Aurora Leigh: Book Two

Times followed one another. Came a morn

I stood upon the brink of twenty years,

And looked before and after, as I stood

Woman and artist,—either incomplete,

Both credulous of completion. There I held

The whole creation in my little cup,

And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank

"Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine,

And all these peoples."

I was glad, that day;

The June was in me, with its multitudes

Of nightingales all singing in the dark,

And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split.

I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God!

So glad, I could not choose be very wise!

And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull

My childhood backward in a childish jest

To see the face of 't once more, and farewell!

In which fantastic mood I bounded forth

At early morning,—would not wait so long

As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings,

But, brushing a green trail across the lawn

With my gown in the dew, took will and way

Among the acacias of the shrubberies,

To fly my fancies in the open air

And keep my birthday, till my aunt awoke

To stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on

As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves,

"The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned

Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone;

And so with me it must be unless I prove

Unworthy of the grand adversity,

And certainly I would not fail so much.

What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day

In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it,

Before my brows be numbed as Dante's own

To all the tender pricking of such leaves?

Such leaves! what leaves?"

I pulled the branches down

To choose from.

"Not the bay! I choose no bay

(The fates deny us if we are overbold),

Nor myrtle—which means chiefly love; and love

Is something awful which one dares not touch

So early o' mornings. This verbena strains

The point of passionate fragrance; and hard by,

This guelder-rose, at far too slight a beck

Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.

Ah—there's my choice,—that ivy on the wall,

That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow

But thinking of a wreath. Large leaves, smooth leaves,

Serrated like my vines, and half as green.

I like such ivy, bold to leap a height

'Twas strong to climb; as good to grow on graves

As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too

(And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb."

Thus speaking to myself, half singing it,

Because some thoughts are fashioned like a bell

To ring with once being touched, I drew a wreath

Drenched, blinding me with dew, across my brow,

And fastening it behind so, turning faced

. . . My public!—cousin Romney—with a mouth

Twice graver than his eyes.

I stood there fixed,—

My arms up, like the caryatid, sole

Of some abolished temple, helplessly

Persistent in a gesture which derides

A former purpose. Yet my blush was flame,

As if from flax, not stone.

"Aurora Leigh,

The earliest of Auroras!"

Hand stretched out

I clasped, as shipwrecked men will clasp a hand,

Indifferent to the sort of palm. The tide

Had caught me at my pastime, writing down

My foolish name too near upon the sea

Which drowned me with a blush as foolish. "You,

My cousin!"

The smile died out in his eyes

And dropped upon his lips, a cold dead weight,

For just a moment, "Here's a book I found!

No name writ on it—poems, by the form;

Some Greek upon the margin,—lady's Greek

Without the accents. Read it? Not a word.

I saw at once the thing had witchcraft in't,

Whereof the reading calls up dangerous spirits:

I rather bring it to the witch."

"My book.

You found it" . . .

"In the hollow by the stream

That beech leans down into—of which you said

The Oread in it has a Naiad's heart

And pines for waters."

"Thank you."

"Thanks to you

My cousin! that I have seen you not too much

Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest,

To be a woman also."

With a glance

The smile rose in his eyes again and touched

The ivy on my forehead, light as air.

I answered gravely "Poets needs must be

Or men or women—more's the pity."

"Ah,

But men, and still less women, happily,

Scarce need be poets. Keep to the green wreath,

Since even dreaming of the stone and bronze

Brings headaches, pretty cousin, and defiles

The clean white morning dresses."

"So you judge!

Because I love the beautiful I must

Love pleasure chiefly, and be overcharged

For ease and whiteness! well, you know the world,

And only miss your cousin, 'tis not much.

But learn this; I would rather take my part

With God's Dead, who afford to walk in white

Yet spread His glory, than keep quiet here

And gather up my feet from even a step

For fear to soil my gown in so much dust.

I choose to walk at all risks.—Here, if heads

That hold a rhythmic thought, much ache perforce,

For my part I choose headaches,—and today's

My birthday."

"Dear Aurora, choose instead

To cure them. You have balsams."

"I perceive.

The headache is too noble for my sex.

You think the heartache would sound decenter,

Since that's the woman's special, proper ache,

And altogether tolerable, except

To a woman."

