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Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Lord Walter`s Wife
Work rating: Medium

I

`But where do you go?` said the lady, while both sat under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

II

`Because I fear you,` he answered;—`because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.`

III

`Oh that,` she said, `is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.`

IV

`Yet farewell so,` he answered; —`the sunstroke`s fatal at times.
I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.

V

`Oh that,` she said, `is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it what matter? who grumbles, and where`s the pretense?

VI

`But I,` he replied, `have promised another, when love was free,
To love her alone, alone, who alone from afar loves me.`

VII

`Why, that,` she said, `is no reason. Love`s always free I am told.
Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?

VIII

`But you,` he replied, `have a daughter, a young child, who was laid
In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid."

IX

`Oh that,` she said, `is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;
And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.`

X

At which he rose up in his anger,—`Why now, you no longer are fair!
Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.`

XI

At which she laughed out in her scorn: `These men! Oh these men overnice,
Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.`

XII

Her eyes blazed upon him—`And you! You bring us your vices so near
That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought `twould defame us to hear!

XIII

`What reason had you, and what right,—I appel to your soul from my life,—
To find me so fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.

XIV

`Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply
I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?

XV

`If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much
To use unlawful and fatal. The praise! —shall I thank you for such?

XVI

`Too fair?—not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,
You attain to it, straightaway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.

XVII

`A moment,—I pray your attention!—I have a poor word in my head
I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.

XVIII

`You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.
You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! I`ve broken the thing.

XIX

`You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then
In the senses—a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.

XX

`Love`s a virtue for heroes!—as white as the snow on high hills,
And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.

XXI
`I love my Walter profoundly,—you, Maude, though you faltered a week,
For the sake of . . . what is it—an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on the cheek?

XXII
`And since, when all`s said, you`re too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant
About crimes irresistable, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant.

XXIII

`I determined to prove to yourself that, whate`er you might dream or avow
By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.

XXIV

`There! Look me full in the face!—in the face. Understand, if you can,
That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.

XXV
`Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar—
You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.

XXVI

`You wronged me: but then I considered . . . there`s Walter! And so at the end
I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.

XXVII

`Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!
Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.`
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