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Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh: Book Seventh
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                         How sure it is,
That, if we say a true word, instantly
We feel `tis God`s, not ours, and pass it on
Like bread at sacrament we taste and pass
Nor handle for a moment, as indeed
We 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 books
Is but a word in Art, which soon grows cramped,
Stiff, dubious-statured with the weight of years,
And drops an accent or digamma down
Some cranny of unfathomable time,
Beyond the critic`s reaching. Art itself,
We`ve called the larger life, must feel the soul
Live past it. For more`s felt than is perceived,
And more`s perceived than can be interpreted,
And Love strikes higher with his lambent flame
Than 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?
Well, well! my father was an Englishman:
My mother`s blood in me is not so strong
That I should bear this stress of Tuscan noon
And keep my wits. The town, there, seems to seethe
In this Medæan boil-pot of the sun,
And all the patient hills are bubbling round
As if a prick would leave them flat. Does heaven
Keep 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 know
Too much here, not to know what`s best for peace;
We have too much light here, not to want more fire
To 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 handkerchief
Would 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,
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 flowers
And fill these vases ere I`m quite awake,—
My grandiose red tulips, which grow wild,
Or Dante`s purple lilies, which he blew
To a larger bubble with his prophet breath,
Or one of those tall flowering reeds that stand
In Arno, like a sheaf of sceptres left
By some remote dynasty of dead gods
To suck the stream for ages and get green,
And blossom wheresoe`er a hand divine
Had warmed the place with ichor. Such I find
At early morning laid across my bed,
And wake up pelted with a childish laugh
Which even Marian`s low precipitous "hush"
Has vainly interposed to put away,—
While I, with shut eyes, smile and motion for
The dewy kiss that`s very sure to come
From mouth and cheeks, the whole child`s face at once
Dissolved on mine,—as if a nosegay burst
Its string with the weight of roses overblown,
And dropped upon me. Surely I should be glad.
The little creature almost loves me now,
And calls my name, "Alola," stripping off
The r`s like thorns, to make it smooth enough
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 runs
I` the head, and forces all things in the world,
Wind, rain, the creaking gnat, or stuttering fly,
To sing itself and vex you,—yet perhaps
A 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
But still we are slaves to nature. Some of us
Are turned, too, overmuch like some poor verse
With a trick of ritournelle: the same thing goes
And comes back ever.


                      Vincent Carrington
Is "sorry," and I`m sorry; but he`s strong
To 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 lose
The pain of pity, in the blush he makes
By 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 sun
To see by, as most others, and perhaps
Has scarce seen really worse than some of us
When all`s said. Let him pass. I`m not too much
A woman, not to be a man for once
And bury all my Dead like Alaric,
Depositing the treasures of my soul
In this drained watercourse, then letting flow
The river of life again with commerce-ships
And pleasure-barges full of silks and songs.
Blow, winds, and help us.


                            Ah, we mock ourselves
With talking of the winds; perhaps as much
With other resolutions. How it weighs,
This hot, sick air! and how I covet here
The Dead`s provision on the river-couch,
With silver curtains drawn on tinkling rings!
Or else their rest in quiet crypts,—laid by
From 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, ends
Our aspiration who bespoke our place
So far in the east. The occidental flats
Had fed us fatter, therefore? we have climbed
Where herbage ends? we want the beast`s part now
And tire of the angel`s?—Men define a man,
The creature who stands frontward 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,
For that`s his specialty. What creature else
Conceives 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 desire
The little ant`s food rather? But a man—
Note men!—they are but women after all,
As women are but Auroras!—there are men
Born 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, too, who believe in heaven, and fear:
There are, who waste their souls in working out
Life`s problem on these sands betwixt two tides,
Concluding,—"Give us the oyster`s part, in death."


