tis sweet for love to pay its debt,’Tis sweeter still for love to give its gift;And you, be liberal in the sweeter way,—You can, I think. At least, as touches me,You owe her, cousin Romney, no amends;She is not used to hold my gown so fast,You need entreat her now to let it go:The lady never was a friend of mine,Nor capable,—I thought you knew as much,—Of losing for your sake so poor a prizeAs such a worthless friendship. Be content,Good cousin, therefore, both for her and you!I’ll never spoil your dark, nor dull your noon,Nor vex you when you’re merry, nor when you rest:You shall not need to put a shutter upTo keep out this Aurora. Ah, your northCan make Auroras which vex nobody,Scarce known from evenings! also, let me say,My larks fly higher than some windows. Right;You’ve read your Leighs. Indeed ’twould shake a house,If such as I came in with outstretched hand,Still warm and thrilling from the clasp of one ...Of one we know, ... to acknowledge, palm to palm,As mistress there ... the Lady Waldemar.’
‘Now God be with us’ ... with a sudden clashOf voice he interrupted—‘what name’s that?You spoke a name, Aurora.’ ‘Pardon me; I would that, Romney, I could name your wife[367]Nor wound you, yet be worthy.’ ‘Are we mad?’ He echoed—‘wife! mine! Lady Waldemar!I think you said my wife.’ He sprang to his feet,And threw his noble head back toward the moonAs one who swims against a stormy sea,And laughed with such a helpless, hopeless scorn,I stood and trembled.‘May God judge me so,’He said at last,—‘I came convicted here,And humbled sorely if not enough. I came,Because this woman from her crystal soulHad shown me something which a man calls light:Because too, formerly, I sinned by herAs, then and ever since, I have, by God,Through arrogance of nature,—though I loved ...Whom best, I need not say, ... since that is writToo plainly in the book of my misdeeds;And thus I came here to abase myself,And fasten, kneeling, on her regent browsA garland which I startled thence one dayOf her beautiful June-youth. But here againI’m baffled!—fail in my abasement asMy aggrandisement: there’s no room left for me,At any woman’s foot, who misconceivesMy nature, purpose, possible actions. What!Are you the Aurora who made large my dreamsTo frame your greatness? you conceive so small?You stand so less than woman, through being more,And lose your natural instinct, like a beast,[368]Through intellectual culture? since indeedI do not think that any common sheWould dare adopt such fancy-forgeriesFor the legible life-signature of suchAs I, with all my blots: with all my blots!At last then, peerless cousin, we are peers—At last we’re even. Ah, you’ve left your height;And here upon my level we take hands,And here I reach you to forgive you, sweet,And that’s a fall, Aurora. Long agoYou seldom understood me,—but, before,I could not blame you. Then, you only seemedSo high above, you could not see below;But now I breathe,—but now I pardon!—nay,We’re parting. Dearest, men have burnt my house,Maligned my motives,—but not one, I swear,Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has,Who called the Lady Waldemar my wife.’
‘Not married to her! yet you said’ ... ‘Again? Nay, read the lines’ (he held a letter out)‘She sent you through me.’ By the moonlight there, I tore the meaning out with passionate hasteMuch rather than I read it. Thus it ran.[369]
NINTH BOOK.
Even thus. I pause to write it out at length,The letter of the Lady Waldemar.—
‘I prayed your cousin Leigh to take you this,He says he’ll do it. After years of love,Or what is called so,—when a woman fretsAnd fools upon one string of a man’s name,And fingers it for ever till it breaks,—He may perhaps do for her such a thing,And she accept it without detrimentAlthough she should not love him any more.And I, who do not love him, nor love you,Nor you, Aurora,—choose you shall repentYour most ungracious letter, and confess,Constrained by his convictions, (he’s convinced)You’ve wronged me foully. Are you made so ill,You woman—to impute such ill to me?We both had mothers,—lay in their bosom once.Why, after all, I thank you, Aurora Leigh,For proving to myself that there are things[370]I would not do, ... not for my life ... nor him ...Though something I have somewhat overdone,—For instance, when I went to see the godsOne morning on Olympus, with a stepThat shook the thunder in a certain cloud,Committing myself vilely. Could I think,The Muse I pulled my heart out from my breastTo soften, had herself a sort of heart,And loved my mortal? He, at least, loved her;I heard him say so; ’twas my recompence,When, watching at his bedside fourteen days,He broke out ever like a flame at whilesBetween the heats of fever.... ‘Is it thou?Breathe closer, sweetest mouth!’ and when at lastThe fever gone, the wasted face extinctAs if it irked him much to know me there,He said, ‘’Twas kind, ’twas good, ’twas womanly,’(And fifty praises to excuse one love)‘But was the picture safe he had ventured for?’And then, half wandering ... ‘I have loved her well,Although she could not love me.’—‘Say instead,’I answered, ‘that she loves you.’—’Twas my turnTo rave: (I would have married him so changed,Although the world had jeered me properlyFor taking up with Cupid at his worst,The silver quiver worn off on his hair.)