Saying which, I loosed my wreath,

And swinging it beside me as I walked,

Half-petulant, half-playful, as we walked,

I sent a sidelong look to find his thought,—

As falcon set on falconer's finger may,

With sidelong head, and startled, braving eye,

Which means, "You'll see—you'll see! I'll soon take flight,

You shall not hinder." He, as shaking out

His hand and answering "Fly then," did not speak,

Except by such a gesture. Silently

We paced, until, just coming into sight

Of the house-windows, he abruptly caught

At one end of the swinging wreath, and said

"Aurora!" There I stopped short, breath and all.

"Aurora, let's be serious, and throw by

This game of head and heart. Life means, be sure,

Both heart and head,—both active, both complete,

And both in earnest. Men and women make

The world, as head and heart make human life.

Work man, work woman, since there's work to do

In this beleaguered earth, for head and heart,

And thought can never do the work of love:

But work for ends, I mean for uses, not

For such sleek fringes (do you call them ends,

Still less God's glory?) as we sew ourselves

Upon the velvet of those baldaquins

Held 'twixt us and the sun. That book of yours,

I have not read a page of; but I toss

A rose up—it falls calyx down, you see!

The chances are that, being a woman, young

And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes,

You write as well . . . and ill . . . upon the whole,

As other women. If as well, what then?

If even a little better, . . . still, what then?

We want the Best in art now, or no art.

The time is done for facile settings up

Of minnow gods, nymphs here and tritons there;

The polytheists have gone out in God,

That unity of Bests. No best, no God!

And so with art, we say. Give art's divine,

Direct, indubitable, real as grief,

Or leave us to the grief we grow ourselves

Divine by overcoming with mere hope

And most prosaic patience. You, you are young

As Eve with nature's daybreak on her face,

But this same world you are come to, dearest coz,

Has done with keeping birthdays, saves her wreaths

To hang upon her ruins,—and forgets

To rhyme the cry with which she still beats back

Those savage, hungry dogs that hunt her down

To the empty grave of Christ. The world's hard pressed:

The sweat of labour in the early curse

Has (turning acrid in six thousand years)

Become the sweat of torture. Who has time,

An hour's time . . . think!—to sit upon a bank

And hear the cymbal tinkle in white hands?

When Egypt's slain, I say, let Miriam sing!—

Before—where's Moses?"

"Ah, exactly that.

Where's Moses?—is a Moses to be found?

You'll seek him vainly in the bulrushes,

While I in vain touch cymbals. Yet concede,

Such sounding brass has done some actual good

(The application in a woman's hand,

If that were credible, being scarcely spoilt,)

In colonising beehives."

"There it is!—

You play beside a death-bed like a child,

Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place

To teach the living. None of all these things

Can women understand. You generalise

Oh, nothing,—not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts,

So sympathetic to the personal pang,

Close on each separate knife-stroke, yielding up

A whole life at each wound, incapable

Of deepening, widening a large lap of life

To hold the world-full woe. The human race

To you means, such a child, or such a man,

You saw one morning waiting in the cold,

Beside that gate, perhaps. You gather up

A few such cases, and when strong sometimes

Will write of factories and of slaves, as if

Your father were a negro, and your son

A spinner in the mills. All's yours and you,

All, coloured with your blood, or otherwise

Just nothing to you. Why, I call you hard

To general suffering. Here's the world half-blind

With intellectual light, half-brutalised

With civilisation, having caught the plague

In silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west

Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain

And sin too! . . . does one woman of you all

(You who weep easily) grow pale to see

This tiger shake his cage?—does one of you

Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls,

And pine and die because of the great sum

Of universal anguish?—Show me a tear

Wet as Cordelia's, in eyes bright as yours,

Because the world is mad. You cannot count,

That you should weep for this account, not you!

You weep for what you know. A red-haired child

Sick in a fever, if you touch him once,

Though but so little as with a finger-tip,

Will set you weeping; but a million sick . . .

You could as soon weep for the rule of three

Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world,

Uncomprehended by you, must remain

Uninfluenced by you.—Women as you are,

Mere women, personal and passionate,

You give us doating mothers, and perfect wives,

Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!

We get no Christ from you,—and verily

We shall not get a poet, in my mind."

"With which conclusion you conclude" . . .

"But this,"

That you, Aurora, with the large live brow

And steady eyelids, cannot condescend

To play at art, as children play at swords,

To show a pretty spirit, chiefly admired

Because true action is impossible.

