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Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh: Book Three
Work rating: Medium

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"To-day thou girdest up thy loins thyself
And goest where thou wouldest: presently
Others shall gird thee," said the Lord, "to go
Where thou wouldst not." He spoke to Peter thus,
To signify the death which he should die
When crucified head downward.


                                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 loins
In 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 bands
Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,
Reversing our straight nature, lifting up
Our 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 write
Beyond the stroke of midnight. Get away;
Your steps, for ever buzzing in the room,
Tease me like gnats. Ah, letters! throw them down
At once, as I must have them, to be sure,
Whether I bid you never bring me such
At such an hour, or bid you. No excuse;
You choose to bring them, as I choose perhaps
To 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 overstrained
And overlived in this close London life!
And yet I should be stronger.


                                Never burn
Your letters, poor Aurora! for they stare
With red seals from the table, saying each,
"Here`s something that you know not." Out, alas,
`Tis scarcely that the world`s more good and wise
Or even straighter and more consequent
Since 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 Sharpe
Presents his work on "Social Conduct," craves
A little money for his pressing debts . .
From me, who scarce have money for my needs;
Art`s fiery chariot which we journey in
Being 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 book
Entirely different, which will sell (and live?),
A striking book, yet not a startling book,
The public blames originalities
(You must not pump spring-water unawares
Upon a gracious public full of nerves):
Good things, not subtle, new yet orthodox,
As easy reading as the dog-eared page
That`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 unquenchably
Like Shakespeare and the gods. That`s very hard.
The gods may laugh, and Shakespeare; Dante smiled
With such a needy heart on two pale lips,
We cry "Weep rather, Dante." Poems are
Men, if true poems: and who dares exclaim
At any man`s door, "Here, `tis understood
The 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 indeed
Should 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 wings
To raise me to the subject, in a sketch
I`ll bring to-morrow—may I? at eleven?
A poet`s only born to turn to use:
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 drops
A 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 Howe
Stands high upon the brink of theories,
Observes the swimmers and cries `Very fine,`
But keeps dry linen equally,—unlike
That gallant breaster, Romney. Strange it is,
Such sudden madness seizing a young man
To make earth over again,—while I`m content
To make the pictures. Let me bring the sketch.
A tiptoe Danae, overbold and hot,
Both arms a-flame to meet her wishing Jove
Halfway, and burn him faster down; the face
And breasts upturned and straining, the loose locks
All 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 seaweed. You dimly see her through
The glittering haze of that prodigious rain,
Half blotted out of nature by a love
As heavy as fate. I`ll bring you either sketch.
I think, myself, the second indicates
More passion."


               Surely. Self is put away,
And calm with abdication. She is Jove,
And no more Danae—greater thus. Perhaps
The painter symbolises unaware
Two 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 word
Of 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 stairs
Not far from being as steep as some larks climb,
And there, in a certain house in Kensington,
Three years I lived and worked. Get leave to work
In this world—`tis the best you get at all;
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction. God says, "Sweat
For foreheads," men say "crowns," and so we are crowned,
Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work;
Be sure `tis better than what you work to get.


Serene and unafraid of solitude,
I worked the short days out,—and watched the sun
On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons
(Like some Druidic idol`s fiery brass
With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat,
From which the blood of wretches pent inside
Seems oozing forth to incarnadine the air)
Push out through fog with his dilated disk,
And startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots
With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw
Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog,
Involve the passive city, strangle it
Alive, and draw it off into the void,
Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a sponge
Had wiped out London,—or as noon and night
Had clapped together and utterly struck out
The intermediate time, undoing themselves
In 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,
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 chant
Their anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb.
But sit in London at the day`s decline,
And view the city perish in the mist
Like Pharaoh`s armaments in the deep Red Sea,
The chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host,
Sucked down and choked to silence—then, surprised
By 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 time
That I myself had set them down as sins
Scarce 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 twined
Of 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 goose-quill,
Suppose, they had just been plucked of, and a snatch
From Horace, "Collegisse juvat," set
Upon the first page. Many a letter, signed
Or unsigned, showing the writers at eighteen
Had lived too long, although a muse should help
Their dawn by holding candles,—compliments
To smile or sigh at. Such could pass with me
No more than coins from Moscow circulate
At Paris: would ten roubles buy a tag
Of ribbon on the boulevard, worth a sou?
I smiled that all this youth should love me,—sighed
That such a love could scarcely raise them up
To 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 scorn
Prick every bubble of my frivolous fame
As my breath blew it, and resolve it back
To the air it came from. Oh, I justified
The 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 work
To better ends, or play in earnest. "Heavens,
I think I should be almost popular
If 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
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 held
In Jove`s clenched palm before the worlds were sown,—
But I—I was not Juno even! my hand
Was 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 burnt, it burns—my whole life burnt with it,
And light, not sunlight and not torchlight, flashed
My steps out through the slow and difficult road.
I had grown distrustful of too forward Springs,
The season`s books in drear significance
Of morals, dropping round me. Lively books?
The ash has livelier verdure than the yew;
And yet the yew`s green longer, and alone
Found worthy of the holy Christmas time:
We`ll plant more yews if possible, albeit
We plant the graveyards with them.


