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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Second Book</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">TIMES followed one another. Came a morn<br>I stood upon the brink of twenty years,<br>And looked before and after, as I stood<br>Woman and artist,–either incomplete,<br>Both credulous of completion. There I held<br>The whole creation in my little cup,<br>And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank,<br>'Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine<br>And all these peoples.'<br> I was glad, that day;<br>The June was in me, with its multitudes<br>Of nightingales all singing in the dark,<br>And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split.<br>I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God!<br>So glad, I could not choose be very wise!<br>And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull<br>My childhood backward in a childish jest<br>To see the face of't once more, and farewell!<br>In which fantastic mood I bounded forth<br>At early morning,–would not wait so long<br>As even to snatch my bonnet by the strings,<br>But, brushing a green trail across the lawn<br>With my gown in the dew, took will and way<br>Among the acacias of the shrubberies,<br>To fly my fancies in the open air<br>And keep my birthday, till my aunt awoke<br>To stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on,<br>As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves;<br>'The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned<br>Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone,<br>And so with me it must be, unless I prove<br>Unworthy of the grand adversity,–<br>And certainly I would not fail so much.<br>What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day<br>In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it,<br>Before my brows be numb as Dante's own<br>To all the tender pricking of such leaves?<br>Such leaves? what leaves?'<br> I pulled the branches down,<br>To choose from.<br> 'Not the bay! I choose no bay;<br>The fates deny us if we are overbold:<br>Nor myrtle–which means chiefly love; and love<br>Is something awful which one dare not touch<br>So early o' mornings. This verbena strains<br>The point of passionate fragrance; and hard by,<br>This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck<br>Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.<br>Ah–there's my choice,–that ivy on the wall,<br>That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow<br>But thinking of a wreath. Large leaves, smooth leaves,<br>Serrated like my vines, and half as green.<br>I like such ivy; bold to leap a height<br>'Twas strong to climb! as good to grow on graves<br>As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too,<br>(And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb.'<br>Thus speaking to myself, half singing it,<br>Because some thoughts are fashioned like a bell<br>To ring with once being touched, I drew a wreath<br>Drenched, blinding me with dew, across my brow,<br>And fastening it behind so, . . turning faced<br>. . My public!–Cousin Romney–with a mouth<br>Twice graver than his eyes.<br> I stood there fixed–<br>My arms up, like the caryatid, sole<br>Of some abolished temple, helplessly<br>Persistent in a gesture which derides<br>A former purpose. Yet my blush was flame,<br>As if from flax, not stone.<br> 'Aurora Leigh,<br>The earliest of Aurora's!'<br> Hand stretched out<br>I clasped, as shipwrecked men will clasp a hand,<br>Indifferent to the sort of palm. The tide<br>Had caught me at my pastime, writing down<br>My foolish name too near upon the sea<br>Which drowned me with a blush as foolish. 'You,<br>My cousin!'<br> The smile died out in his eyes<br>And dropped upon his lips, a cold dead weight,<br>For just a moment . . 'Here's a book, I found!<br>No name writ on it–poems, by the form;<br>Some Greek upon the margin,–lady's Greek,<br>Without the accents. Read it? Not a word.<br>I saw at once the thing had witchcraft in't,<br>Whereof the reading calls up dangerous spirits;<br>I rather bring it to the witch.'<br> 'My book!<br>You found it.' . .<br> 'In the hollow by the stream,<br>That beach leans down into–of which you said,<br>The Oread in it has a Naiad's heart<br>And pines for waters.'<br> 'Thank you.'<br> 'Rather you,<br>My cousin! that I have seen you not too much<br>A witch, a poet, scholar, and the rest,<br>To be a woman also.'<br> With a glance<br>The smile rose in his eyes again, and touched<br>The ivy on my forehead, light as air.<br>I answered gravely, 'Poets needs must be<br>Or men or women–more's the pity.'<br> 'Ah,<br>But men, and still less women, happily,<br>Scarce need be poets. Keep to the green wreath,<br>Since even dreaming of the stone and bronze<br>Brings headaches, pretty cousin, and defiles<br>The clean white morning dresses.'<br> 'So you judge!<br>Because I love the beautiful, I must<br>Love pleasure chiefly, and be overcharged<br>For ease and whiteness! Well–you know the world.<br>And only miss your cousin; 'tis not much!–<br>But learn this: I would rather take my part<br>With God's Dead, who afford to walk in white<br>Yet spread His glory, than keep quiet here,<br>And gather up my feet from even a step,<br>For fear to soil my gown in so much dust.<br>I choose to walk at all risks.–Here, if heads<br>That hold a rhythmic thought, must ache perforce,<br>For my part, I choose headaches,–and to-day's<br>My birthday.'<br> 'Dear Aurora, choose instead<br>To cure such. You have balsams.'<br> 'I perceive!–<br>The headache is too noble for my sex.<br>You think the heartache would sound decenter,<br>Since that's the woman's special, proper ache,<br>And altogether tolerable, except<br>To a woman.'<br> Saying which, I loosed my wreath.<br>And, swinging it beside me as I walked,<br>Half petulant, half playful, as we walked,<br>I sent a sidelong look to find his thought,–<br>As falcon set on falconer's finger may,<br>With sidelong head, and startled, braving eye,<br>Which means, 'You'll see–you'll see! I'll soon take flight–<br>You shall not hinder.' He, as shaking out<br>His hand and answering 'Fly then,' did not speak,<br>Except by such a gesture. Silently<br>We paced, until, just coming into sight<br>Of the house-windows, he abruptly caught<br>At one end of the swinging wreath, and said<br>'Aurora!' There I stopped short, breath and all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Aurora, let's be serious, and throw by<br>This game of head and heart. Life means, be sure,<br>Both heart and head,–both active, both complete,<br>And both in earnest. Men and women make<br>The world, as head and heart make human life.<br>Work man, work woman, since there's work to do<br>In this beleaguered earth, for head and heart,<br>And thought can never do the work of love!<br>But work for ends, I mean for uses; not<br>For such sleek fringes (do you call them ends?<br>Still less God's glory) as we sew ourselves<br>Upon the velvet of those baldaquins<br>Held 'twixt us and the sun. That book of yours,<br>I have not read a page of; but I toss<br>A rose up–it falls calyx down, you see! . .<br>The chances are that, being a woman, young,<br>And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes, . .<br>You write as well . . and ill . . upon the whole,<br>As other women. If as well, what then?<br>If even a little better, . . still what then?<br>We want the Best in art now, or no art.<br>The time is done for facile settings up<br>Of minnow gods, nymphs here, and tritons there;<br>The polytheists have gone out in God,<br>That unity of Bests. No best, no God!