You never can be satisfied with praise

Which men give women when they judge a book

Not as mere work but as mere woman's work,

Expressing the comparative respect

Which means the absolute scorn. "Oh, excellent,

"What grace, what facile turns, what fluent sweeps,

"What delicate discernment . . . almost thought!

"The book does honour to the sex, we hold.

"Among our female authors we make room

"For this fair writer, and congratulate

"The country that produces in these times

"Such women, competent to . . . spell."

"Stop there,"

I answered, burning through his thread of talk

With a quick flame of emotion,—"You have read

My soul, if not my book, and argue well

I would not condescend . . . we will not say

To such a kind of praise (a worthless end

Is praise of all kinds), but to such a use

Of holy art and golden life. I am young,

And peradventure weak—you tell me so—

Through being a woman. And, for all the rest,

Take thanks for justice. I would rather dance

At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped

Their gingerbread for joy,—than shift the types

For tolerable verse, intolerable

To men who act and suffer. Better far

Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means,

Than a sublime art frivolously."

"You,

Choose nobler work than either, O moist eyes

And hurrying lips and heaving heart! We are young,

Aurora, you and I. The world,—look round,—

The world, we're come to late, is swollen hard

With perished generations and their sins:

The civiliser's spade grinds horribly

On dead men's bones, and cannot turn up soil

That's otherwise than fetid. All success

Proves partial failure; all advance implies

What's left behind; all triumph, something crushed

At the chariot-wheels; all government, some wrong:

And rich men make the poor, who curse the rich,

Who agonise together, rich and poor,

Under and over, in the social spasm

And crisis of the ages. Here's an age

That makes its own vocation! here we have stepped

Across the bounds of time! here's nought to see,

But just the rich man and just Lazarus,

And both in torments, with a mediate gulf,

Though not a hint of Abraham's bosom. Who

Being man, Aurora, can stand calmly by

And view these things, and never tease his soul

For some great cure? No physic for this grief,

In all the earth and heavens too?"

"You believe

In God, for your part?—ay? that He who makes

Can make good things from ill things, best from worst,

As men plant tulips upon dunghills when

They wish them finest?"

"True. A death-heat is

The same as life-heat, to be accurate,

And in all nature is no death at all,

As men account of death, so long as God

Stands witnessing for life perpetually,

By being just God. That's abstract truth, I know,

Philosophy, or sympathy with God:

But I, I sympathise with man, not God

(I think I was a man for chiefly this),

And when I stand beside a dying bed,

'Tis death to me. Observe,—it had not much

Consoled the race of mastodons to know,

Before they went to fossil, that anon

Their place would quicken with the elephant.

They were not elephants but mastodons;

And I, a man, as men are now and not

As men may be hereafter, feel with men

In the agonising present."

"Is it so,"

I said, "my cousin? is the world so bad,

While I hear nothing of it through the trees?

The world was always evil,—but so bad?"

"So bad, Aurora. Dear, my soul is grey

With poring over the long sum of ill;

So much for vice, so much for discontent,

So much for the necessities of power,

So much for the connivances of fear,

Coherent in statistical despairs

With such a total of distracted life, . . .

To see it down in figures on a page,

Plain, silent, clear, as God sees through the earth

The sense of all the graves,—that's terrible

For one who is not God, and cannot right

The wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed,

But vow away my years, my means, my aims,

Among the helpers, if there's any help

In such a social strait? The common blood

That swings along my veins is strong enough

To draw me to this duty."

Then I spoke.

"I have not stood long on the strand of life,

And these salt waters have had scarcely time

To creep so high up as to wet my feet:

I cannot judge these tides—I shall, perhaps.

A woman's always younger than a man

At equal years, because she is disallowed

Maturing by the outdoor sun and air,

And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.

Ah well, I know you men judge otherwise!

You think a woman ripens, as a peach,

In the cheeks chiefly. Pass it to me now;

I'm young in age, and younger still, I think,

As a woman. But a child may say amen

To a bishop's prayer and feel the way it goes,

And I, incapable to loose the knot

Of social questions, can approve, applaud

August compassion, Christian thoughts that shoot

Beyond the vulgar white of personal aims.

Accept my reverence."

There he glowed on me

With all his face and eyes. "No other help?"

Said he—"no more than so?"

"What help?" I asked.

"You'd scorn my help,—as Nature's self, you say,

Has scorned to put her music in my mouth

Because a woman's. Do you now turn round

And ask for what a woman cannot give?"