‘No, no,’ he murmured, ‘no, she loves me not;Aurora Leigh does better: bring her bookAnd read it softly, Lady Waldemar,Until I thank your friendship more for that,[371]Than even for harder service.’ So I readYour book, Aurora, for an hour, that day:I kept its pauses, marked its emphasis;My voice, empaled upon rhyme’s golden hooks,Not once would writhe, nor quiver, nor revolt;I read on calmly,—calmly shut it up,Observing, ‘There’s some merit in the book.And yet the merit in’t is thrown awayAs chances still with women, if we writeOr write not: we want string to tie our flowers,So drop them as we walk, which serves to showThe way we went. Good morning, Mister Leigh;You’ll find another reader the next time.A woman who does better than to love,I hate; she will do nothing very well:Male poets are preferable, tiring lessAnd teaching more.’ I triumphed o’er you both,And left him.‘When I saw him afterward,I had read your shameful letter, and my heart.He came with health recovered, strong though pale,Lord Howe and he, a courteous pair of friends,To say what men dare say to women, whenTheir debtors. But I stopped them with a word;And proved I had never trodden such a road,To carry so much dirt upon my shoe.Then, putting into it something of disdain,I asked forsooth his pardon, and my own,For having done no better than to love,And that, not wisely,—though ’twas long ago,[372]And though ’twas altered perfectly since then.I told him, as I tell you now, Miss Leigh,And proved I took some trouble for his sake(Because I knew he did not love the girl)To spoil my hands with working in the streamOf that poor bubbling nature,—till she went,Consigned to one I trusted, my own maid,Who once had lived full five months in my house,(Dressed hair superbly) with a lavish purseTo carry to Australia where she had leftA husband, said she. If the creature lied,The mission failed, we all do fail and lieMore or less—and I’m sorry—which is allExpected from us when we fail the most,And go to church to own it. What I meant,Was just the best for him, and me, and her ...Best even for Marian!—I am sorry for’t,And very sorry. Yet my creature saidShe saw her stop to speak in Oxford StreetTo one ... no matter! I had sooner cutMy hand off (though ’twere kissed the hour before,And promised a pearl troth-ring for the next)Than crush her silly head with so much wrong.Poor child! I would have mended it with gold,Until it gleamed like St. Sophia’s domeWhen all the faithful troop to morning prayer:But he, he nipped the bud of such a thoughtWith that cold Leigh look which I fancied once,And broke in, ‘Henceforth she was called his wife.His wife required no succour: he was bound[373]To Florence, to resume this broken bond:Enough so. Both were happy, he and Howe,To acquit me of the heaviest charge of all—’—At which I shot my tongue against my flyAnd struck him; ‘Would he carry,—he was just,—A letter from me to Aurora Leigh,And ratify from his authentic mouthMy answer to her accusation?’—‘Yes,If such a letter were prepared in time.’—He’s just, your cousin,—ay, abhorrently.He’d wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.And so, cold, courteous, a mere gentleman,He bowed, we parted. ‘Parted. Face no more, Voice no more, love no more! wiped wholly outLike some ill scholar’s scrawl from heart and slate,—Ay, spit on and so wiped out utterlyBy some coarse scholar! I have been too coarse,Too human. Have we business, in our rank,With blood i’ the veins? I will have henceforth none;Not even to keep the colour at my lip.A rose is pink and pretty without blood;Why not a woman? When we’ve played in vainThe game, to adore,—we have resources still,And can play on at leisure, being adored:Here’s Smith already swearing at my feetThat I’m the typic She. Away with Smith!—Smith smacks of Leigh,—and, henceforth, I’ll admitNo socialist within three crinolines,To live and have his being. But for you,[374]Though insolent your letter and absurd,And though I hate you frankly,—take my Smith!For when you have seen this famous marriage tied,A most unspotted Erle to a noble Leigh,(His love astray on one he should not love)Howbeit you should not want his love, beware,You’ll want some comfort. So I leave you Smith;Take Smith!—he talks Leigh’s subjects, somewhat worse;Adopts a thought of Leigh’s, and dwindles it;Goes leagues beyond, to be no inch behind;Will mind you of him, as a shoe-string may,Of a man: and women, when they are made like you,Grow tender to a shoe-string, footprint even,Adore averted shoulders in a glass,And memories of what, present once, was loathed.And yet, you loathed not Romney,—though you’ve playedAt ‘fox and goose’ about him with your soul:Pass over fox, you rub out fox,—ignoreA feeling, you eradicate it,—the act’sIdentical.I wish you joy, Miss Leigh.You’ve made a happy marriage for your friend;And all the honour, well-assorted love,Derives from you who love him, whom he loves!You need not wish me joy to think of it,I have so much. Observe, Aurora Leigh;Your droop of eyelid is the same as his,And, but for you, I might have won his love,And, to you, I have shown my naked heart,—For which three things I hate, hate, hate you. Hush,[375]Suppose a fourth!—I cannot choose but thinkThat, with him, I were virtuouser than youWithout him: so I hate you from this gulfAnd hollow of my soul, which opens outTo what, except for you, had been my heaven,And is instead, a place to curse by! Love.’