                                     Day and night
I worked my rhythmic thought, and furrowed up
Both watch and slumber with long lines of life
Which did not suit their season. The rose fell
From either cheek, my eyes globed luminous
Through orbits of blue shadow, and my pulse
Would shudder along the purple-veinèd wrist
Like a shot bird. Youth`s stern, set face to face
With youth`s ideal: and when people came
And 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 perhaps
For those ill looks. Observe—"I," means in youth
Just I, the conscious and eternal soul
With 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 when
World-talkers talk of doing well or ill.
I prosper if I gain a step, although
A nail then pierced my foot: although my brain
Embracing 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 days
Which hedges time in from the eternities,
I struggled,—never stopped to note the stakes
Which hurt me in my course. The midnight oil
Would 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
While working with the other for myself
And 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 prose
To make a space to sphere my living verse.
I wrote for cyclopædias, magazines,
And weekly papers, holding up my name
To keep it from the mud. I learnt the use
Of the editorial "we" in a review
As courtly ladies the fine trick of trains,
And swept it grandly through the open doors
As if one could not pass through doors at all
Save so encumbered. I wrote tales beside,
Carved many an article on cherry-stones
To suit light readers,—something in the lines
Revealing, it was said, the mallet-hand,
But that, I`ll never vouch for: what you do
For 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-room
For body and verse, I stood up straight and worked
My veritable work. And as the soul
Which 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
The summer foliage out in a green flame—
So life, in deepening with me, deepened all
The 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 felt
My heart`s life throbbing in my verse to show
It 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 note
To catch attention,—and their quiet mood,
As if they lived too high above the earth
For that to put them out in anything:
So gentle, because verily so proud;
So wary and afraid of hurting you,
By no means that you are not really vile,
But that they would not touch you with their foot
To push you to your place; so self-possessed
Yet gracious and conciliating, it takes
An 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 meant
Not much indeed, but something,—took my hands,
And smiled as if her smile could help my case,
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 cause
Which taxed you with this visit, madam."


                                            "Good,"
She said; "I value what`s 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 ascent
To this Olympus."


                   There, a silver laugh
Ran rippling through her quickened little breaths
The steep stair somewhat justified.


                                       "But still
Your ladyship has left me curious why
You dared the risk of finding the said Muse?"


"Ah,—keep me, notwithstanding, to the point,
Like any pedant? Is the blue in eyes
As awful as in stockings after all,
I wonder, that you`d have my business out
Before I breathe—exact the epic plunge
In spite of gasps? Well, naturally you think
I`ve come here, as the lion-hunters go
To deserts, to secure you with a trap
For exhibition in my drawing-rooms
On zoologic soirées? Not in the least.
Roar softly at me; I am frivolous,
I dare say; I have played at wild-beast shows
Like other women of my class,—but now
I meet my lion simply as Androcles
Met his . . . when at his mercy."


                                    So, she bent
Her head, as queens may mock,—then lifting up
Her 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 up
To 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 frank
In answering also, if you`ll question me,
Or even for something less. You stand outside,
You artist women, of the common sex;
You share not with us, and exceed us so
Perhaps by what you`re mulcted in, your hearts
Being starved to make your heads: so run the old
Traditions of you. I can therefore speak
Without the natural shame which creatures feel
When speaking on their level, to their like.
There`s many a papist she, would rather die
Than own to her maid she put a ribbon on
To catch the indifferent eye of such a man,
Who yet would count adulteries on her beads
At holy Mary`s shrine and never blush;
Because the saints are so far off, we lose
All modesty before them. Thus, to-day.
`Tis I, love Romney Leigh."


                              "Forbear," I cried.
"If here`s no Muse, still less is any saint;
Nor even a friend, that Lady Waldemar
Should make confessions" . . .