"For what she only can, I turn and ask,"

He answered, catching up my hands in his,

And dropping on me from his high-eaved brow

The full weight of his soul,—"I ask for love,

And that, she can; for life in fellowship

Through bitter duties—that, I know she can;

For wifehood—will she?"

"Now," I said, "may God

Be witness 'twixt us two!" and with the word,

Meseemed I floated into a sudden light

Above his stature,—"am I proved too weak

To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear

Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think,

Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought?

Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can,

Yet competent to love, like him?"

I paused;

Perhaps I darkened, as the lighthouse will

That turns upon the sea. "It's always so.

Anything does for a wife."

"Aurora, dear,

And dearly honoured,"—he pressed in at once

With eager utterance,—"you translate me ill.

I do not contradict my thought of you

Which is most reverent, with another thought

Found less so. If your sex is weak for art

(And I, who said so, did but honour you

By using truth in courtship), it is strong

For life and duty. Place your fecund heart

In mine, and let us blossom for the world

That wants love's colour in the grey of time.

My talk, meanwhile, is arid to you, ay,

Since all my talk can only set you where

You look down coldly on the arena-heaps

Of headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct!

The Judgment-Angel scarce would find his way

Through such a heap of generalised distress

To the individual man with lips and eyes,

Much less Aurora. Ah, my sweet, come down,

And hand in hand we'll go where yours shall touch

These victims, one by one! till, one by one,

The formless, nameless trunk of every man

Shall seem to wear a head with hair you know,

And every woman catch your mother's face

To melt you into passion."

"I am a girl,"

I answered slowly; "you do well to name

My mother's face. Though far too early, alas,

God's hand did interpose 'twixt it and me,

I know so much of love as used to shine

In that face and another. Just so much;

No more indeed at all. I have not seen

So much love since, I pray you pardon me,

As answers even to make a marriage with

In this cold land of England. What you love

Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:

You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,

A wife to help your ends,—in her no end.

Your cause is noble, your ends excellent,

But I, being most unworthy of these and that,

Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell."

"Farewell, Aurora? you reject me thus?"

He said.

"Sir, you were married long ago.

You have a wife already whom you love,

Your social theory. Bless you both, I say.

For my part, I am scarcely meek enough

To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse.

Do I look a Hagar, think you?"

"So you jest."

"Nay, so, I speak in earnest," I replied.

"You treat of marriage too much like, at least,

A chief apostle: you would bear with you

A wife . . . a sister . . . shall we speak it out?

A sister of charity."

"Then, must it be

Indeed farewell? And was I so far wrong

In hope and in illusion, when I took

The woman to be nobler than the man,

Yourself the noblest woman, in the use

And comprehension of what love is,—love,

That generates the likeness of itself

Through all heroic duties? so far wrong,

In saying bluntly, venturing truth on love,

'Come, human creature, love and work with me,'—

Instead of 'Lady, thou art wondrous fair,

'And, where the Graces walk before, the Muse

'Will follow at the lightning of their eyes,

'And where the Muse walks, lovers need to creep:

'Turn round and love me, or I die of love.'"

With quiet indignation I broke in.

"You misconceive the question like a man,

Who sees a woman as the complement

Of his sex merely. You forget too much

That every creature, female as the male,

Stands single in responsible act and thought

As also in birth and death. Whoever says

To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,'

Will get fair answers if the work and love,

Being good themselves, are good for her—the best

She was born for. Women of a softer mood,

Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life,

Will sometimes only hear the first word, love,

And catch up with it any kind of work,

Indifferent, so that dear love go with it.

I do not blame such women, though, for love,

They pick much oakum; earth's fanatics make

Too frequently heaven's saints. But me your work

Is not the best for,—nor your love the best,

Nor able to commend the kind of work

For love's sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,

To be overbold in speaking of myself:

I too have my vocation,—work to do,

The heavens and earth have set me since I changed

My father's face for theirs, and, though your world

Were twice as wretched as you represent,

Most serious work, most necessary work

As any of the economists'. Reform,

Make trade a Christian possibility,

And individual right no general wrong;

Wipe out earth's furrows of the Thine and Mine,

And leave one green for men to play at bowls,

With innings for them all! . . . What then, indeed,

If mortals are not greater by the head

Than any of their prosperities? what then,

Unless the artist keep up open roads

Betwixt the seen and unseen,—bursting through

The best of your conventions with his best,

The speakable, imaginable best

God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond

Both speech and imagination? A starved man

Exceeds a fat beast: we'll not barter, sir,

The beautiful for barley.—And, even so,

I hold you will not compass your poor ends

Of barley-feeding and material ease,

Without a poet's individualism

To work your universal. It takes a soul,

To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,

To move the masses, even to a cleaner stye:

It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's-breadth off

The dust of the actual.—Ah, your Fouriers failed,

Because not poets enough to understand

That life develops from within.—For me,

Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,

Of work like this: perhaps a woman's soul

Aspires, and not creates: yet we aspire,

And yet I'll try out your perhapses, sir,

And if I fail . . . why, burn me up my straw

Like other false works—I'll not ask for grace;

Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I

Who love my art, would never wish it lower

To suit my stature. I may love my art.

You'll grant that even a woman may love art,

Seeing that to waste true love on anything

Is womanly, past question."

I retain

The very last word which I said that day,

As you the creaking of the door, years past,

Which let upon you such disabling news

You ever after have been graver. He,

His eyes, the motions in his silent mouth,

Were fiery points on which my words were caught,

Transfixed for ever in my memory

For his sake, not their own. And yet I know

I did not love him . . . nor he me . . . that's sure . . .

And what I said is unrepented of,

As truth is always. Yet . . . a princely man!—

If hard to me, heroic for himself!

He bears down on me through the slanting years,

The stronger for the distance. If he had loved,

Ay, loved me, with that retributive face, . . .

I might have been a common woman now

And happier, less known and less left alone,

Perhaps a better woman after all,

With chubby children hanging on my neck

To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vines

That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it.

The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.

And I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright,

Still worthy of having spoken out the truth,

By being content I spoke it though it set

Him there, me here.—O woman's vile remorse,

To hanker after a mere name, a show,

A supposition, a potential love!

Does every man who names love in our lives

Become a power for that? is love's true thing

So much best to us, that what personates love

Is next best? A potential love, forsooth!

I'm not so vile. No, no—he cleaves, I think,

This man, this image,—chiefly for the wrong

And shock he gave my life, in finding me

Precisely where the devil of my youth

Had set me, on those mountain-peaks of hope

All glittering with the dawn-dew, all erect

And famished for the noon,—exclaiming, while

I looked for empire and much tribute, "Come,

I have some worthy work for thee below.

Come, sweep my barns and keep my hospitals,

And I will pay thee with a current coin

Which men give women."

As we spoke, the grass

Was trod in haste beside us, and my aunt,

With smile distorted by the sun,—face, voice

As much at issue with the summer-day

As if you brought a candle out of doors,

Broke in with "Romney, here!—My child, entreat

Your cousin to the house, and have your talk,

If girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come."

He answered for me calmly, with pale lips

That seemed to motion for a smile in vain,

"The talk is ended, madam, where we stand.

Your brother's daughter has dismissed me here;

And all my answer can be better said

Beneath the trees, than wrong by such a word

Your house's hospitalities. Farewell."

With that he vanished. I could hear his heel

Ring bluntly in the lane, as down he leapt

The short way from us.—Then a measured speech

Withdrew me. "What means this, Aurora Leigh?

My brother's daughter has dismissed my guests?"

The lion in me felt the keeper's voice

Through all its quivering dewlaps; I was quelled

Before her,—meekened to the child she knew:

I prayed her pardon, said "I had little thought

To give dismissal to a guest of hers,

In letting go a friend of mine who came

To take me into service as a wife,—

No more than that, indeed."

"No more, no more?

Pray Heaven," she answered, "that I was not mad.

I could not mean to tell her to her face

That Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife,

And I refused him?"

"Did he ask?" I said;

"I think he rather stooped to take me up

For certain uses which he found to do

For something called a wife. He never asked."

"What stuff!" she answered; "are they queens, these girls?

They must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks,

Spread out upon the ground, before they'll step

One footstep for the noblest lover born."

"But I am born," I said with firmness, "I,

To walk another way than his, dear aunt."

"You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months

Will walk as well as you," she cried in haste,

"Without a steadying finger. Why, you child,

God help you, you are groping in the dark,

For all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps,

That you, sole offspring of an opulent man,

Are rich and free to choose a way to walk?

You think, and it's a reasonable thought,

That I, beside, being well to do in life,

Will leave my handful in my niece's hand

When death shall paralyse these fingers? Pray,

Pray, child, albeit I know you love me not,

As if you loved me, that I may not die!

