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Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh: Book Seventh
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"The woman`s motive? shall we daub ourselves
With finding roots for nettles? `tis soft clay
And easily explored. She had the means,
The moneys, 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, right damnable 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 in
And spent her pity on me,—made me calm
And merely very reasonably sad.
She found me a servant`s place in Paris, where
I tried to take the cast-off life again,
And stood as quiet as a beaten ass
Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up
To let them charge him with another pack.


"A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,
Was easy with me, less for kindness than
Because she led, herself, an easy time
Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,
Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.
She felt so pretty and so pleased all day
She 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 girls
`All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?
`And first-communion pallor on your cheeks,
`Worn past the time for`t? little fool, be gay!`
At which she vanished like a fairy, through
A gap of silver laughter.


                            "Came an hour
When all went otherwise. She did not speak,
But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes
As if a viper with a pair of tongs,
Too far for any touch, yet near enough
To 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,
`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 life
Which threw me on death at intervals,—through all
The upbreak of the fountains of my heart
The 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 grave
With 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 there
Was small to take it in: an acorn-cup
Would 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
My scanty bundle up and went my way,
Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot
With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth
Beyond 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 laid
For 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 housed
Than 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, "ridiculous
If not so lamentable! `Tis the way
With these light women of a thrifty vice,
My Marian,—always hard upon the rent
In any sister`s virtue! while they keep
Their own so darned and patched with perfidy,
That, though a rag itself, it looks as well
Across a street, in balcony or coach,
As any perfect stuff might. For my part,
I`d rather take the wind-side of the stews
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 kind
And let me sew in peace among her girls.
And what was better than to draw the threads
All 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 part
Against the world`s successes, virtues, fames.
"Come with me, sweetest sister," I returned,
"And sit within my house and do me good
From henceforth, thou and thine! ye are my own
From henceforth. I am lonely in the world,
And thou art lonely, and the child is half
An orphan. Come,—and henceforth thou and I
Being still together will not miss a friend,
Nor he a father, since two mothers shall
Make 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
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 out
To meet my kiss, as if requiting me
And trusting me at once. And thus, at once,
I carried him and her to where I live;
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 loves
The Lamia-woman,—and I, write to him
What stops his marriage, and destroys his peace,—
Or what perhaps shall simply trouble him,
Until she only need to touch his sleeve
With just a finger`s tremulous white flame,
Saying "Ah,—Aurora Leigh! a pretty tale,
"A very pretty poet! I can guess
"The motive"—then, to catch his eye in hers
And vow she does not wonder,—and they two
To break in laughter as the sea along
A melancholy coast, and float up higher,
In such a laugh, their fatal weeds of love!
Ay, fatal, ay. And who shall answer me
Fate has not hurried tides,—and if to-night
My letter would not be a night too late,
An arrow shot into a man that`s dead,
To prove a vain intention? Would I show
The new wife vile, to make the husband mad?
No, Lamia! shut the shutters, bar the doors
From every glimmer on thy serpent-skin!
I will not let thy hideous secret out
To agonise the man I love—I mean
The friend I love . . . as friends love.


                                            It is strange,
To-day while Marian told her story like
To absorb most listeners, how I listened chief
To a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy`s,
Nor God`s in wrath, . . . but one that mixed with mine
Long years ago among the garden-trees,
And said to me, to me too, "Be my wife,
Aurora." It is strange with what a swell
Of yearning passion, as a snow of ghosts
Might beat against the impervious door of heaven,
I thought, "Now, if I had been a woman, such
As God made women, to save men by love,—
By just my love I might have saved this man,
And made a nobler poem for the world
Than all I have failed in." But I failed besides
In this; and now he`s lost! through me alone!
And, by my only fault, his empty house
Sucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hell
To keep his hearth cold, make his casements creak
For 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 inquiry?—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 soul
Broke up in water—this way.


                               Poor mixed rags
Forsooth we`re made of, like those other dolls
That lean with pretty faces into fairs.
It seems as if I had a man in me,
Despising such a woman.


                         Yet indeed,
To see a wrong or suffering moves us all
To 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 trade
To 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 Shakespeare too,
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 blood
That`s called the woman merely. I will write
Plain 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 leaf
Of Marian Erle,—what noble friend of yours
She trusted once, through what flagitious means,
To what disastrous ends;—the story`s true.
I found her wandering on the Paris quays,
A babe upon her breast,—unnatural,
Unseasonable outcast on such snow
Unthawed to this time. I will tax in this
Your friendship, friend, if that convicted She
Be not his wife yet, to denounce the facts
To himself,—but, otherwise, to let them pass
On 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 headache,—though aware
That 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 cards
To enrich them? pray instruct me how `tis done:
First, clubs,—and while you look at clubs, `tis 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 pipes
Beneath the splintered elm-tree! Crime and shame
And all their hoggery trample your smooth world,
Nor leave more foot-marks than Apollo`s kine
Whose hoofs were muffled by the thieving god
In 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
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 near
In loving wishes to your house."