–<br>And so with art, we say. Give art's divine,<br>Direct, indubitable, real as grief,–<br>Or leave us to the grief we grow ourselves<br>Divine by overcoming with mere hope<br>And most prosaic patience. You, you are young<br>As Eve with nature's daybreak on her face;<br>But this same world you are come to, dearest coz,<br>Has done with keeping birthdays, saves her wreaths<br>To hang upon her ruins,–and forgets<br>To rhyme the cry with which she still beats back<br>Those savage, hungry dogs that hunt her down<br>To the empty grave of Christ. The world's hard pressed;<br>The sweat of labour in the early curse<br>Has (turning acrid in six thousand years)<br>Become the sweat of torture. Who has time,<br>An hour's time . . think! . . to sit upon a bank<br>And hear the cymbal tinkle in white hands!<br>When Egypt's slain, I say, let Miriam sing!–<br>Before . . where's Moses?'<br> 'Ah–exactly that<br>Where's Moses?–is a Moses to be found?–<br>You'll sink him vainly in the bulrushes,<br>While I in vain touch cymbals. Yet, concede,<br>Such sounding brass has done some actual good,<br>(The application in a woman's hand,<br>If that were credible, being scarcely spoilt,)<br>In colonising beehives.'<br> 'There it is!–<br>You play beside a death-bed like a child,<br>Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place<br>To teach the living. None of all these things,<br>Can women understand. You generalise,<br>Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts,<br>So sympathetic to the personal pang,<br>Close on each separate knife-stroke, yielding up<br>A whole life at each wound; incapable<br>Of deepening, widening a large lap of life<br>To hold the world-full woe. The human race<br>To you means, such a child, or such a man,<br>You saw one morning waiting in the cold,<br>Beside that gate, perhaps. You gather up<br>A few such cases, and, when strong, sometimes<br>Will write of factories and of slaves, as if<br>Your father were a negro, and your son<br>A spinner in the mills. All's yours and you,–<br>All, coloured with your blood, or otherwise<br>Just nothing to you. Why, I call you hard<br>To general suffering. Here's the world half blind<br>With intellectual light, half brutalised<br>With civilization, having caught the plague<br>In silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west<br>Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain<br>And sin too! . . does one woman of you all,<br>(You who weep easily) grow pale to see<br>This tiger shake his cage?–does one of you<br>Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls<br>And pine and die, because of the great sum<br>Of universal anguish?–Show me a tear<br>Wet as Cordelia's, in eyes bright as yours,<br>Because the world is mad? You cannot count,<br>That you should weep for this account, not you!<br>You weep for what you know. A red-haired child<br>Sick in a fever, if you touch him once,<br>Though but so little as with a finger-tip,<br>Will set you weeping! but a million sick . .<br>You could as soon weep for the rule of three,<br>Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world<br>Uncomprehended by you must remain<br>Uninfluenced by you. Women as you are,<br>Mere women, personal and passionate,<br>You give us doating mothers, and chaste wives.<br>Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!<br>We get no Christ from you,–and verily<br>We shall not get a poet, in my mind.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'With which conclusion you conclude' . .<br> 'But this–<br>That you, Aurora, with the large live brow<br>And steady eyelids, cannot condescend<br>To play at art, as children play at swords,<br>To show a pretty spirit, chiefly admired<br>Because true action is impossible.<br>You never can be satisfied with praise<br>Which men give women when they judge a book<br>Not as mere work, but as mere woman's work,<br>Expressing the comparative respect<br>Which means the absolute scorn. 'Oh, excellent!<br>'What grace! what facile turns! what fluent sweeps!<br>'What delicate discernment . . almost thought!<br>'The book does honour to the sex, we hold.<br>'Among our female authors we make room<br>'For this fair writer, and congratulate<br>'The country that produces in these times<br>'Such women, competent to . . spell.<br> 'Stop there!'<br>I answered–burning through his thread of talk<br>With a quick flame of emotion,–'You have read<br>My soul, if not my book, and argue well<br>I would not condescend . . we will not say<br>To such a kind of praise, (a worthless end<br>Is praise of all kinds) but to such a use<br>Of holy art and golden life. I am young,<br>And peradventure weak–you tell me so–<br>Through being a woman. And, for all the rest,<br>Take thanks for justice. I would rather dance<br>At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped<br>Their gingerbread for joy,–than shift the types<br>For tolerable verse, intolerable<br>To men who act and suffer. Better far,<br>Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means,<br>Than a sublime art frivolously.'<br> 'You,<br>Choose nobler work than either, O moist eyes,<br>And hurrying lips, and heaving heart! We are young<br>Aurora, you and I. The world . . look round . .<br>The world, we're come to late, is swollen hard<br>With perished generations and their sins:<br>The civiliser's spade grinds horribly<br>On dead men's bones, and cannot turn up soil<br>That's otherwise than fetid. All success<br>Proves partial failure; all advance implies<br>What's left behind; all triumph, something crushed<br>At the chariot-wheels; all government, some wrong:<br>And rich men make the poor, who curse the rich,<br>Who agonise together, rich and poor,<br>Under and over, in the social spasm<br>And crisis of the ages. Here's an age,<br>That makes its own vocation! here, we have stepped<br>Across the bounds of time! here's nought to see,<br>But just the rich man and just Lazarus,<br>And both in torments; with a mediate gulph,<br>Though not a hint of Abraham's bosom. Who,<br>Being man and human, can stand calmly by<br>And view these things, and never tease his soul<br>For some great cure? No physic for this grief,<br>In all the earth and heavens too?'<br> 'You believe<br>In God, for your part?–ay? That He who makes,<br>Can make good things from ill things, best from worst,<br>As men plant tulips upon dunghills when<br>They wish them finest?'<br> 'True. A death-heat is<br>The same as life-heat, to be accurate;<br>And in all nature is no death at all,<br>As men account of death, as long as God<br>Stands witnessing for life perpetually,'<br>By being just God. That's abstract truth, I know,<br>Philosophy, or sympathy with God:<br>But I, I sympathise with man, not God,<br>I think I was a man for chiefly this;<br>And when I stand beside a dying bed,<br>It's death to me. Observe,–it had not much<br>Consoled the race of mastodons to know<br>Before they went to fossil, that anon<br>Their place should quicken with the elephant<br>They were not elephants but mastodons:<br>And I, a man, as men are now, and not<br>As men may be hereafter, feel with men<br>In the agonising present.'<br> 'Is it so,'<br>I said, 'my cousin? is the world so bad,<br>While I hear nothing of it through the trees?<br>The world was always evil,–but so bad?'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'So bad, Aurora. Dear, my soul is grey<br>With poring over the long sum of ill;<br>So much for vice, so much for discontent,<br>So much for the necessities of power,<br>So much for the connivances of fear,–<br>Coherent in statistical despairs<br>With such a total of distracted life, . .