For when I die and leave you, out you go

(Unless I make room for you in my grave),

Unhoused, unfed, my dear poor brother's lamb

(Ah heaven!—that pains!)—without a right to crop

A single blade of grass beneath these trees,

Or cast a lamb's small shadow on the lawn,

Unfed, unfolded! Ah, my brother, here's

The fruit you planted in your foreign loves!—

Ay, there's the fruit he planted! never look

Astonished at me with your mother's eyes,

For it was they who set you where you are,

An undowered orphan. Child, your father's choice

Of that said mother disinherited

His daughter, his and hers. Men do not think

Of sons and daughters, when they fall in love,

So much more than of sisters; otherwise

He would have paused to ponder what he did,

And shrunk before that clause in the entail

Excluding offspring by a foreign wife

(The clause set up a hundred years ago

By a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girl

And had his heart danced over in return);

But this man shrank at nothing, never thought

Of you, Aurora, any more than me—

Your mother must have been a pretty thing,

For all the coarse Italian blacks and browns,

To make a good man, which my brother was,

Unchary of the duties to his house;

But so it fell indeed. Our cousin Vane,

Vane Leigh, the father of this Romney, wrote

Directly on your birth, to Italy,

'I ask your baby daughter for my son,

In whom the entail now merges by the law.

Betroth her to us out of love, instead

Of colder reasons, and she shall not lose

By love or law from henceforth'—so he wrote;

A generous cousin was my cousin Vane.

Remember how he drew you to his knee

The year you came here, just before he died,

And hollowed out his hands to hold your cheeks,

And wished them redder,—you remember Vane.

And now his son, who represents our house,

And holds the fiefs and manors in his place,

To whom reverts my pittance when I die

(Except a few books and a pair of shawls),

The boy is generous like him, and prepared

To carry out his kindest word and thought

To you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man

Is Romney Leigh; although the sun of youth

Has shone too straight upon his brain, I know,

And fevered him with dreams of doing good

To good-for-nothing people. But a wife

Will put all right, and stroke his temples cool

With healthy touches." . . .

I broke in at that.

I could not lift my heavy heart to breathe

Till, then, but then I raised it, and it fell

In broken words like these—"No need to wait:

The dream of doing good to . . . me, at least,

Is ended, without waiting for a wife

To cool the fever for him. We've escaped

That danger,—thank Heaven for it."

"You," she cried,

"Have got a fever. What, I talk and talk

An hour long to you,—I instruct you how

You cannot eat or drink or stand or sit

Or even die, like any decent wretch

In all this unroofed and unfurnished world,

Without your cousin,—and you still maintain

There's room 'twixt him and you for flirting fans

And running knots in eyebrows? You must have

A pattern lover sighing on his knee?

You do not count enough, a noble heart

(Above book-patterns) which this very morn

Unclosed itself in two dear fathers' names

To embrace your orphaned life? Fie, fie! But stay,

I write a word, and counteract this sin."

She would have turned to leave me, but I clung.

"O sweet my father's sister, hear my word

Before you write yours. Cousin Vane did well,

And cousin Romney well,—and I well too,

In casting back with all my strength and will

The good they meant me. O my God, my God!

God meant me good, too, when He hindered me

From saying 'yes' this morning. If you write

A word, it shall be 'no.' I say no, no!

I tie up 'no' upon His altar-horns,

Quite out of reach of perjury! At least

My soul is not a pauper; I can live

At least my soul's life, without alms from men;

And if it must be in heaven instead of earth,

Let heaven look to it,—I am not afraid."

She seized my hands with both hers, strained them fast,

And drew her probing and unscrupulous eyes

Right through me, body and heart. "Yet, foolish Sweet,

You love this man. I've watched you when he came,

And when he went, and when we've talked of him:

I am not old for nothing; I can tell

The weather-signs of love: you love this man."

Girls blush sometimes because they are alive,

Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.

The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;

They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,

And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?

Who's sorry for a gnat . . . or girl?

I blushed.

I feel the brand upon my forehead now

Strike hot, sear deep, as guiltless men may feel

The felon's iron, say, and scorn the mark

Of what they are not. Most illogical

Irrational nature of our womanhood,

That blushes one way, feels another way,

And prays, perhaps, another! After all,

We cannot be the equal of the male

Who rules his blood a little.