An active kind of curse. I stood there cursed—Confounded. I had seized and caught the senseOf the letter with its twenty stinging snakes,In a moment’s sweep of eyesight, and I stoodDazed.—‘Ah!—not married.’ ‘You mistake,’ he said; ‘I’m married. Is not Marian Erle my wife?As God sees things, I have a wife and child;And I, as I’m a man who honours God,Am here to claim them as my child and wife.’
I felt it hard to breathe, much less to speak.Nor word of mine was needed. Some one elseWas there for answering. ‘Romney,’ she began,‘My great good angel, Romney.’ Then at first, I knew that Marian Erle was beautiful.She stood there, still and pallid as a saint,Dilated, like a saint in ecstasy,As if the floating moonshine interposedBetwixt her foot and the earth, and raised her upTo float upon it. ‘I had left my child,Who sleeps,’ she said, ‘and, having drawn this way,[376]I heard you speaking, ... friend!—Confirm me now.You take this Marian, such as wicked menHave made her, for your honourable wife?’
The thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice.He stretched his arms out toward the thrilling voice,As if to draw it on to his embrace.—‘I take her as God made her, and as menMust fail to unmake her, for my honoured wife.’
She never raised her eyes, nor took a step,But stood there in her place, and spoke again.—‘You take this Marian’s child, which is her shameIn sight of men and women, for your child,Of whom you will not ever feel ashamed?’
The thrilling, tender, proud, pathetic voice.He stepped on toward it, still with outstretched arms,As if to quench upon his breast that voice.—‘May God so father me, as I do him,And so forsake me as I let him feelHe’s orphaned haply. Here I take the childTo share my cup, to slumber on my knee,To play his loudest gambol at my foot,To hold my finger in the public ways,Till none shall need inquire, ‘Whose child is this,’The gesture saying so tenderly, ‘My own’.’
She stood a moment silent in her place;Then, turning toward me, very slow and cold—[377]—‘And you,—what say you?—will you blame me much,If, careful for that outcast child of mine,I catch this hand that’s stretched to me and him,Nor dare to leave him friendless in the worldWhere men have stoned me? Have I not the rightTo take so mere an aftermath from life,Else found so wholly bare? Or is it wrongTo let your cousin, for a generous bent,Put out his ungloved fingers among briarsTo set a tumbling bird’s-nest somewhat straight?You will not tell him, though we’re innocentWe are not harmless?... and that both our harmsWill stick to his good smooth noble life like burrs,Never to drop off though you shake the cloak?You’ve been my friend: you will not now be his?You’ve known him, that he’s worthy of a friend;And you’re his cousin, lady, after all,And therefore more than free to take his part,Explaining, since the nest is surely spoilt,And Marian what you know her,—though a wife,The world would hardly understand her caseOf being just hurt and honest; while for him,’Twould ever twit him with his bastard childAnd married harlot. Speak, while yet there’s time:You would not stand and let a good man’s dogTurn round and rend him, because his, and rearedOf a generous breed,—and will you let his act,Because it’s generous? Speak. I’m bound to you,And I’ll be bound by only you, in this.’[378]The thrilling, solemn voice, so passionless,Sustained, yet low, without a rise or fall,As one who had authority to speak,And not as Marian. I looked up to feel If God stood near me, and beheld his heavenAs blue as Aaron’s priestly robe appearedTo Aaron when he took it off to die.And then I spoke—‘Accept the gift, I say,My sister Marian, and be satisfied.The hand that gives, has still a soul behindWhich will not let it quail for having given,Though foolish worldlings talk they know not what,Of what they know not. Romney’s strong enoughFor this: do you be strong to know he’s strong:He stands on Right’s side; never flinch for him,As if he stood on the other. You’ll be boundBy me? I am a woman of repute;No fly-blow gossip ever specked my life;My name is clean and open as this hand,Whose glove there’s not a man dares blab about,As if he had touched it freely:—here’s my handTo clasp your hand, my Marian, owned as pure!As pure,—as I’m a woman and a Leigh!—And, as I’m both, I’ll witness to the worldThat Romney Leigh is honoured in his choice,Who chooses Marian for his honoured wife.’