Alas, long-suffering and most patient God,
Thou needst be surelier God to bear with us
Than even to have made us! thou aspire, aspire
From henceforth for me! thou who hast thyself
Endured this fleshhood, knowing how as a soaked
And sucking vesture it can drag us down
And choke us in the melancholy Deep,
Sustain me, that with thee I walk these waves,
Resisting!—breathe me upward, thou in me
Aspiring 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!


The days went by. I took up the old days,
With all their Tuscan pleasures worn and spoiled,
Like some lost book we dropped in the long grass
On such a happy summer-afternoon
When 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 wonderful
For sorrow,—thinking how two hands before
Had held up what is left to only one,
And how we smiled when such a vehement nail
Impressed the tiny dint here which presents
This verse in fire for ever. Tenderly
And mournfully I lived. I knew the birds
And insects,—which looked fathered by the flowers
And emulous of their hues: I recognised
The moths, with that great overpoise of wings
Which make a mystery of them how at all
They can stop flying: butterflies, that bear
Upon their blue wings such red embers round,
They seem to scorch the blue air into holes
Each flight they take: and fire-flies, that suspire
In short soft lapses of transported flame
Across the tingling Dark, while overhead
The constant and inviolable stars
Outburn those light-of-love: melodious owls
(If music had but one note and was sad,
`Twould sound just so), and all the silent swirl
Of bats that seem to follow in the air
Some grand circumference of a shadowy dome
To which we are blind: and then the nightingales,
Which pluck our heart across a garden-wall
(When walking in the town) and carry it
So high into the bowery almond trees
We tremble and are afraid, and feel as if
The golden flood of moonlight unaware
Dissolved the pillars of the steady earth
And made it less substantial. And I knew
The harmless opal snakes, the large-mouthed frogs
(Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams);
And lizards, the green lightnings of the wall,
Which, if you sit down quiet, nor sigh loud,
Will flatter you and take you for a stone,
And flash familiarly about your feet
With such prodigious eyes in such small heads!—
I knew them (though they had somewhat dwindled from
My childish imagery), and kept in mind
How last I sat among them equally,
In fellowship and mateship, as a child
Feels equall still toward insect, beast, and bird,
Before the Adam in him has forgone
All privilege of Eden,—making friends
And talk with such a bird or such a goat,
And buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cage
To 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."


But now the creatures all seemed farther off,
No longer mine, nor like me, only there,
A gulf between us. I could yearn indeed,
Like other rich men, for a drop of dew
To 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 heard
My father`s step on that deserted ground,
His voice along that silence, as he told
The names of bird and insect, tree and flower,
And all the presentations of the stars
Across 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-house
As 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 neck
And paused upon his flank. The house`s front
Was cased with lingots of ripe Indian corn
In tessellated order and device
Of golden patterns, not a stone of wall
Uncovered,—not an inch of room to grow
A vine-leaf. The old porch had disappeared;
And right in the open doorway sat a girl
At plaiting straws, her black hair strained away
To a scarlet kerchief caught beneath her chin
In Tuscan fashion,—her full ebon eyes,
Which looked too heavy to be lifted so,
Still dropped and lifted toward the mulberry-tree
On which the lads were busy with their staves
In shout and laughter, stripping every bough
As bare as winter, of those summer leaves
My father had not changed for all the silk
In which the ugly silkworms hide themselves.
Enough. My horse recoiled before my heart;
I turned the rein abruptly. Back we went
As fast, to Florence.


                       That was trial enough
Of graves. I would not visit, if I could,
My father`s, or my mother`s any more,
To see if stone cutter or lichen beat
So 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 look
So far below to find them: let me think
That rather they are visiting my grave,
Called life here (undeveloped yet to life),
And that they drop upon me, now and then,
For token or for solace, some small weed
Least odorous of the growths of paradise,
To spare such pungent scents as kill with joy.