For although

I blushed indeed, as if I loved the man,

And her incisive smile, accrediting

That treason of false witness in my blush,

Did bow me downward like a swathe of grass

Below its level that struck me,—I attest

The conscious skies and all their daily suns,

I think I loved him not,—nor then, nor since,

Nor ever. Do we love the schoolmaster,

Being busy in the woods? much less, being poor,

The overseer of the parish? Do we keep

Our love to pay our debts with?

White and cold

I grew next moment. As my blood recoiled

From that imputed ignominy, I made

My heart great with it. Then, at last, I spoke,

Spoke veritable words but passionate,

Too passionate perhaps . . . ground up with sobs

To shapeless endings. She let fall my hands

And took her smile off, in sedate disgust,

As peradventure she had touched a snake,—

A dead snake, mind!—and, turning round, replied,

"We'll leave Italian manners, if you please.

I think you had an English father, child,

And ought to find it possible to speak

A quiet 'yes' or 'no,' like English girls,

Without convulsions. In another month

We'll take another answer—no, or yes."

With that, she left me in the garden-walk.

I had a father! yes, but long ago—

How long it seemed that moment. Oh, how far,

How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints

When once gone from us! We may call against

The lighted windows of thy fair June-heaven

Where all the souls are happy,—and not one,

Not even my father, look from work or play

To ask, "Who is it that cries after us,

Below there, in the dusk?" Yet formerly

He turned his face upon me quick enough,

If I said "father." Now I might cry loud;

The little lark reached higher with his song

Than I with crying. Oh, alone, alone,—

Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth,

I stood there in the garden, and looked up

The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out

On such June mornings.

You who keep account

Of crisis and transition in this life,

Set down the first time Nature says plain "no"

To some "yes" in you, and walks over you

In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin

By singing with the birds, and running fast

With June-days, hand in hand: but once, for all,

The birds must sing against us, and the sun

Strike down upon us like a friend's sword caught

By an enemy to slay us, while we read

The dear name on the blade which bites at us!—

That's bitter and convincing: after that,

We seldom doubt that something in the large

Smooth order of creation, though no more

Than haply a man's footstep, has gone wrong.

Some tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled,

As those smile who have no face in the world

To smile back to them. I had lost a friend

In Romney Leigh; the thing was sure—a friend,

Who had looked at me most gently now and then,

And spoken of my favourite books, "our books,"

With such a voice! Well, voice and look were now

More utterly shut out from me I felt,

Than even my father's. Romney now was turned

To a benefactor, to a generous man,

Who had tied himself to marry . . . me, instead

Of such a woman, with low timorous lids

He lifted with a sudden word one day,

And left, perhaps, for my sake.—Ah, self-tied

By a contract, male Iphigenia bound

At a fatal Aulis for the winds to change

(But loose him, they'll not change), he well might seem

A little cold and dominant in love!

He had a right to be dogmatical,

This poor, good Romney. Love, to him, was made

A simple law-clause. If I married him,

I should not dare to call my soul my own

Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought

And every heart-beat down there in the bill;

Not one found honestly deductible

From any use that pleased him! He might cut

My body into coins to give away

Among his other paupers; change my sons,

While I stood dumb as Griseld, for black babes

Or piteous foundlings; might unquestioned set

My right hand teaching in the Ragged Schools,

My left hand washing in the Public Baths,

What time my angel of the Ideal stretched

Both his to me in vain. I could not claim

The poor right of a mouse in a trap, to squeal,

And take so much as pity from myself.

Farewell, good Romney! if I loved you even,

I could but ill afford to let you be

So generous to me. Farewell, friend, since friend

Betwixt us two, forsooth, must be a word

So heavily overladen. And, since help

Must come to me from those who love me not,

Farewell, all helpers—I must help myself,

And am alone from henceforth.—Then I stooped

And lifted the soiled garland from the earth,

And set it on my head as bitterly

As when the Spanish monarch crowned the bones

Of his dead love. So be it. I preserve

That crown still,—in the drawer there! 'twas the first.

The rest are like it;—those Olympian crowns,

We run for, till we lose sight of the sun

In the dust of the racing chariots!

After that,

Before the evening fell, I had a note,

Which ran,—"Aurora, sweet Chaldean, you read

My meaning backward like your eastern books,

While I am from the west, dear. Read me now

A little plainer. Did you hate me quite

But yesterday? I loved you for my part;

I love you. If I spoke untenderly

This morning, my beloved, pardon it;

And comprehend me that I loved you so

I set you on the level of my soul,

And overwashed you with the bitter brine

Of some habitual thoughts. Henceforth, my flower,

Be planted out of reach of any such,

And lean the side you please, with all your leaves!