Her broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light;Her smile was wonderful for rapture. ‘Thanks,[379]My great Aurora.’ Forward then she sprang,And dropping her impassioned spaniel headWith all its brown abandonment of curlsOn Romney’s feet, we heard the kisses drawnThrough sobs upon the foot, upon the ground—O Romney! O my angel! O unchanged,Though, since we’ve parted, I have past the grave!But Death itself could only better thee,Not change thee!—Thee I do not thank at all:I but thank God who made thee what thou art,So wholly godlike.’ When he tried in vain To raise her to his embrace, escaping thenceAs any leaping fawn from a huntsman’s grasp,She bounded off and ‘lighted beyond reach,Before him, with a staglike majestyOf soft, serene defiance,—as she knewHe could not touch her, so was tolerantHe had cared to try. She stood there with her greatDrowned eyes, and dripping cheeks, and strange sweet smileThat lived through all, as if one held a lightAcross a waste of waters,—shook her headTo keep some thoughts down deeper in her soul,—Then, white and tranquil as a summer-cloudWhich, having rained itself to a tardy peace,Stands still in heaven as if it ruled the day,Spoke out again—‘Although, my generous friend,Since last we met and parted, you’re unchanged,And, having promised faith to Marian Erle,[380]Maintain it, as she were not changed at all;And though that’s worthy, though that’s full of balmTo any conscious spirit of a girlWho once has loved you as I loved you once,—Yet still it will not make her ... if she’s dead,And gone away where none can give or takeIn marriage,—able to revive, returnAnd wed you,—will it, Romney? Here’s the point;O friend, we’ll see it plainer: you and IMust never, never, never join hands so.Nay, let me say it,—for I said it firstTo God, and placed it, rounded to an oath,Far, far above the moon there, at His feet,As surely as I wept just now at yours,—We never, never, never join hands so.And now, be patient with me; do not thinkI’m speaking from a false humility.The truth is, I am grown so proud with grief,And He has said so often through his nightsAnd through his mornings, ‘Weep a little still,Thou foolish Marian, because women must,But do not blush at all except for sin,’—That I, who felt myself unworthy onceOf virtuous Romney and his high-born race,Have come to learn, ... a woman, poor or rich,Despised or honoured, is a human soul;And what her soul is,—that, she is herself,Although she should be spit upon of men,As is the pavement of the churches here,Still good enough to pray in. And, being chaste[381]And honest, and inclined to do the right,And love the truth, and live my life out greenAnd smooth beneath his steps, I should not fearTo make him, thus, a less uneasy timeThan many a happier woman. Very proudYou see me. Pardon, that I set a trapTo hear a confirmation in your voice ...Both yours and yours. It is so good to know’Twas really God who said the same before:For thus it is in heaven, that first God speaks,And then his angels. Oh, it does me good,It wipes me clean and sweet from devil’s dirt,That Romney Leigh should think me worthy stillOf being his true and honourable wife!Henceforth I need not say, on leaving earth,I had no glory in it. For the rest,The reason’s ready (master, angel, friend,Be patient with me) wherefore you and ICan never, never, never join hands so.I know you’ll not be angry like a man(For you are none) when I shall tell the truth,—Which is, I do not love you, Romney Leigh,I do not love you. Ah well! catch my hands,Miss Leigh, and burn into my eyes with yours,—I swear I do not love him. Did I once?’Tis said that women have been bruised to death,And yet, if once they loved, that love of theirsCould never be drained out with all their blood:I’ve heard such things and pondered. Did I indeedLove once? or did I only worship? Yes,[382]Perhaps, O friend, I set you up so highAbove all actual good or hope of good,Or fear of evil, all that could be mine,I haply set you above love itself,And out of reach of these poor woman’s arms,Angelic Romney. What was in my thought?To be your slave, your help, your toy, your tool.To be your love ... I never thought of that.To give you love ... still less. I gave you love?I think I did not give you anything;I was but only yours,—upon my knees,All yours, in soul and body, in head and heart,—A creature you had taken from the ground,Still crumbling through your fingers to your feetTo join the dust she came from. Did I love,Or did I worship? judge, Aurora Leigh!But, if indeed I loved, ’twas long ago,—So long! before the sun and moon were made,Before the hells were open,—ah, beforeI heard my child cry in the desert night,And knew he had no father. It may be,I’m not as strong as other women are,Who, torn and crushed, are not undone from love.It may be, I am colder than the dead,Who, being dead, love always. But for meOnce killed, ... this ghost of Marian loves no more,No more ... except the child!... no more at all.I told your cousin, sir, that I was dead;And now, she thinks I’ll get up from my grave,And wear my chin-cloth for a wedding-veil,[383]And glide along the churchyard like a bride,While all the dead keep whispering through the withes,‘You would be better in your place with us,You pitiful corruption!’ At the thought,The damps break out on me like leprosy,Although I’m clean. Ay, clean as Marian Erle:As Marian Leigh, I know, I were not clean:I have not so much life that I should love,... Except the child. Ah God! I could not bearTo see my darling on a good man’s knees,And know by such a look, or such a sigh,Or such a silence, that he thought sometimes,‘This child was fathered by some cursed wretch’ ...For, Romney,—angels are less tender-wiseThan God and mothers: even you would thinkWhat we think never. He is ours, the child;And we would sooner vex a soul in heavenBy coupling with it the dead body’s thought,It left behind it in a last month’s grave,Than, in my child, see other than ... my child.We only, never call him fatherlessWho has God and his mother. O my babe,My pretty, pretty blossom, an ill-windOnce blew upon my breast! can any thinkI’d have another,—one called happier,A fathered child, with father’s love and raceThat’s worn as bold and open as a smile,To vex my darling when he’s asked his nameAnd has no answer? What! a happier childThan mine, my best,—who laughed so loud to-night[384]He could not sleep for pastime? Nay, I swearBy life and love, that, if I lived like some,And loved like ... some ... ay, loved you, Romney Leigh,As some love (eyes that have wept so much, see clear),I’ve room for no more children in my arms;My kisses are all melted on one mouth;I would not push my darling to a stoolTo dandle babies. Here’s a hand, shall keepFor ever clean without a marriage-ring,To tend my boy, until he cease to needOne steadying finger of it, and desert(Not miss) his mother’s lap, to sit with men.And when I miss him (not he me) I’ll comeAnd say, ‘Now give me some of Romney’s work,To help your outcast orphans of the world,And comfort grief with grief.’ For you, meantime,Most noble Romney, wed a noble wife,And open on each other your great souls,—I need not farther bless you. If I daredBut strain and touch her in her upper sphere,And say, ‘Come down to Romney—pay my debt!’I should be joyful with the stream of joySent through me. But the moon is in my face ...I dare not,—though I guess the name he loves;I’m learned with my studies of old days,Remembering how he crushed his under-lipWhen some one came and spoke, or did not come:Aurora, I could touch her with my hand,And fly, because I dare not.’ She was gone. [385]He smiled so sternly that I spoke in haste.‘Forgive her—she sees clearly for herself:Her instinct’s holy,’‘I forgive?’ he said,‘I only marvel how she sees so sure,While others’ ... there he paused,—then hoarse, abrupt,—Aurora! you forgive us, her and me?For her, the thing she sees, poor loyal child,If once corrected by the thing I know,Had been unspoken; since she loves you well,Has leave to love you:—while for me, alas,If once or twice I let my heart escapeThis night, ... remember, where hearts slip and fallThey break beside: we’re parting,—parting,—ah,You do not love, that you should surely knowWhat that word means. Forgive, be tolerant;It had not been, but that I felt myselfSo safe in impuissance and despair,I could not hurt you though I tossed my armsAnd sighed my soul out. The most utter wretchWill choose his postures when he comes to die,However in the presence of a queen;And you’ll forgive me some unseemly spasmsWhich meant no more than dying. Do you thinkI had ever come here in my perfect mind,Unless I had come here, in my settled mind,Bound Marian’s, bound to keep the bond, and giveMy name, my house, my hand, the things I could,To Marian? For even I could give as much;Even I, affronting her exalted soul[386]By a supposition that she wanted these,Could act the husband’s coat and hat set upTo creak i’ the wind and drive the world-crows offFrom pecking in her garden. Straw can fillA hole to keep out vermin. Now, at last,I own heaven’s angels round her life sufficeTo fight the rats of our society,Without this Romney: I can see it at last;And here is ended my pretension whichThe most pretended. Over-proud of course,Even so!—but not so stupid ... blind ... that I,Whom thus the great Taskmaster of the worldHas set to meditate mistaken work,My dreary face against a dim blank wallThroughout man’s natural lifetime,—could pretendOr wish ... O love, I have loved you! O my soul,I have lost you!—but I swear by all yourself,And all you might have been to me these years,If that June-morning had not failed my hope,—I’m not so bestial, to regret that dayThis night,—this night, which still to you is fair;Nay, not so blind, Aurora. I attestThose stars above us, which I cannot see ...’
‘You cannot’....‘That if Heaven itself should stoop,Remix the lots, and give me another chance,I’d say, ‘No other!’—I’d record my blank.Aurora never should be wife of mine.’[387]‘Not see the stars?’ ‘’Tis worse still, not to see To find your hand, although we’re parting, dear.A moment let me hold it, ere we part;And understand my last words—these, at last!I would not have you thinking, when I’m gone,That Romney dared to hanker for your love,In thought or vision, if attainable,(Which certainly for me it never was)And wish to use it for a dog to-day,To help the blind man stumbling. God forbid!And now I know He held you in his palm,And kept you open-eyed to all my faults,To save you at last from such a dreary end.Believe me, dear, that if I had known, like Him,What loss was coming on me, I had doneAs well in this as He has.—Farewell, you,Who are still my light,—farewell! How late it is:I know that, now: you’ve been too patient, sweet.I will but blow my whistle toward the lane,And some one comes ... the same who brought me here.Get in—Good night.’‘A moment. Heavenly Christ!A moment. Speak once, Romney. ‘’Tis not true.I hold your hands, I look into your face—You see me?’‘No more than the blessed stars.Be blessed too, Aurora. Ah, my sweet,You tremble. Tender-hearted! Do you mindOf yore, dear, how you used to cheat old John,[388]And let the mice out slily from his traps,Until he marvelled at the soul in miceWhich took the cheese and left the snare? The sameDear soft heart always! ’Twas for this, I grievedHowe’s letter never reached you. Ah, you had heardOf illness,—not the issue ... not the extent:My life long sick with tossings up and down;The sudden revulsion in the blazing house,—The strain and struggle both of body and soul,Which left fire running in my veins, for blood:Scarce lacked that thunderbolt of the falling beam,Which nicked me on the forehead as I passedThe gallery-door with a burden. Say heaven’s bolt,Not William Erie’s; not Marian’s father’s; trampAnd poacher, whom I found for what he was,And, eager for her sake to rescue him,Forth swept from the open highway of the world,Road-dust and all,—till, like a woodland boarMost naturally unwilling to be tamed,He notched me with his tooth. But not a wordTo Marian! and I do not think, besides,He turned the tilting of the beam my way,—And if he laughed, as many swear, poor wretch,Nor he nor I supposed the hurt so deep.We’ll hope his next laugh may be merrier,In a better cause.’‘Blind, Romney?’ ‘Ah, my friend, You’ll learn to say it in a cheerful voice.I, too, at first desponded. To be blind,[389]Turned out of nature, mulcted as a man,Refused the daily largesse of the sunTo humble creatures! When the fever’s heatDropped from me, as the flame did from my house,And left me ruined like it, stripped of allThe hues and shapes of aspectable life,A mere bare blind stone in the blaze of day,A man, upon the outside of the earth,As dark as ten feet under, in the grave,—Why that seemed hard.’ ‘No hope?’ ‘A tear! you weep, Divine Aurora? tears upon my hand!I’ve seen you weeping for a mouse, a bird,—But, weep for me, Aurora? Yes, there’s hope.Not hope of sight,—I could be learned, dear,And tell you in what Greek and Latin nameThe visual nerve is withered to the root,Though the outer eyes appear indifferent,Unspotted in their chrystals. But there’s hope.The spirit, from behind this dethroned sense,Sees, waits in patience till the walls break upFrom which the bas-relief and fresco have dropt:There’s hope. The man here, once so arrogantAnd restless, so ambitious, for his part,Of dealing with statistically packedDisorders, (from a pattern on his nail,)And packing such things quite another way,—Is now contented. From his personal lossHe has come to hope for others when they lose,[390]And wear a gladder faith in what we gain ...Through bitter experience, compensation sweet,Like that tear, sweetest. I am quiet now,—As tender surely for the suffering world,But quiet,—sitting at the wall to learn,Content, henceforth, to do the thing I can:For, though as powerless, said I, as a stone,A stone can still give shelter to a worm,And it is worth while being a stone for that:There’s hope, Aurora.’ ‘Is there hope for me? For me?—and is there room beneath the stoneFor such a worm?—And if I came and said ...What all this weeping scarce will let me say,And yet what women cannot say at all,But weeping bitterly ... (the pride keeps up,Until the heart breaks under it) ... I love,—I love you, Romney’.... ‘Silence!’ he exclaimed. ‘A woman’s pity sometimes makes her mad.A man’s distraction must not cheat his soulTo take advantage of it. Yet, ’tis hard—Farewell, Aurora.’‘But I love you, sir;And when a woman says she loves a man,The man must hear her, though he love her not,Which ... hush!... he has leave to answer in his turn;She will not surely blame him. As for me,You call it pity,—think I’m generous?’Twere somewhat easier, for a woman proud[391]As I am, and I’m very vilely proud,To let it pass as such, and press on youLove born of pity,—seeing that excellent lovesAre born so, often, nor the quicklier die,—And this would set me higher by the headThan now I stand. No matter: let the truthStand high; Aurora must be humble: no,My love’s not pity merely. ObviouslyI’m not a generous woman, never was,Or else, of old, I had not looked so nearTo weights and measures, grudging you the powerTo give, as first I scorned your power to judgeFor me, Aurora: I would have no giftsForsooth, but God’s,—and I would use them, too,According to my pleasure and my choice,As He and I were equals,—you, below,Excluded from that level of interchangeAdmitting benefaction. You were wrongIn much? you said so. I was wrong in most.Oh, most! You only thought to rescue menBy half-means, half-way, seeing half their wants,While thinking nothing of your personal gain.But I who saw the human nature broad,At both sides, comprehending, too, the soul’s,And all the high necessities of Art,Betrayed the thing I saw, and wronged my own lifeFor which I pleaded. Passioned to exaltThe artist’s instinct in me at the costOf putting down the woman’s,—I forgotNo perfect artist is developed here[392]From any imperfect woman. Flower from root,And spiritual from natural, grade by gradeIn all our life. A handful of the earthTo make God’s image! the despised poor earth,The healthy odorous earth,—I missed, with it,The divine Breath that blows the nostrils outTo ineffable inflatus: ay, the breathWhich love is. Art is much, but love is more.O Art, my Art, thou’rt much, but Love is more!Art symbolises heaven, but Love is GodAnd makes heaven. I, Aurora, fell from mine:I would not be a woman like the rest,A simple woman who believes in love,And owns the right of love because she loves,And, hearing she’s beloved, is satisfiedWith what contents God: I must analyse,Confront, and question; just as if a flyRefused to warm itself in any sunTill such was in leone: I must fretForsooth, because the month was only May;Be faithless of the kind of proffered love,And captious, lest it miss my dignity,And scornful, that my lover sought a wifeTo use ... to use! O Romney, O my love,I am changed since then, changed wholly,—for indeed,If now you’d stoop so low to take my love,And use it roughly, without stint or spare,As men use common things with more behind,(And, in this, ever would be more behind)To any mean and ordinary end,—[393]The joy would set me like a star, in heaven,So high up, I should shine because of heightAnd not of virtue. Yet in one respect,Just one, beloved, I am in no wise changed:I love you, loved you ... loved you first and last,And love you on for ever. Now I knowI loved you always, Romney. She who diedKnew that, and said so; Lady WaldemarKnows that; ... and Marian: I had known the sameExcept that I was prouder than I knew,And not so honest. Ay, and, as I live,I should have died so, crushing in my handThis rose of love, the wasp inside and all,—Ignoring ever to my soul and youBoth rose and pain,—except for this great loss,This great despair,—to stand before your faceAnd know I cannot win a look of yours.You think, perhaps, I am not changed from pride,And that I chiefly bear to say such words,Because you cannot shame me with your eyes?O calm, grand eyes, extinguished in a storm,Blown out like lights o’er melancholy seas,Though shrieked for by the shipwrecked,—O my Dark,My Cloud,—to go before me every dayWhile I go ever toward the wilderness,—I would that you could see me bare to the soul!—If this be pity, ’tis so for myself,And not for Romney: he can stand alone;A man like him is never overcome:No woman like me, counts him pitiable[394]While saints applaud him. He mistook the world:But I mistook my own heart,—and that slipWas fatal. Romney,—will you leave me here?So wrong, so proud, so weak, so unconsoled,So mere a woman!—and I love you so,—I love you, Romney.’ Could I see his face, I wept so? Did I drop against his breast,Or did his arms constrain me? Were my cheeksHot, overflooded, with my tears, or his?And which of our two large explosive heartsSo shook me? That, I know not. There were wordsThat broke in utterance ... melted, in the fire;Embrace, that was convulsion, ... then a kiss ...As long and silent as the ecstatic night,—Anddeep, deep, shuddering breaths, which meant beyondWhatever could be told by word or kiss.