                                   I sign.
And now I loose my heart upon a page,
This—


       "Lady Waldemar, I`m very glad
I 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 me
Than has your loathing, though the last appears
Sufficiently unscrupulous to hurt,
And not afraid of judgment. Now, there`s space
Between our faces,—I stand off, as if
I judged a stranger`s portrait and pronounced
Indifferently the type was good or bad.
What matter to me that the lines are false,
I ask you? did I ever ink my lips
By drawing your name through them as a friend`s,
Or touch your hands as lovers do? Thank God
I 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 souls
Who seek to press my lip or clasp my palm,—
`Alas, but Lady Waldemar came first!`


"`Tis true, by this time you may near me so
That you`re my cousin`s wife. You`ve gambled deep
As Lucifer, and won the morning-star
In that case,—and the noble house of Leigh
Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:
I cannot speak and burn you up between
Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,—nor speak
And pierce your breast through Romney`s, I who live,
His friend and cousin,—so, you`re safe. You two
Mus grow together like the tares and wheat
Till God`s great fire.—But make the best of time.


"And hide this letter: let it speak no more
Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,
And set her own love digging its own grave
Within her green hope`s pretty garden-ground,—
Ay, sent her forth with some one of your sort
To a wicked house in France, from which she fled
With curses in her eyes and ears and throat,
Her whole soul choked with curses,—mad in short,
And madly scouring up and down for weeks
The foreign hedgeless country, lone and lost,—
So innocent, male-fiends might slink within
Remote 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 sight
Of all the dogs, in reach of all the guns,—
Ay, Marian`s babe, her poor unfathered child,
Her yearling babe!—you`d face him when he wakes
And opens up his wonderful blue eyes:
You`d meet them and not wink perhaps, nor fear
God`s triumph in them and supreme revenge
When righting His creation`s balance-scale
(You pulled as low as Tophet) to the top
Of most celestial innocence. For me,
Who am not as bold, I own those infant eyes
Have set me praying.


                      "While they look at heaven,
No need of protestation in my words
Against 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 birth
You 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, when
He speaks, be quick with your obedience;
Still grind your paltry wants and low desires
To 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 you
Shall do your part as well as such ill things
Can do aught good. You shall not vex him,—mark,
You shall not vex him, jar him when he`s sad,
Or cross him when he`s eager. Understand
To trick him with apparent sympathies,
Nor let him see thee in the face too near
And unlearn thy sweet seeming. Pay the price
Of lies, by being constrained to lie on still:
`Tis easy for thy sort: a million more
Will 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`s
Will 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 draw
Their 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 out
By handfuls from me: I had writ my heart
And wept my tears, and now was cool and calm;
And, going straightway to the neighbouring room,
I lifted up the curtains of the bed
Where Marian Erle, the babe upon her arm,
Both faces leaned together like a pair
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 I
Should make ado for such as she.—"Defiled"
I wrote? "defiled" I thought her? Stoop,
Stoop lower, Aurora! get the angel`s leave
To creep in somewhere, humbly, on your knees,
Within this round of sequestration white
In which they have wrapped earth`s foundlings, heaven`s elect.


The next day we took train to Italy
And 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 bells
Of 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 beat
And crash it out with clangour. I was weak;
I struggled for the posture of my soul
In upright consciousness of place and time,
But evermore, `twixt waking and asleep,
Slipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marian`s eyes
A moment (it is very good for strength
To 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 swept
Above the old roofs of Dijon: Lyons dropped
A spark into the night, half trodden out
Unseen. But presently the winding Rhone
Washed out the moonlight large along his banks
Which strained their yielding curves out clear and clean
To hold it,—shadow of town and castle blurred
Upon the hurrying river. Such an air
Blew thence upon the forehead—half an air
And half a water—that I leaned and looked,
Then, turning back on Marian, smiled to mark
That she looked only on her child, who slept,
His face toward the moon too.