<br>To see it down in figures on a page,<br>Plain, silent, clear . . as God sees through the earth<br>The sense of all the graves! . . . that's terrible<br>For one who is not God, and cannot right<br>The wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed<br>But vow away my years, my means, my aims,<br>Among the helpers, if there's any help<br>In such a social strait? The common blood<br>That swings along my veins, is strong enough<br>To draw me to this duty.'<br> Then I spoke.<br>'I have not stood long on the strand of life,<br>And these salt waters have had scarcely time<br>To creep so high up as to wet my feet.<br>I cannot judge these tides–I shall, perhaps.<br>A woman's always younger than a man<br>At equal years, because she is disallowed<br>Maturing by the outdoor sun and air,<br>And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.<br>Ah well, I know you men judge otherwise!<br>You think a woman ripens as a peach,–<br>In the cheeks, chiefly. Pass it to me now;<br>I'm young in age, and younger still, I think,<br>As a woman. But a child may say amen<br>To a bishop's prayer and see the way it goes;<br>And I, incapable to loose the knot<br>Of social questions, can approve, applaud<br>August compassion, christian thoughts that shoot<br>Beyond the vulgar white of personal aims.<br>Accept my reverence.'<br> There he glowed on me<br>With all his face and eyes. 'No other help?'<br>Said he–'no more than so?'<br> 'What help?' I asked.<br>'You'd scorn my help,–as Nature's self, you say,<br>Has scorned to put her music in my mouth,<br>Because a woman's. Do you now turn round<br>And ask for what a woman cannot give?'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'For what she only can, I turn and ask,'<br>He answered, catching up my hands in his,<br>And dropping on me from his high-eaved brow<br>The full weight of his soul,–'I ask for love,<br>And that, she can; for life in fellowship<br>Through bitter duties–that, I know she can;<br>For wifehood . . will she?'<br> 'Now,' I said, 'may God<br>Be witness 'twixt us two!' and with the word,<br>Meseemed I floated into a sudden light<br>Above his stature,–'am I proved too weak<br>To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear<br>Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think,<br>Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought?<br>Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can,<br>Yet competent to love, like HIM?'<br> I paused:<br>Perhaps I darkened, as the lighthouse will<br>That turns upon the sea. 'It's always so!<br>Anything does for a wife.'<br> 'Aurora, dear,<br>And dearly honoured' . . he pressed in at once<br>With eager utterance,–'you translate me ill.<br>I do not contradict my thought of you<br>Which is most reverent, with another thought<br>Found less so. If your sex is weak for art,<br>(And I who said so, did but honour you<br>By using truth in courtship) it is strong<br>For life and duty. Place your fecund heart<br>In mine, and let us blossom for the world<br>That wants love's colour in the grey of time.<br>With all my talk I can but set you where<br>You look down coldly on the arena-heaps<br>Of headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct!<br>The Judgment-Angel scarce would find his way<br>Through such a heap of generalised distress,<br>To the individual man with lips and eyes–<br>Much less Aurora. Ah, my sweet, come down,<br>And, hand in hand, we'll go where yours shall touch<br>These victims, one by one! till one by one,<br>The formless, nameless trunk of every man<br>Shall seem to wear a head, with hair you know,<br>And every woman catch your mother's face<br>To melt you into passion.'<br> 'I am a girl,'<br>I answered slowly; 'you do well to name<br>My mother's face. Though far too early, alas,<br>God's hand did interpose 'twixt it and me,<br>I know so much of love, as used to shine<br>In that face and another. Just so much;<br>No more indeed at all. I have not seen<br>So much love since, I pray you pardon me,<br>As answers even to make a marriage with,<br>In this cold land of England. What you love,<br>Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:<br>You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,–<br>A wife to help your ends . . in her no end!<br>Your cause is noble, your ends excellent,<br>But I, being most unworthy of these and that,<br>Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Farewell, Aurora, you reject me thus?'<br>He said.<br> 'Why, sir, you are married long ago.<br>You have a wife already whom you love,<br>Your social theory. Bless you both, I say.<br>For my part, I am scarcely meek enough<br>To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse.<br>Do I look a Hagar, think you?'<br> 'So, you jest!'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Nay so, I speak in earnest,' I replied.<br>'You treat of marriage too much like, at least,<br>A chief apostle; you would bear with you<br>A wife . . a sister . . shall we speak it out?<br>A sister of charity.'<br> 'Then, must it be<br>Indeed farewell? And was I so far wrong<br>In hope and in illusion, when I took<br>The woman to be nobler than the man,<br>Yourself the noblest woman,–in the use<br>And comprehension of what love is,–love,<br>That generates the likeness of itself<br>Through all heroic duties? so far wrong<br>In saying bluntly, venturing truth on love,<br>'Come, human creature, love and work with me,'–<br>Instead of, 'Lady, thou art wondrous fair,<br>'And, where the Graces walk before, the Muse<br>'Will follow at the lighting of the eyes,<br>'And where the Muse walks, lovers need to creep<br>'Turn round and love me, or I die of love.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With quiet indignation I broke in.<br>'You misconceive the question like a man,<br>Who sees a woman as the complement<br>Of his sex merely. You forget too much<br>That every creature, female as the male,<br>Stands single in responsible act and thought<br>As also in birth and death. Whoever says<br>To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,'<br>Will get fair answers, if the work and love<br>Being good themselves, are good for her–the best<br>She was born for. Women of a softer mood,<br>Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life,<br>Will sometimes only hear the first word, love,<br>And catch up with it any kind of work,<br>Indifferent, so that dear love go with it:<br>I do not blame such women, though, for love,<br>They pick much oakum; earth's fanatics make<br>Too frequently heaven's saints. But me, your work<br>Is not the best for,–nor your love the best,<br>Nor able to commend the kind of work<br>For love's sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,<br>To be over-bold in speaking of myself,–<br>I, too, have my vocation,–work to do,<br>The heavens and earth have set me, since I changed<br>My father's face for theirs,–and though your world<br>Were twice as wretched as you represent<br>Most serious work, most necessary work,<br>As any of the economists'. Reform,<br>Make trade a Christian possibility,<br>And individual right no general wrong;<br>Wipe out earth's furrows of the Thine and Mine,<br>And leave one green, for men to play at bowls;<br>With innings for them all! . . what then, indeed,<br>If mortals were not greater by the head<br>Than any of their prosperities? what then,<br>Unless the artist keep up open roads<br>Betwixt the seen and unseen,–bursting through<br>The best of your conventions with his best<br>The unspeakable, imaginable best<br>God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond<br>Both speech and imagination? A starved man<br>Exceeds a fat beast: we'll not barter, sir,<br>The beautiful for barley.