But what he said ... I have written day by day,With somewhat even writing. Did I thinkThat such a passionate rain would interceptAnd dash this last page? What he said, indeed,I fain would write it down here like the rest,To keep it in my eyes, as in my ears,The heart’s sweet scripture, to be read at nightWhen weary, or at morning when afraid,And lean my heaviest oath on when I swearThat, when all’s done, all tried; all counted here,All great arts, and all good philosophies,—This love just puts its hand out in a dream,[395]And straight outreaches all things. What he said, I fain would write. But if an angel spokeIn thunder, should we, haply, know much moreThan that it thundered? If a cloud came downAnd wrapt us wholly, could we draw its shape,As if on the outside, and not overcome?And so he spake. His breath against my faceConfused his words, yet made them more intense,—As when the sudden finder of the windWill wipe a row of single city-lampsTo a pure white line of flame, more luminousBecause of obliteration; more intense,—The intimate presence carrying in itselfComplete communication, as with soulsWho, having put the body off, perceiveThrough simply being. Thus, ’twas granted meTo know he loved me to the depth and heightOf such large natures, ever competentWith grand horizons by the land or sea,To love’s grand sunrise. Small spheres hold small fires:But he loved largely, as a man can loveWho, baffled in his love, dares live his life,Accept the ends which God loves, for his own,And lift a constant aspect. From the day I had brought to England my poor searching face,(An orphan even of my father’s grave)He had loved me, watched me, watched his soul in mine,Which in me grew and heightened into love.[396]For he, a boy still, had been told the taleOf how a fairy bride from Italy,With smells of oleanders in her hair,Was coming through the vines to touch his hand;Whereat the blood of boyhood on the palmMade sudden heats. And when at last I came,And lived before him, lived, and rarely smiled,He smiled and loved me for the thing I was,As every child will love the year’s first flower,(Not certainly the fairest of the year,But, in which, the complete year seems to blow)The poor sad snowdrop,—growing between drifts,Mysterious medium ’twixt the plant and frost,So faint with winter while so quick with spring,So doubtful if to thaw itself awayWith that snow near it. Not that Romney LeighHad loved me coldly. If I thought so once,It was as if I had held my hand in fireAnd shook for cold. But now I understoodFor ever, that the very fire and heatOf troubling passion in him, burned him clear,And shaped to dubious order, word and act:That, just because he loved me over all,All wealth, all lands, all social privilege,To which chance made him unexpected heir,—And, just because on all these lesser gifts,Constrained by conscience and the sense of wrongHe had stamped with steady hand God’s arrow-markOf dedication to the human need,He thought it should be so too, with his love;[397]He, passionately loving, would bring downHis love, his life, his best, (because the best)His bride of dreams, who walked so still and highThrough flowery poems as through meadow-grass,The dust of golden lilies on her feet,That she should walk beside him on the rocksIn all that clang and hewing out of men,And help the work of help which was his life,And prove he kept back nothing,—not his soul.And when I failed him,—for I failed him, I—And when it seemed he had missed my love,—he thought,‘Aurora makes room for a working-noon;’And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope,Took up his life, as if it were for death,(Just capable of one heroic aim,)And threw it in the thickest of the world,—At which men laughed as if he had drowned a dog:No wonder,—since Aurora failed him first!The morning and the evening made his day.
But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet!O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasyOf darkness! O great mystery of love,—In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s selfEnlarges rapture,—as a pebble droptIn some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine!While we two sate together, leaned that nightSo close, my very garments crept and thrilledWith strange electric life; and both my cheeks[398]Grew red, then pale, with touches from my hairIn which his breath was; while the golden moonWas hung before our faces as the badgeOf some sublime inherited despair,Since ever to be seen by only one,—A voice said, low and rapid as a sigh,Yet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,—‘Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see!Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls,Which rul’st for evermore both day and night!I am happy.’I flung closer to his breast,As sword that, after battle, flings to sheathe;And, in that hurtle of united souls,The mystic motions which in common moodsAre shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,And all the starry turbulence of worldsSwing round us in their audient circles, tillIf that same golden moon were overheadOr if beneath our feet, we did not know.