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 down
The cypress alley like a restless ghost
That tries its feeble ineffectual breath
Upon its own charred funeral-brands put out
Too soon, where black and stiff stood up the trees
Against the broad vermilion of the skies.
Such skies!—all clouds abolished in a sweep
Of God`s skirt, with a dazzle to ghosts and men,
As down I went, saluting on the bridge
The hem of such before`t was caught away
Beyond the peaks of Lucca. Underneath,
The river, just escaping from the weight
Of that intolerable glory, ran
In acquiescent shadow murmurously;
While, up beside it, streamed the festa-folk
With fellow-murmurs from their feet and fans,
And issimo and ino and sweet poise
Of vowels in their pleasant scandalous talk;
Returning from the grand-duke`s dairy-farm
Before the trees grew dangerous at eight
(For "trust no tree by moonlight," Tuscans say),
To eat their ice at Donay`s tenderly,—
Each lovely lady close to a cavalier
Who holds her dear fan while she feeds her smile
On meditative spoonfuls of vanille
And listens to his hot-breathed vows of love
Enough to thaw her cream and scorch his beard.


`Twas little matter. I could pass them by
Indifferently, 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 and learn
To hang the cobweb of their gossip out
To 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 thrice
Before a woman makes a pounce on you
And 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 right
In one, to call your name, inquire your where,
Or what you think of Mister Someone`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 life
Comes next one`s death; `tis disembodiment
Without the pang. I marvel, people choose
To stand stock-still like fakirs, till the moss
Grows 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
As surely as to others.


                         Musing so,
I walked the narrow unrecognising streets,
Where many a palace-front peers gloomily
Through stony vizors iron-barred (prepared
Alike, should foe or lover pass that way,
For guest or victim), and came wandering out
Upon the churches with mild open doors
And plaintive wail of vespers, where a few,
Those chiefly women, sprinkled round in blots
Upon the dusky pavement, knelt and prayed
Toward 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 tale
To fit its fortunes. There was one who looked
As if the earth had suddenly grown too large
For such a little humpbacked thing as she;
The pitiful black kerchief round her neck
Sole proof she had had a mother. One, again,
Looked sick for love,—seemed praying some soft saint
To put more virtue in the new fine scarf
She spent a fortnight`s meals on, yesterday,
That cruel Gigi might return his eyes
From Giuliana. There was one, so old,
So old, to kneel grew easier than to stand,—
So solitary, she accepts at last
Our Lady for her gossip, and frets on
Against the sinful world which goes its rounds
In marrying and being married, just the same
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 blessèd entrails? such a dream
For nought? would sweetest Mary cheat her so,
And lose that certain candle, straight and white
As any fair grand-duchess in her teens,
Which otherwise should flare here in a week?
Benigna sis, thou beauteous Queen of Heaven!"


I sat there musing, and imagining
Such utterance from such faces: poor blind souls
That writhe toward heaven along the devil`s trail,—
Who knows, I thought, but He may stretch His hand
And 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 desire
Like other creatures, craving offal-food,
That He would stop His ears to what I said,
And only listen to the run and beat
Of this poor, passionate, helpless blood—


                                              And then
I lay, and spoke not: but He heard in heaven.


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 outdoor crowd
So 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 trick
To keep a mounting saint uncanonised.
But he was safe for that time, and I too;
The argent angels in the altar-flare
Absorbed his soul next moment. The good man!
In England we were scarce acquaintances,
That here in Florence he should keep my thought
Beyond the image on his eye, which came
And went: and yet his thought disturbed my life:
For, after that, I oftener sat at home
On evenings, watching how they fined themselves
With gradual conscience to a perfect night,
Until the moon, diminished to a curve,
Lay out there like a sickle for His hand
Who cometh down at last to reap the earth.
At such times, ended seemed my trade of verse;
I feared to jingle bells upon my robe
Before 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 sat absorbed amid the quickening glooms,
Most like some passive broken lump of salt
Dropped in by chance to a bowl of oenomel,
To spoil the drink a little and lose itself,
Dissolving slowly, slowly, until lost.
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