                                 "That`s unkindly said:
If no friend, what forbids to make a friend
To join to our confession ere we have done?
I love your cousin. If it seems unwise
To 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 Mayfair with the rest
To happy issues. There are marquises
Would serve seven years to call me wife, I know,
And, after seven, I might consider it,
For there`s some comfort in a marquisate
When 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`m well aware I do not derogate
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 ate
Of garlic—which, whatever else you eat,
Tastes uniformly acrid, till your peach
Reminds 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 lives
From common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows
From flying over,—we`re as natural still
As Blowsalinda. Drape us perfectly
In Lyons velvet,—we are not, for that,
Lay-figures, look you: we have hearts within,
Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts,
As ready for outrageous ends and acts
As any distressed sempstress of them all
That Romney groans and toils for. We catch love,
And other fevers, in the vulgar way:
Love will not be outwitted by our wit,
Nor outrun by our equipages:—mine
Persisted, spite of efforts. All my cards
Turned up but Romney Leigh; my German stopped
At germane Wertherism; my Paris rounds
Returned me from the Champs Elysées just
A ghost, and sighing like Dido`s. I came home
Uncured,—convicted rather to myself
Of 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 Waldemar
I know not: yet I say as much as this,—
Whoever loves him, let her not excuse
But cleanse herself, that, loving such a man,
She may not do it with such unworthy love
He cannot stoop and take it."


                                "That is said
Austerely, like a youthful prophetess,
Who knits her brows across her pretty eyes
To keep them back from following the grey flight
Of doves between the temple-columns. Dear,
Be kinder with me; let us two be friends.
I`m a mere woman,—the more weak perhaps
Through being so proud; you`re better; as for him,
He`s best. Indeed he builds his goodness up
So high, it topples down to the other side
And makes a sort of badness; there`s the worst
I have to say against your cousin`s best!
And so be mild, Aurora, with my worst
For his sake, if not mine."


                              "I own myself
Incredulous of confidence like this
Availing him or you."


                       "And I, myself,
Of being worthy of him with any love:
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 indicate
What may or may not pass?" I cried. "He knows
What`s worthy of him; the choice remains with him;
And what he chooses, act or wife, I think
I 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 itself
In this mixed world), and fasten it for once
Upon the torso of the Dancing Faun
(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 godlike virtues and heroic aims
Subjoined to limping possibilities
Of mismade human nature. Grant the man
Twice godlike, twice heroic,—still he limps,
And here`s the point we come to."


                                    "Pardon me,
But, Lady Waldemar, the point`s the thing
We 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 myself
I would not say so—but for him. He limps
So certainly, he`ll fall into the pit
A week hence,—so I lose him—so he is lost!
For when he`s fairly married, he a Leigh,
To a girl of doubtful life, undoubtful birth,
Starved out in London till her coarse-grained hands
Are whiter than her morals,—even you
May call his choice unworthy."


                                 "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 think
Awry, 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 gowns-men`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
In Melbourne`s poor-bills, Ashley`s factory bills,—
Ignored the Aspasia we all dare to praise,
For other women, dear, we could not name
Because we`re decent. Well, he had some right
On his side probably; men always have
Who go absurdly wrong. The living boor
Who brews your ale exceeds in vital worth
Dead 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 he
Went mad upon them . . . madder and more mad
From college times to these,—as, going down hill,
The faster still, the farther. You must know
Your Leigh by heart: he has sown his black young curls
With bleaching cares of half a million men
Already. 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, qualified
For the parish stocks, and Romney will be there
To call you brother, sister, or perhaps
A tenderer name still. Had I any chance
With 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 looks
For ever on the ground! you must be low,
Or else a pictured ceiling overhead,
Good painting thrown away. For me, I`ve done
What women may—we`re somewhat limited,
We modest women—but I`ve done my best.
—How men are perjured when they swear our eyes
Have meaning in them! they`re just blue or brown,
They just can drop their lids a little. And yet
Mine did more, for I read half Fourier through,
Proudhon, Considérant, 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 rational
To a saner man than he whene`er we talked
(For which I dodged occasion)—learnt by heart
His speeches in the Commons and elsewhere
Upon the social question; heaped reports
Of wicked women and penitentiaries
On all my tables (with a place for Sue),
And gave my name to swell subscription lists
Toward keeping up the sun at nights in heaven,
And other possible ends. All things I did,
Except the impossible . . . such as wearing gowns
Provided 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
With such a dawn of conscience. For the heart,
Made firewood for his sake, and flaming up
To his face,—he merely warmed his feet at it:
Just deigned to let my carriage stop him short
In park or street,—he leaning on the door
With news of the committee which sat last
On pickpockets at suck."