And then calm, equal, smooth with weights of joy,His voice rose, as some chief musician’s songAmid the old Jewish temple’s Selah-pause,And bade me mark how we two met at lastUpon this moon-bathed promontory of earth,To give up much on each side, then take all.‘Beloved,’ it sang, ‘we must be here to work;[399]And men who work, can only work for men,And, not to work in vain, must comprehendHumanity, and, so, work humanly,And raise men’s bodies still by raising souls,As God did, first.’‘But stand upon the earth,’I said, ‘to raise them,—(this is human too;There’s nothing high which has not first been low;My humbleness, said One, has made me great!)As God did, last.’‘And work all silently,And simply,’ he returned, ‘as God does all;Distort our nature never, for our work,Nor count our right hands stronger for being hoofs.The man most man, with tenderest human hands,Works best for men,—as God in Nazareth.’
He paused upon the word, and then resumed;‘Fewer programmes; we who have no prescience.Fewer systems; we who are held and do not hold.Less mapping out of masses, to be saved,By nations or by sexes. Fourier’s void,And Comte is dwarfed,—and Cabet, puerile.Subsists no law of life outside of life;No perfect manners, without Christian souls:The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver,Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.’
I echoed thoughtfully—‘The man, most man,[400]Works best for men: and, if most man indeed,He gets his manhood plainest from his soul:While, obviously, this stringent soul itselfObeys our old rules of development;The Spirit ever witnessing in ours,And Love, the soul of soul, within the soul,Evolving it sublimely. First, God’s love.’
‘And next,’ he smiled, ‘the love of wedded souls,Which still presents that mystery’s counterpart.Sweet shadow-rose, upon the water of life,Of such a mystic substance, Sharon gaveA name to! human, vital, fructuous rose,Whose calyx holds the multitude of leaves,—Loves filial, loves fraternal, neighbour-loves,And civic, ... all fair petals, all good scents,All reddened, sweetened from one central Heart!’
‘Alas,’ I cried, ‘it was not long ago,You swore this very social rose smelt ill.’
‘Alas,’ he answered, ‘is it a rose at all?The filial’s thankless, the fraternal’s hard,The rest is lost. I do but stand and think,Across dim waters of a troubled lifeThe Flower of Heaven so vainly overhangs,—What perfect counterpart would be in sight,If tanks were clearer. Let us clean the tubes,And wait for rains. O poet, O my love,[401]Since I was too ambitious in my deed,And thought to distance all men in success,Till God came on me, marked the place, and said,‘Ill-doer, henceforth keep within this line,Attempting less than others,’—and I standAnd work among Christ’s little ones, content,—Come thou, my compensation, my dear sight,My morning-star, my morning! rise and shine,And touch my hills with radiance not their own;Shine out for two, Aurora, and fulfilMy falling-short that must be! work for two,As I, though thus restrained, for two, shall love!Gaze on, with inscient vision toward the sun,And, from his visceral heat, pluck out the rootsOf light beyond him. Art’s a service,—mark:A silver key is given to thy clasp,And thou shalt stand unwearied, night and day,And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards,And open, so, that intermediate doorBetwixt the different planes of sensuous formAnd form insensuous, that inferior menMay learn to feel on still through these to those,And bless thy ministration. The world waitsFor help. Beloved, let us love so well,Our work shall still be better for our love,And still our love be sweeter for our work,And both, commended, for the sake of each,By all true workers and true lovers born.Now press the clarion on thy woman’s lip[402](Love’s holy kiss shall still keep consecrate)And breathe the fine keen breath along the brass,And blow all class-walls level as Jericho’sPast Jordan; crying from the top of souls,To souls, that they assemble on earth’s flatsTo get them to some purer eminenceThan any hitherto beheld for clouds!What height we know not,—but the way we know,And how by mounting aye, we must attain,And so climb on. It is the hour for souls;That bodies, leavened by the will and love,Be lightened to redemption. The world’s old;But the old world waits the hour to be renewed:Toward which, new hearts in individual growthMust quicken, and increase to multitudeIn new dynasties of the race of men,—Developed whence, shall grow spontaneouslyNew churches, new œconomies, new lawsAdmitting freedom, new societiesExcluding falsehood. He shall make all new.’
My Romney!—Lifting up my hand in his,As wheeled by Seeing spirits toward the east,He turned instinctively,—where, faint and fair,Along the tingling desert of the sky,Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glassThe first foundations of that new, near DayWhich should be builded out of heaven, to God.[403]He stood a moment with erected brows,In silence, as a creature might, who gazed:Stood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyesUpon the thought of perfect noon. And whenI saw his soul saw,—‘Jasper first,’ I said,‘And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;The rest in order, ... last, an amethyst.’
THE END.
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
Transcriber's Notes:
The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is in the public domain.
Uncertain or antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.
Errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.
Where double quotes have been repeated at the beginnings of consecutive lines, they have been omitted for clarity.