–And, even so,<br>I hold you will not compass your poor ends<br>Of barley-feeding and material ease,<br>Without a poet's individualism<br>To work your universal. It takes a soul,<br>To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,<br>To move the masses . . even to a cleaner stye:<br>It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's breadth off<br>The dust of the actual.–ah, your Fouriers failed,<br>Because not poets enough to understand<br>That life develops from within.–For me,<br>Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,<br>Of work like this! . . perhaps a woman's soul<br>Aspires, and not creates! yet we aspire,<br>And yet I'll try out your perhapses, sir;<br>And if I fail . . why, burn me up my straw<br>Like other false works–I'll not ask for grace,<br>Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I<br>Who love my art, would never wish it lower<br>To suit my stature. I may love my art,<br>You'll grant that even a woman may love art,<br>Seeing that to waste true love on anything,<br>Is womanly, past question.'<br> I retain<br>The very last word which I said, that day,<br>As you the creaking of the door, years past,<br>Which let upon you such disabling news<br>You ever after have been graver. He,<br>His eyes, the motions in his silent mouth,<br>Were fiery points on which my words were caught,<br>Transfixed for ever in my memory<br>For his sake, not their own. And yet I know<br>I did not love him . . nor he me . . that's sure . .<br>And what I said, is unrepented of,<br>As truth is always. Yet . . a princely man!–<br>If hard to me, heroic for himself!<br>He bears down on me through the slanting years,<br>The stronger for the distance. If he had loved,<br>Ay, loved me, with that retributive face, . .<br>I might have been a common woman now,<br>And happier, less known and less left alone;<br>Perhaps a better woman after all,–<br>With chubby children hanging on my neck<br>To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vines<br>That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it.<br>The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright,<br>Still worthy of having spoken out the truth,<br>By being content I spoke it, though it set<br>Him there, me here.–O woman's vile remorse,<br>To hanker after a mere name, a show,<br>A supposition, a potential love!<br>Does every man who names love in our lives,<br>Become a power for that? is love's true thing<br>So much best to us, that what personates love<br>Is next best? A potential love, forsooth!<br>We are not so vile. No, no–he cleaves, I think,<br>This man, this image, . . chiefly for the wrong<br>And shock he gave my life, in finding me<br>Precisely where the devil of my youth<br>Had set me, on those mountain-peaks of hope<br>All glittering with the dawn-dew, all erect<br>And famished for the morning,–saying, while<br>I looked for empire and much tribute, 'Come,<br>I have some worthy work for thee below.<br>Come, sweep my barns, and keep my hospitals,–<br>And I will pay thee with a current coin<br>Which men give women.'<br> As we spoke, the grass<br>Was trod in haste beside us, and my aunt,<br>With smile distorted by the sun,–face, voice,<br>As much at issue with the summer-day<br>As if you brought a candle out of doors,–<br>Broke in with, 'Romney, here!–My child, entreat<br>Your cousin to the house, and have your talk,<br>If girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He answered for me calmly, with pale lips<br>That seemed to motion for a smile in vain.<br>'The talk is ended, madam, where we stand.<br>Your brother's daughter has dismissed me here;<br>And all my answer can be better said<br>Beneath the trees, than wrong by such a word<br>Your house's hospitalities. Farewell.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">With that he vanished. I could hear his heel<br>Ring bluntly in the lane, as down he leapt<br>The short way, from us.–Then, a measured speech<br>Withdrew me. 'What means this, Aurora Leigh?<br>My brother's daughter has dismissed my guests?'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The lion in me felt the keeper's voice,<br>Through all its quivering dewlaps: I was quelled<br>Before her,–meekened to the child she knew:<br>I prayed her pardon, said, 'I had little thought<br>To give dismissal to a guest of hers,<br>In letting go a friend of mine, who came<br>To take me into service as a wife,–<br>No more than that, indeed.'<br> 'No more, no more?<br>Pray heaven,' she answered, 'that I was not mad.<br>I could not mean to tell her to her face<br>That Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife,<br>And I refused him?'<br> 'Did he ask?' I said;<br>'I think he rather stooped to take me up<br>For certain uses which he found to do<br>For something called a wife. He never asked.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'What stuff!' she answered; 'are they queens, these girls?<br>They must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks,<br>Spread out upon the ground, before they'll step<br>One footstep for the noblest lover born.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'But I am born,' I said with firmness, 'I,<br>To walk another way than his, dear aunt.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months<br>Will walk as well as you,' she cried in haste,<br>'Without a steadying finger. Why, you child,<br>God help you, you are groping in the dark,<br>For all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps,<br>That you, sole offspring of an opulent man,<br>Are rich and free to choose a way to walk?<br>You think, and it's a reasonable thought,<br>That I besides, being well to do in life,<br>Will leave my handful in my niece's hand<br>When death shall paralyse these fingers? Pray,<br>Pray, child,–albeit I know you love me not,–<br>As if you loved me, that I may not die!<br>For when I die and leave you, out you go,<br>(Unless I make room for you in my grave)<br>Unhoused, unfed, my dear, poor brother's lamb,<br>(Ah heaven,–that pains!)–without a right to crop<br>A single blade of grass beneath these trees,<br>Or cast a lamb's small shadow on the lawn,<br>Unfed, unfolded! Ah, my brother, here's<br>The fruit you planted in your foreign loves!–<br>Ay, there's the fruit he planted! never look<br>Astonished at me with your mother's eyes,<br>For it was they, who set you where you are,<br>An undowered orphan. Child, your father's choice<br>Of that said mother, disinherited<br>His daughter, his and hers. Men do not think<br>Of sons and daughters, when they fall in love,<br>So much more than of sisters; otherwise,<br>He would have paused to ponder what he did,<br>And shrunk before that clause in the entail<br>Excluding offspring by a foreign wife<br>(The clause set up a hundred years ago<br>By a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girl<br>And had his heart danced over in return)<br>But this man shrunk at nothing, never thought<br>Of you, Aurora, any more than me–<br>Your mother must have been a pretty thing,<br>For all the coarse Italian blacks and browns,<br>To make a good man, which my brother was,<br>Unchary of the duties to his house;<br>But so it fell indeed. Our cousin Vane,<br>Vane Leigh, the father of this Romney, wrote<br>Directly on your birth, to Italy,<br>'I ask your baby daughter for my son<br>In whom the entail now merges by the law.<br>Betroth her to us out of love, instead<br>Of colder reasons, and she shall not lose<br>By love or law from henceforth'–so he wrote;<br>A generous cousin, was my cousin Vane.