Write woman's verses and dream woman's dreams;

But let me feel your perfume in my home

To make my sabbath after working-days.

Bloom out your youth beside me,—be my wife."

I wrote in answer—"We Chaldeans discern

Still farther than we read. I know your heart,

And shut it like the holy book it is,

Reserved for mild-eyed saints to pore upon

Betwixt their prayers at vespers. Well, you're right,

I did not surely hate you yesterday;

And yet I do not love you enough to-day

To wed you, cousin Romney. Take this word,

And let it stop you as a generous man

From speaking farther. You may tease, indeed,

And blow about my feelings, or my leaves,

And here's my aunt will help you with east winds

And break a stalk, perhaps, tormenting me;

But certain flowers grow near as deep as trees,

And, cousin, you'll not move my root, not you,

With all your confluent storms. Then let me grow

Within my wayside hedge, and pass your way!

This flower has never as much to say to you

As the antique tomb which said to travellers, 'Pause,

'Siste, viator.'" Ending thus, I sighed.

The next week passed in silence, so the next,

And several after: Romney did not come

Nor my aunt chide me. I lived on and on,

As if my heart were kept beneath a glass,

And everybody stood, all eyes and ears,

To see and hear it tick. I could not sit,

Nor walk, nor take a book, nor lay it down,

Nor sew on steadily, nor drop a stitch,

And a sigh with it, but I felt her looks

Still cleaving to me, like the sucking asp

To Cleopatra's breast, persistently

Through the intermittent pantings. Being observed,

When observation is not sympathy,

Is just being tortured. If she said a word,

A "thank you," or an "if it please you, dear,"

She meant a commination, or, at best,

An exorcism against the devildom

Which plainly held me. So with all the house.

Susannah could not stand and twist my hair

Without such glancing at the looking-glass

To see my face there, that she missed the plait.

And John,—I never sent my plate for soup,

Or did not send it, but the foolish John

Resolved the problem, 'twixt his napkined thumbs,

Of what was signified by taking soup

Or choosing mackerel. Neighbours who drooped in

On morning visits, feeling a joint wrong,

Smiled admonition, sat uneasily,

And talked, with measured, emphasised reserve,

Of parish news, like doctors to the sick,

When not called in,—as if, with leave to speak,

They might say something. Nay, the very dog

Would watch me from his sun-patch on the floor,

In alternation with the large black fly

Not yet in reach of snapping. So I lived.

A Roman died so; smeared with honey, teased

By insects, stared to torture by the noon:

And many patient souls 'neath English roofs

Have died like Romans. I, in looking back,

Wish only, now, I had borne the plague of all

With meeker spirits than were rife at Rome.

For, on the sixth week, the dead sea broke up,

Dashed suddenly through beneath the heel of Him

Who stands upon the sea and earth and swears

Time shall be nevermore. The clock struck nine

That morning too,—no lark was out of tune,

The hidden farms among the hills breathed straight

Their smoke toward heaven, the lime-tree scarcely stirred

Beneath the blue weight of the cloudless sky,

Though still the July air came floating through

The woodbine at my window, in and out,

With touches of the out-door country news

For a bending forehead. There I sat, and wished

That morning-truce of God would last till eve,

Or longer. "Sleep," I thought, "late sleepers,—sleep,

And spare me yet the burden of your eyes."

Then, suddenly, a single ghastly shriek

Tore upward from the bottom of the house.

Like one who wakens in a grave and shrieks,

The still house seemed to shriek itself alive,

And shudder through its passages and stairs

With slam of doors and clash of bells.—I sprang,

I stood up in the middle of the room,

And there confronted at my chamber-door

A white face,—shivering, ineffectual lips.

"Come, come," they tried to utter, and I went:

As if a ghost had drawn me at the point

Of a fiery finger through the uneven dark,

I went with reeling footsteps down the stair,

Nor asked a question.

There she sat, my aunt,—

Bolt upright in the chair beside her bed,

Whose pillow had no dint! she had used no bed

For that night's sleeping, yet slept well. My God,

The dumb derision of that grey, peaked face

Concluded something grave against the sun,

Aurora Leigh: Book Two

More poems from same author

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