                                So we passed
The liberal open country and the close,
And shot through tunnels, like a lightning-wedge
By great Thor-hammers driven through the rock,
Which, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits,
And lets it in at once: the train swept in
Athrob with effort, trembling with resolve,
The fierce denouncing whistle wailing on
And dying off smothered in the shuddering dark,
While we, self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressed
As other Titans underneath the pile
And nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last,
To catch the dawn afloat upon the land!
—Hills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywhere,
Not cramped in their foundations, pushing wide
Rich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn
(As if they entertained i` the name of France),
While down their straining sides streamed manifest
A 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 heaven
And 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 sat upon the deck and watched the 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 beneath
To a dying man who will not pass the day,
And knows it, holding by a hand he loves.
I too sat quiet, satisfied with death,
Sat silent: I could hear my own soul speak,
And had my friend,—for Nature comes sometimes
And says, "I am ambassador for God."
I felt the wind soft from the land of souls;
The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,
One straining past another along the shore,
The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts,
Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas
And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak
They stood: I watched, beyond that Tyrian belt
Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship,
Down all their sides the misty olive-woods
Dissolving in the weak, congenial moon
And still disclosing some brown convent tower
That seems as if it grew from some brown rock,
Or many a little lighted village, dropped
Like a fallen star upon so high a point,
You wonder what can keep it in its place
From sliding headlong with the waterfalls
Which powder all the myrtle and orange groves
With spray of silver. Thus my Italy
Was 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.


And then I did not think, "My Italy,"
I thought "My father!" O my father`s house,
Without his presence!—Places are too much,
Or else too little, for immortal man—
Too little, when love`s May o`ergrows the ground;
Too much, when that luxuriant robe of green
Is rustling to our ankles in dead leaves.
`Tis only good to be or here or there,
Because we had a dream on such a stone,
Or this or that,—but, once being 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 gravestone on this burying earth.
—But while I stood and mused, a quiet touch
Fell 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 looked
As if I too were something. Sweet the help
Of one we have helped! Thanks, Marian, for such help.


I found a house at Florence on the hill
Of Bellosguardo. `Tis a tower which keeps
A post of double observation o`er
That valley of Arno (holding as a hand
The outspread city) straight toward Fiesole
And Mount Morello and the setting sun,
The Vallombrosan mountains opposite,
Which sunrise fills as full as crystal cups
Turned red to the brim because their wine is red.
No sun could die nor yet be born unseen
By dwellers at my villa: morn and eve
Were magnified before us in the pure
Illimitable space and pause of sky,
Intense as angels` garments blanched with God,
Less blue than radiant. From the outer wall
Of the garden, drops the mystic floating grey
Of olive-trees (with interruptions green
From maize and vine), until `tis caught and torn
Upon the abrupt black line of cypresses
Which signs the way to Florence. Beautiful
The city lies along the ample vale,
Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street,
The river trailing like a silver cord
Through all, and curling loosely, both before
And after, over the whole stretch of land
Sown whitely up and down its opposite slopes
With farms and villas.


                        Many weeks had passed,
No word was granted.—Last, a letter came
From 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 piece
Will split a man`s tongue,—straight he speaks and says
`Received that cheque.` But you! . . . I send you funds
To Paris, and you make no sign at all.
Remember, I`m responsible and wait
A sign of you, Miss Leigh.


                             "Meantime your book
Is eloquent as if you were not dumb;
And common critics, ordinarily deaf
To such fine meanings, and, like deaf men, loth
To seem deaf, answering chance-wise, yes or no,
`It must be` or `it must not` (most pronounced
When least convinced), pronounce for once aright:
You`d think they really heard,—and so they do . . .
The burr of three or four who really hear
And praise your book aright: Fame`s smallest trump
Is 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 half
If that od-force of German Reichenbach,
Which still from female finger-tips burns blue,
Could strike out as our masculine white heats
To quicken a man. Forgive me. All my heart
Is 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 keep
A month more from you! but I yield it up
Because I know you`ll write the sooner for`t,
Most women (of your height even) counting love
Life`s only serious business. Who`s my wife
That shall be in a month? you ask, nor guess?
Remember what a pair of topaz eyes
You 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:
I had thrown them there to keep them safe from Jove,
They would so naughtily find out their way
To 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 eyes
But those,—and so I flung them into paint
And turned them to the wall`s care. Ay, but now
I`ve let them out, my Kate`s: I`ve painted her
(I change my style and leave mythologies),
The whole sweet face; it looks upon my soul
Like a face on water, to beget itself.
A half-length portrait, in a hanging cloak
Like 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 love
Through 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 pushed
Where, three months since, her eyes were: nay, in fact,
Nought satisfied her but to make me paint
Your 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 compounded for
The naming of the wedding-day next month,
And gladly too. `Tis pretty to remark
How women can love women of your sort,
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 weaker than Aurora Leigh,
And there`ll be women who believe of you
(Besides my Kate) that if you walked on sand
You 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 this
Through all this letter—conscious of your heart,
And writing lightlier for the heavy fact,
As clocks are voluble with lead.