<br>Remember how he drew you to his knee<br>The year you came here, just before he died,<br>And hollowed out his hands to hold your cheeks,<br>And wished them redder,–you remember Vane?<br>And now his son who represents our house<br>And holds the fiefs and manors in his place,<br>To whom reverts my pittance when I die,<br>(Except a few books and a pair of shawls)<br>The boy is generous like him, and prepared<br>To carry out his kindest word and thought<br>To you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man<br>Is Romney Leigh; although the sun of youth<br>Has shone too straight upon his brain, I know,<br>And fevered him with dreams of doing good<br>To good-for-nothing people. But a wife<br>Will put all right, and stroke his temples cool<br>With healthy touches' . .<br> I broke in at that.<br>I could not lift my heavy heart to breathe<br>Till then, but then I raised it, and it fell<br>In broken words like these–'No need to wait.<br>The dream of doing good to . . me, at least,<br>Is ended, without waiting for a wife<br>To cool the fever for him. We've escaped<br>That danger . . thank Heaven for it.'<br> You,' she cried,<br>'Have got a fever. What, I talk and talk<br>An hour long to you,–I instruct you how<br>You cannot eat or drink or stand or sit<br>Or even die, like any decent wretch<br>In all this unroofed and unfurnished world,<br>Without your cousin,–and you still maintain<br>There's room 'twixt him and you, for flirting fans<br>And running knots in eyebrows! You must have<br>A pattern lover sighing on his knee:<br>You do not count enough a noble heart,<br>Above book-patterns, which this very morn<br>Unclosed itself, in two dear fathers' names,<br>To embrace your orphaned life! fie, fie! But stay<br>I write a word, and counteract this sin.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She would have turned to leave me, but I clung.<br>'O sweet my father's sister, hear my word<br>Before you write yours. Cousin Vane did well,<br>And Romney well,–and I well too,<br>In casting back with all my strength and will<br>The good they meant me. O my God, my God!<br>God meant me good, too, when he hindered me<br>From saying 'yes' this morning. If you write<br>A word, it shall be 'no.' I say no, no!<br>I tie up 'no' upon His altar-horns<br>Quite out of reach of perjury! At least<br>My soul is not a pauper; I can live<br>At least my soul's life, without alms from men,<br>And if it must be in heaven instead of earth,<br>Let heaven look to it,–I am not afraid.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">She seized my hands with both hers, strained them fast<br>And drew her probing and unscrupulous eyes<br>Right through me, body and heart. 'Yet, foolish Sweet,<br>You love this man. I have watched you when he came<br>And when he went, and when we've talked of him:<br>I am not old for nothing; I can tell<br>The weather-signs of love–you love this man.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,<br>Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.<br>The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;<br>They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,<br>And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?<br>Who's sorry for a gnat . . or girl?<br> I blushed.<br>I feel the brand upon my forehead now<br>Strike hot, sear deep, as guiltless men may feel<br>The felon's iron, say, and scorn the mark<br>Of what they are not. Most illogical<br>Irrational nature of our womanhood,<br>That blushes one way, feels another way,<br>And prays, perhaps, another! After all,<br>We cannot be the equal of the male,<br>Who rules his blood a little.<br> For although<br>I blushed indeed, as if I loved the man,<br>And her incisive smile, accrediting<br>That treason of false witness in my blush,<br>Did bow me downward like a swathe of grass<br>Below its level that struck me,–I attest<br>The conscious skies and all their daily suns,<br>I think I loved him not . . nor then, nor since . .<br>Nor ever. Do we love the schoolmaster,<br>Being busy in the woods? much less, being poor,<br>The overseer of the parish? Do we keep<br>Our love, to pay our debts with?<br> White and cold<br>I grew next moment. As my blood recoiled<br>From that imputed ignominy, I made<br>My heart great with it. Then, at last I spoke,–<br>Spoke veritable words, but passionate,<br>Too passionate perhaps . . ground up with sobs<br>To shapeless endings. She let fall my hands,<br>And took her smile off, in sedate disgust,<br>As peradventure she had touched a snake,–<br>A dead snake, mind!–and, turning round, replied<br>'We'll leave Italian manners, if you please.<br>I think you had an English father, child,<br>And ought to find it possible to speak<br>A quiet 'yes' or 'no,' like English girls,<br>Without convulsions. In another month<br>We'll take another answer . . no, or yes.'<br>With that she left me in the garden-walk.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I had a father! yes, but long ago–<br>How long it seemed that moment!–Oh, how far,<br>How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints<br>When once gone from us! We may call against<br>The lighted windows of thy fair June-heaven<br>Where all the souls are happy,–and not one,<br>Not even my father, look from work or play<br>To ask, 'Who is it that cries after us,<br>Below there, in the dusk?' Yet formerly<br>He turned his face upon me quick enough,<br>If I said 'father.' Now I might cry loud;<br>The little lark reached higher with his song<br>Than I with crying. Oh, alone, alone,–<br>Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth,<br>I stood there in the garden, and looked up<br>The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out<br>On such June mornings.<br> You who keep account<br>Of crisis and transition in this life,<br>Set down the first time Nature says plain 'no'<br>To some 'yes' in you, and walks over you<br>In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin<br>By singing with the birds, and running fast<br>With June-days, hand in hand: but once, for all,<br>The birds must sing against us, and the sun<br>Strike down upon us like a friend's sword caught<br>By an enemy to slay us, while we read<br>The dear name on the blade which bites at us!–<br>That's bitter and convincing: after that<br>We seldom doubt that something in the large<br>Smooth order of creation, though no more<br>Than haply a man's footstep, has gone wrong.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Some tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled,<br>As those smile who have no face in the world<br>To smile back to them. I had lost a friend<br>In Romney Leigh; the thing was sure–a friend,<br>Who had looked at me most gently now and then,<br>And spoken of my favourite books . . 'our books' . .<br>With such a voice! Well, voice and look were now<br>More utterly shut out from me, I felt,<br>Than even my father's. Romney now was turned<br>To a benefactor, to a generous man,<br>Who had tied himself to marry . . me, instead<br>Of such a woman, with low timorous lids<br>He lifted with a sudden word one day,<br>And left, perhaps, for my sake.–Ah, self-tied<br>By a contract,–male Iphigenia, bound<br>At a fatal Aulis, for the winds to change,<br>(But loose him–they'll not change;) he well might seem<br>A little cold and dominant in love!