                          "You jest—you jest."
"As martyrs jest, dear (if you read their lives),
Upon the axe which kills them. When all`s done
By me, . . . for him—you`ll ask him presently
The 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 known
`Yours since last week. Forgive my knowledge so:
`You feel I`m not the woman of the world
`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 because
`You`re at the difficult point, the join. `Tis true
`Even I can scarce admit the cogency
`Of such a marriage . . . where you do not love
`(Except the class), yet marry and throw your name
`Down to the gutter, for a fire-escape
`To future generations! `tis sublime,
`A great example, a true Genesis
`Of 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 it in the light,
`And do not muffle it in a winter-cloak
`As a vulgar bit of shame,—as if, at best,
`A Leigh had made a misalliance and blushed
`A 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 act
`Less sacrifice, more fantasy.` At which
He grew so pale, dear, . . . to the lips, I knew
I had touched him. `Do you know her,` he inquired,
`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 Saint Margaret`s Court
To see this miracle, this Marian Erle,
This drover`s daughter (she`s not pretty, he swears),
Upon whose finger, exquisitely pricked
By 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 lift
The match up from the doubtful place. At once
He thanked me sighing, murmured to himself
`She`ll do it perhaps, she`s noble,`—thanked me twice,
And promised, as my guerdon, to put off
His 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 hand
If feeble, thus to justify his match.
So be it then. But how this serves your ends,
And how the strange confession of your love
Serves 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 pearl
And pride of all your lofty race of Leighs
Is destined to solution. Authorised
By 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 me and you,
And you fail utterly), by concluding thus
An 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 less
For saying the thing I should not. Well I know
I should not. I have kept, as others have,
The iron rule of womanly reserve
In lip and life, till now: I wept a week
Before 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 hot
It burns its natural veil of august shame,
And stands sublimely in the nude, as chaste
As 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 greens
Of poets are fresher than the world`s highways:
Forgive me that I rashly blew the dust
Which dims our hedges even, in your eyes,
And vexed you so much. You find, probably,
No evil in this marriage,—rather good
Of innocence, to pastoralise in song:
You`ll give the bond your signature, perhaps,
Beneath the lady`s mark,—indifferent
That 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 err
Supposing 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 stir
Now 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 cloud
That leaves the sense of thunder.


                                    I drew breath,
Oppressed in my deliverance. After all,
This woman breaks her social system up
For love, so counted—the love possible
To such,—and lilies are still lilies, pulled
By smutty hands, though spotted from their white;
And thus she is better haply, of her kind,
Than Romney Leigh, who lives by diagrams,
And crosses out the spontaneities
Of all his individual, personal life
With formal universals. As if man
Were 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 God
Were chiefly God by living out Himself
To an individualism of the Infinite,
Eterne, intense, profuse,—still throwing up
The golden spray of multitudinous worlds
In measure to the proclive weight and rush
Of His inner nature,—the spontaneous love
Still proof and outflow of spontaneous life?
Then live, Aurora.


                    Two hours afterward,
Within Saint Margaret`s Court I stood alone,
Close-veiled. A sick child, from an ague-fit,
Whose wasted right hand gambled `gainst his left
With an old brass button in a blot of sun,
Jeered weakly at me as I passed across
The uneven pavement; while a woman, rouged
Upon 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 dog
You`ll be to-morrow. What, we pick our way,
Fine madam, with those damnable small feet!
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 gentleman
Who 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 miserable
To be so cruel,"—and I emptied out
My purse upon the stones: when, as I had cast
The last charm in the cauldron, the whole court
Went boiling, bubbling up, from all its doors
And windows, with a hideous wail of laughs
And roar of oaths, and blows perhaps . . . I passed
Too quickly for distinguishing . . . and pushed
A little side-door hanging on a hinge,
And plunged into the dark, and groped and climbed
The long, steep, narrow stair `twixt broken rail
And mildewed wall that let the plaster drop
To startle me in the blackness. Still, up, up!
So high lived Romney`s bride. I paused at last
Before 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 face
Met mine upon the threshold. "Oh, not you,
Not you!"—the dropping of the voice implied;
"Then, if not you, for me not any one."
I looked her in the eyes, and held her hands,
And said "I am his cousin,—Romney Leigh`s;
And here I 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?


                          Nowise beautiful
Was Marian Erle. She was not white nor brown,
But could look either, like a mist that changed
According to being shone on more or less:
The hair, too, ran its opulence of curls
In doubt `twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear
To 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 wind should trouble it. Again,
The dimple in the cheek had better gone
With redder, fuller rounds; and somewhat large
The mouth was, though the milky little teeth
Dissolved 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 after times
By others and herself too. Marian Erle
Was born upon the ledge of Malvern Hill,
To eastward, in a hut built up at night,
To 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 place
To 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:—
Source
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