                                   "How poor,
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 gold
On 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 peace
Through a golden ring. I thought so: foolishly,
The event proved; for you went more opposite
To each other, month by month, and year by year,
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 drinks
And 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 Leigh
May lose as he does. There`s an end to all,
Yes, even this letter, though this second sheet
May find you doubtful. Write a word for Kate:
She reads my letters always, 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 is
At Florence with my pictures; I can hear
Your 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 walk
With Kate . . . I think so. Vincent Carrington."


The noon was hot; the air scorched like the sun,
And was shut out. The closed persiani threw
Their long-scored shadows on my villa-floor,
And interlined the golden atmosphere
Straight, still,—across the pictures on the wall,
The statuette on the console (of young Love
And Psyche made one marble by a kiss),
The low couch where I leaned, the table near,
The vase of lilies Marian pulled last night
(Each green leaf and each white leaf ruled in black
As if for writing some new text of fate),
And the open letter, rested on my knee,
But there the lines swerved, trembled, though I sat
Untroubled, plainly, reading it again,
And three times. Well, he`s married; that is clear.
No wonder that he`s married, nor much more
That 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 love
Will 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 Waldemar
At prettiest, under the said hood, preserved
From such a light as I could hold to her face
To 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" . . .
It may be 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,
And take a blister on my brow instead
Of this dead weight! best, perfectly be stunned
By those insufferable cicale, sick
And hoarse with rapture of the summer-heat,
That sing, like poets, till their hearts break,—sing
Till 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 away
From what he is, in his turn. Strain a step
For ever, yet gain no step? Are we such,
We cannot, with our admirations even,
Our tip-toe aspirations, touch a thing
That`s higher than we? is all a dismal flat,
And God alone above each, as the sun
O`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 grow
More 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
For something good and green to alight upon
And nestle into, with those soft-winged eyes,
Subsiding 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 man
Can pluck a leaf, and find a lecture in`t;
And I, too, . . . God has made me,—I`ve a heart
That`s capable of worship, love, and loss;
We say the same of Shakespeare`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 end,
Through all the dismal faces that we make,
O`erwrinkled with dishonouring agony
From decomposing drugs. 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:
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 firmaments
And 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 draws
Through all things upwards—that a twofold world
Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things
And spiritual,—who separates those two
In 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 divide
This apple of life, and cut it through the pips:
The perfect round which fitted Venus` hand
Has perished as utterly as if we ate
Both halves. Without the spiritual, observe,
The natural`s impossible—no form,
No motion: without sensuous, spiritual
Is inappreciable,—no beauty or power:
And in this twofold sphere the twofold man
(For still the artist is intensely a man)
Holds firmly by the natural, to reach
The spiritual beyond it,—fixes still
The type with mortal vision, to pierce through,
With eyes immortal, to the antitype
Some call the ideal,—better called the real,
And certain to be called so presently
When things shall have their names. Look long enough
On any peasant`s face here, coarse and lined,
You`ll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay,
As perfect featured as he yearns at Rome
From 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 disdain
For ever out of sight. Ay, Carrington
Is glad of such a creed: an artist must,
Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone,
With just his hand, and finds it suddenly
A-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 springshoot;
Nor yet the horse, before a quarry a-graze:
But man, the twofold creature, apprehends
The twofold 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 significance
Through the open arms of God. "There`s nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin`s bell:
And truly, I reiterate, nothing`s small!
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, veinèd wrist)
In such a little tremor of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth 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 unaware
More and more from the first similitude.


Truth, so far, in my book! a truth which draws
From all things upward. I, Aurora, still
Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life
As Jove did Io; and, until that Hand
Shall 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 Is
Behind 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`s
Complete, consummate, undivided work;
That every natural flower which grows on earth
Implies a flower upon the spiritual side,
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow
With blossoming causes,—not so far away,
But we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared,
May catch at something of the bloom and breath,—
Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed
Still apprehended, consciously or not,
And still transferred to picture, music, verse,
For thrilling audient and beholding souls
By 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 man
Produced this," when much rather they should say
"`Tis insight and he saw this."


                                  Thus is Art
Self-magnified in magnifying a truth
Which, fully recognised, would change the world
And 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 through
The 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 towns
Make offal of their daughters for its use,
On summer-nights, when God is sad in heaven
To think what goes on in His recreant world
He made quite other; while that moon He made
To shine there, at the first love`s covenant,
Shines still, convictive as a marriage-ring
Before adulterous eyes.


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