<br>He had a right to be dogmatical,<br>This poor, good Romney. Love, to him, was made<br>A simple law-clause. If I married him,<br>I would not dare to call my soul my own,<br>Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought<br>And every heart-beat down there in the bill,–<br>Not one found honestly deductible<br>From any use that pleased him! He might cut<br>My body into coins to give away<br>Among his other paupers; change my sons,<br>While I stood dumb as Griseld, for black babes<br>Or piteous foundlings; might unquestioned set<br>My right hand teaching in the Ragged Schools,<br>My left hand washing in the Public Baths,<br>What time my angel of the Ideal stretched<br>Both his to me in vain! I could not claim<br>The poor right of a mouse in a trap, to squeal.<br>And take so much as pity, from myself.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Farewell, good Romney! if I loved you even,<br>I could but ill afford to let you be<br>So generous to me. Farewell, friend, since friend<br>Betwixt us two, forsooth, must be a word<br>So heavily overladen. And, since help<br>Must come to me from those who love me not,<br>Farewell, all helpers–I must help myself,<br>And am alone from henceforth.–Then I stooped,<br>And lifted the soiled garland from the ground,<br>And set it on my head as bitterly<br>As when the Spanish king did crown the bones<br>Of his dead love. So be it. I preserve<br>That crown still,–in the drawer there! 'twas the first;<br>The rest are like it;–those Olympian crowns,<br>We run for, till we lose sight of the sun<br>In the dust of the racing chariots!<br> After that,<br>Before the evening fell, I had a note<br>Which ran,–'Aurora, sweet Chaldean, you read<br>My meaning backward like your eastern books,<br>While I am from the west, dear. Read me now<br>A little plainer. Did you hate me quite<br>But yesterday? I loved you for my part;<br>I love you. If I spoke untenderly<br>This morning, my beloved, pardon it;<br>And comprehend me that I loved you so,<br>I set you on the level of my soul,<br>And overwashed you with the bitter brine<br>Of some habitual thoughts. Henceforth, my flower,<br>Be planted out of reach of any such,<br>And lean the side you please, with all your leaves!<br>Write woman's verses and dream woman's dreams;<br>But let me feel your perfume in my home,<br>To make my sabbath after working-days;<br>Bloom out your youth beside me,–be my wife.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I wrote in answer–'We, Chaldeans, discern<br>Still farther than we read. I know your heart<br>And shut it like the holy book it is,<br>Reserved for mild-eyed saints to pore upon<br>Betwixt their prayers at vespers. Well, you're right,<br>I did not surely hate you yesterday;<br>And yet I do not love you enough to-day<br>To wed you, cousin Romney. Take this word,<br>And let it stop you as a generous man<br>From speaking farther. You may tease, indeed,<br>And blow about my feelings, or my leaves,–<br>And here's my aunt will help you with east winds,<br>And break a stalk, perhaps, tormenting me;<br>But certain flowers grow near as deep as trees,<br>And, cousin, you'll not move my root, not you,<br>With all your confluent storms. Then let me grow<br>Within my wayside hedge, and pass your way!<br>This flower has never as much to say to you<br>As the antique tomb which said to travellers, 'Pause,<br>'Siste, viator. Ending thus, I signed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The next week passed in silence, so the next,<br>And several after: Romney did not come,<br>Nor my aunt chide me. I lived on and on,<br>As if my heart were kept beneath a glass,<br>And everybody stood, all eyes and ears,<br>To see and hear it tick. I could not sit,<br>Nor walk, nor take a book, nor lay it down,<br>Nor sew on steadily, nor drop a stitch<br>And a sigh with it, but I felt her looks<br>Still cleaving to me, like the sucking asp<br>To Cleopatra's breast, persistently<br>Through the intermittent pantings. Being observed,<br>When observation is not sympathy,<br>Is just being tortured. If she said a word,<br>A 'thank you,' or an 'if it please you, dear.'<br>She meant a commination, or, at best,<br>An exorcism against the devildom<br>Which plainly held me. So with all the house.<br>Susannah could not stand and twist my hair,<br>Without such glancing at the looking-glass<br>To see my face there, that she missed the plait:<br>And John,–I never sent my plate for soup,<br>Or did not send it, but the foolish John<br>Resolved the problem, 'twixt his napkined thumbs,<br>Of what was signified by taking soup<br>Or choosing mackerel. Neighbours, who dropped in<br>On morning visits, feeling a joint wrong,<br>Smiled admonition, sate uneasily,<br>And talked with measured, emphasised reserve,<br>Of parish news, like doctors to the sick,<br>When not called in,–as if, with leave to speak,<br>They might say something. Nay, the very dog<br>Would watch me from his sun-patch on the floor,<br>In alternation with the large black fly<br>Not yet in reach of snapping. So I lived.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A Roman died so: smeared with honey, teased<br>By insects, stared to torture by the noon:<br>And many patient souls 'neath English roofs<br>Have died like Romans. I, in looking back,<br>Wish only, now, I had borne the plague of all<br>With meeker spirits than were rife in Rome.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For, on the sixth week, the dead sea broke up,<br>Dashed suddenly through beneath the heel of Him<br>Who stands upon the sea and earth, and swears<br>Time shall be nevermore. The clock struck nine<br>That morning, too,–no lark was out of tune;<br>The hidden farms among the hills, breathed straight<br>Their smoke toward heaven; the lime-trees scarcely stirred<br>Beneath the blue weight of the cloudless sky,<br>Though still the July air came floating through<br>The woodbine at my window, in and out,<br>With touches of the out-door country-news<br>For a bending forehead. There I sate, and wished<br>That morning-truce of God would last till eve,<br>Or longer. 'Sleep,' I thought, 'late sleepers,–sleep,<br>And spare me yet the burden of your eyes.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then, suddenly, a single ghastly shriek<br>Tore upwards from the bottom of the house.<br>Like one who wakens in a grave and shrieks,<br>The still house seemed to shriek itself alive,<br>And shudder through its passages and stairs<br>With slam of doors and clash of bells.–I sprang,<br>I stood up in the middle of the room,<br>And there confronted at my chamber-door,<br>A white face,–shivering, ineffectual lips.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Come, come,' they tried to utter, and I went;<br>As if a ghost had drawn me at the point<br>Of a fiery finger through the uneven dark,<br>I went with reeling footsteps down the stair.<br>Nor asked a question.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> There she sate, my aunt,–<br>Bolt upright in the chair beside her bed,<br>Whose pillow had no dint! she had used no bed<br>For that night's sleeping . . yet slept well. My God<br>The dumb derision of that grey, peaked face<br>Concluded something grave against the sun,<br>Which filled the chamber with its July burst<br>When Susan drew the curtains, ignorant<br>Of who sate open-eyed behind her. There,<br>She sate . . it sate . . we said 'she' yesterday . .<br>And held a letter with unbroken seal,<br>As Susan gave it to her hand last night:<br>All night she had held it. If its news referred<br>To duchies or to dunghills, not an inch<br>She'd budge, 'twas obvious, for such worthless odds:<br>Nor, though the stars were suns, and overburned<br>Their spheric limitations, swallowing up<br>Like wax the azure spaces, could they force<br>Those open eyes to wink once. What last sight<br>Had left them blank and flat so,–drawing out<br>The faculty of vision from the roots,<br>As nothing more, worth seeing, remained behind?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Were those the eyes that watched me, worried me?<br>That dogged me up and down the hours and days,<br>A beaten, breathless, miserable soul?<br>And did I pray, a half hour back, but so,<br>To escape the burden of those eyes . . those eyes?<br>'Sleep late' I said.–<br> Why now, indeed, they sleep.<br>God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,<br>And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,<br>A gauntlet with a gift in't. Every wish<br>Is like a prayer . . With God.<br> I had my wish,–<br>To read and meditate the thing I would,<br>To fashion all my life upon my thought,<br>And marry, or not marry. Henceforth, none<br>Could disapprove me, vex me, hamper me.<br>Full ground-room, in this desert newly made,<br>For Babylon or Balbec,–when the breath,<br>Just choked with sand, returns, for building towns!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The heir came over on the funeral day,<br>And we two cousins met before the dead,<br>With two pale faces. Was it death or life<br>That moved us? When the will was read and done,<br>The official guest and witnesses withdrawn,<br>We rose up in a silence almost hard,<br>And looked at one another. Then I said,<br>'Farewell, my cousin.'<br>But he touched, just touched<br>My hatstrings tied for going, (at the door<br>The carriage stood to take me) and said low,<br>His voice a little unsteady through his smile,<br>'Siste, viator.'<br> 'Is there time,' I asked,<br>'In these last days of railroads, to stop short<br>Like Cæsar's chariot (weighing half a ton)<br>On the Appian road for morals?'<br> 'There is time,'<br>He answered grave, 'for necessary words,<br>Inclusive, trust me, of no epitaph<br>On man or act, my cousin. We have read<br>A will, which gives you all the personal goods<br>And funded monies of your aunt.'<br> 'I thank<br>Her memory for it. With three hundred pounds<br>We buy in England even, clear standing-room<br>To stand and work in. Only two hours since,<br>I fancied I was poor.'<br> 'And cousin, still<br>You're richer than you fancy. The will says,<br>Three hundred pounds, and any other sum<br>Of which the said testatrix dies possessed.<br>I say she died possessed of other sums.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Dear Romney, need we chronicle the pence?<br>I'm richer than I thought–that's evident.<br>Enough so.'<br> 'Listen rather. You've to do<br>With business and a cousin,' he resumed,<br>'And both, I fear, need patience. Here's the fact.<br>The other sum (there is another sum,<br>Unspecified in any will which dates<br>After possession, yet bequeathed as much<br>And clearly as those said three hundred pounds)<br>Is thirty thousand. You will have it paid<br>When? . . where? My duty troubles you with words.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He struck the iron when the bar was hot;<br>No wonder if my eyes sent out some sparks.<br>'Pause there! I thank you. You are delicate<br>In glosing gifts;–but I, who share your blood,<br>Am rather made for giving, like yourself,<br>Than taking, like your pensioners. Farewell.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He stopped me with a gesture of calm pride.<br>'A Leigh,' he said, 'gives largesse and gives love,<br>But gloses neither: if a Leigh could glose,<br>He would not do it, moreover, to a Leigh,<br>With blood trained up along nine centuries<br>To hound and hate a lie, from eyes like yours.<br>And now we'll make the rest as clear; your aunt<br>Possessed these monies.'<br> 'You'll make it clear,<br>My cousin, as the honour of us both,<br>Or one of us speaks vainly–that's not I.<br>My aunt possessed this sum,–inherited<br>From whom, and when? bring documents, prove dates.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Why now indeed you throw your bonnet off.<br>As if you had time left for a logarithm!<br>The faith's the want. Dear cousin, give me faith,<br>And you shall walk this road with silken shoes,<br>As clean as any lady of our house<br>Supposed the proudest. Oh, I comprehend<br>The whole position from your point of sight.<br>I oust you from your father's halls and lands,<br>And make you poor by getting rich–that's law;<br>Considering which, in common circumstance,<br>You would not scruple to accept from me<br>Some compensation, some sufficiency<br>Of income–that were justice; but, alas,<br>I love you . . that's mere nature!–you reject<br>My love . . that's nature also;–and at once,<br>You cannot, from a suitor disallowed,<br>A hand thrown back as mine is, into yours<br>Receive a doit, a farthing, . . not for the world!<br>That's etiquette with women, obviously<br>Exceeding claim of nature, law, and right,<br>Unanswerable to all. I grant, you see,<br>The case as you conceive it,–leave you room<br>To sweep your ample skirts of womanhood;<br>While, standing humbly squeezed against the wall,<br>I own myself excluded from being just,<br>Restrained from paying indubitable debts,<br>Because denied from giving you my soul–<br>That's my fortune!–I submit to it<br>As if, in some more reasonable age,<br>'Twould not be less inevitable. Enough.<br>You'll trust me, cousin, as a gentleman,<br>To keep your honour, as you count it, pure,–<br>Your scruples (just as if I thought them wise)<br>Safe and inviolate from gifts of mine.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I answered mild but earnest. 'I believe<br>In no one's honour which another keeps,<br>Nor man's nor woman's. As I keep, myself,<br>My truth and my religion, I depute<br>No father, though I had one this side death,<br>Nor brother, though I had twenty, much less you,<br>Though twice my cousin, and once Romney Leigh,<br>To keep my honour pure. You face, today,<br>A man who wants instruction, mark me, not<br>A woman who wants protection. As to a man,<br>Show manhood, speak out plainly, be precise<br>With facts and dates. My aunt inherited<br>This sum, you say–'<br> 'I said she died possessed<br>Of this, dear cousin.'<br> 'Not by heritage.<br>Thank you: we're getting to the facts at last.<br>Perhaps she played at commerce with a ship<br>Which came in heavy with Australian gold?<br>Or touched a lottery with her finger-end,<br>Which tumbled on a sudden into her lap<br>Some old Rhine tower or principality?<br>Perhaps she had to do with a marine<br>Sub-transatlantic railroad, which pre-pays<br>As well as pre-supposes? or perhaps<br>Some stale ancestral debt was after-paid<br>By a hundred years, and took her by surprise?–<br>You shake your head my cousin; I guess ill.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'You need not guess, Aurora, nor deride,<br>The truth is not afraid of hurting you.<br>You'll find no cause, in all your scruples, why<br>Your aunt should cavil at a deed of gift<br>'Twixt her and me.'<br> 'I thought so–ah! a gift.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'You naturally thought so,' he resumed.<br>'A very natural gift.'<br> 'A gift, a gift!<br>Her individual life being stranded high<br>Above all want, approaching opulence,<br>Too haughty was she to accept a gift<br>Without some ultimate aim: ah, ah, I see,–<br>A gift intended plainly for her heirs,<br>And so accepted . . if accepted . . ah,<br>Indeed that might be; I am snared perhaps,<br>Just so. But, cousin, shall I pardon you,<br>If thus you have caught me with a cruel springe?'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He answered gently, 'Need you tremble and pant<br>Like a netted lioness? is't my fault, mine,<br>That you're a grand wild creature of the woods,<br>And hate the stall built for you? Any way,<br>Though triply netted, need you glare at me?<br>I do not hold the cords of such a net,<br>You're free from me, Aurora!'<br> 'Now may God<br>Deliver me from this strait! This gift of yours<br>Was tendered . . when? accepted . . when?' I asked.<br>'A month . . a fortnight since? Six weeks ago<br>It was not tendered. By a word she dropped,<br>I know it was not tendered nor received.<br>When was it? bring your dates.'<br> 'What matters when?<br>A half-hour ere she died, or a half-year,<br>Secured the gift, maintains the heritage<br>Inviolable with law. As easy pluck<br>The golden stars from heaven's embroidered stole,<br>To pin them on the grey side of this earth,<br>As make you poor again, thank God.'<br> 'Not poor<br>Nor clean again from henceforth, you thank God?<br>Well, sir–I ask you . . I insist at need . .<br>Vouchsafe the special date, the special date.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'The day before her death-day,' he replied,<br>'The gift was in her hands. We'll find that deed,<br>And certify that date to you.'<br> As one<br>Who has climbed a mountain-height and carried up<br>His own heart climbing, panting in his throat<br>With the toil of the ascent, takes breath at last,<br>Looks back in triumph–so I stood and looked:<br>'Dear cousin Romney, we have reached the top<br>Of this steep question, and may rest, I think.<br>But first, I pray you pardon, that the shock<br>And surge of natural feeling and event<br>Had made me oblivious of acquainting you<br>That this, this letter . . unread, mark,–still sealed,<br>Was found enfolded in the poor dead hand:<br>That spirit of hers had gone beyond the address,<br>Which could not find her though you wrote it clear.–<br>I know your writing, Romney,–recognise<br>The open-hearted A, the liberal sweep<br>Of the G. Now listen,–let us understand;<br>You will not find that famous deed of gift,<br>Unless you find it in the letter here,<br>Which, not being mine, I give you back.–Refuse<br>To take the letter? well then–you and I,<br>As writer and as heiress, open it<br>Together, by your leave.–Exactly so:<br>The words in which the noble offering's made,<br>Are nobler still, my cousin; and, I own,<br>The proudest and most delicate heart alive,<br>Distracted from the measure of the gift<br>By such a grace in giving, might accept<br>Your largesse without thinking any more<br>Of the burthen of it, than King Solomon<br>Considered, when he wore his holy ring<br>Charactered over with the ineffable spell,<br>How many carats of fine gold made up<br>Its money-value. So, Leigh gives to Leigh–<br>Or rather, might have given, observe!–for that's<br>The point we come to. Here's a proof of gift,<br>But here's no proof, sir, of acceptancy,<br>But rather, disproof. Death's black dust, being blown,<br>Infiltrated through every secret fold<br>Of this sealed letter by a puff of fate,<br>Dried up for ever the fresh-written ink,<br>Annulled the gift, disutilised the grace,<br>And left these fragments.'<br> As I spoke, I tore<br>The paper up and down, and down and up<br>And crosswise, till it fluttered from my hands,<br>As forest-leaves, stripped suddenly and rapt<br>By a whirlwind on Valdarno, drop again,<br>Drop slow, and strew the melancholy ground<br>Before the amazed hills . . why, so, indeed,<br>I'm writing like a poet, somewhat large<br>In the type of the image,–and exaggerate<br>A small thing with a great thing, topping it!–<br>But then I'm thinking how his eyes looked . . his<br>With what despondent and surprised reproach!<br>I think the tears were in them as he looked–<br>I think the manly mouth just trembled. Then<br>He broke the silence.<br> 'I may ask, perhaps,<br>Although no stranger . . only Romney Leigh,<br>Which means still less . . than Vincent Carrington . .<br>Your plans in going hence, and where you go.<br>This cannot be a secret.'<br> 'All my life<br>Is open to you, cousin. I go hence<br>To London, to the gathering-place of souls,<br>To live mine straight out, vocally, in books;<br>Harmoniously for others, if indeed<br>A woman's soul, like man's, be wide enough<br>To carry the whole octave (that's to prove)<br>Or, if I fail, still, purely for myself.<br>Pray God be with me, Romney.'<br> 'Ah, poor child,<br>Who fight against the mother's 'tiring hand,<br>And choose the headsman's! May God change his world<br>For your sake, sweet, and make it mild as heaven,<br>And juster than I have found you!'<br> But I paused.<br>'And you, my cousin?'–<br> 'I,' he said,–'you ask?<br>You care to ask? Well, girls have curious minds,<br>And fain would know the end of everything,<br>Of cousins, therefore, with the rest.<br>For me, Aurora, I've my work; you know my work;<br>And having missed this year some personal hope,<br>I must beware the rather that I miss<br>No reasonable duty. While you sing<br>Your happy pastorals of the meads and trees,<br>Bethink you that I go to impress and prove<br>On stifled brains and deafened ears, stunned deaf,<br>Crushed dull with grief, that nature sings itself,<br>And needs no mediate poet, lute or voice,<br>To make it vocal. While you ask of men<br>Your audience, I may get their leave perhaps<br>For hungry orphans to say audibly<br>'We're hungry, see,'–for beaten and bullied wives<br>To hold their unweaned babies up in sight,<br>Whom orphanage would better; and for all<br>To speak and claim their portion . . by no means<br>Of the soil, . . but of the sweat in tilling it,–<br>Since this is now-a-days turned privilege,<br>To have only God's curse on us, and not man's<br>Such work I have for doing, elbow-deep<br>In social problems,–as you tie your rhymes,<br>To draw my uses to cohere with needs,<br>And bring the uneven world back to its round;<br>Or, failing so much, fill up, bridge at least<br>To smoother issues, some abysmal cracks<br>And feuds of earth, intestine heats have made<br>To keep men separate,–using sorry shifts<br>Of hospitals, almshouses, infant schools,<br>And other practical stuff of partial good,<br>You lovers of the beautiful and whole,<br>Despise by system.'<br> 'I despise? The scorn<br>Is yours, my cousin. Poets become such,<br>Through scorning nothing. You decry them for<br>The good of beauty, sung and taught by them,<br>While they respect your practical partial good<br>As being a part of beauty's self. Adieu!<br>When God helps all the workers for his world,<br>The singers shall have help of Him, not last.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="/comments.php?id=116055" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He smiled as men smile when they will not speak<br>Because of something bitter in the thought;<br>And still I feel his melancholy eyes<br>Look judgment on me. It is seven years since:<br>I know not if 'twas pity or 'twas scorn<br>Has made them so far-reaching: judge it ye<br>Who have had to do with pity more than love,<br>And scorn than hatred. I am used, since then,<br>To other ways, from equal men. But so,<br>Even so, we let go hands, my cousin and I,<br>And, in between us, rushed the torrent-world<br>To blanch our faces like divided rocks,<br>And bar for ever mutual sight and touch<br>Except through swirl of spray and all that roar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br/></a><a href="https://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="https://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Barrett+Browning">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</a></strong> from <em><a href="https://sources.citatepedia.com/from.php?a=Elizabeth+Barrett+Browning&d=Aurora+Leigh">Aurora Leigh</a></em></div>

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