EIGHTH BOOK.

EIGHTH BOOK.

Oneeve it happened, when I sate alone,Alone, upon the terrace of my tower,A book upon my knees, to counterfeitThe reading that I never read at all,While Marian, in the garden down below,Knelt by the fountain (I could just hear thrillThe drowsy silence of the exhausted day)And peeled a new fig from that purple heapIn the grass beside her,—turning out the redTo feed her eager child, who sucked at itWith vehement lips across a gap of airAs he stood opposite, face and curls a-flameWith that last sun-ray, crying, ‘give me, give,’And stamping with imperious baby-feet,(We’re all born princes)—something startled me,—The laugh of sad and innocent souls, that breaksAbruptly, as if frightened at itself;’Twas Marian laughed. I saw her glance aboveIn sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,And straightway dropped my eyes upon my book,And knew, the first time, ’twas Boccaccio’s tales,The Falcon’s,—of the lover who for loveDestroyed the best that loved him. Some of usDo it still, and then we sit and laugh no more.Laughyou, sweet Marian! you’ve the right to laugh,Since God himself is for you, and a child!For me there’s somewhat less,—and so, I sigh.The heavens were making room to hold the night,The sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gatesTo let the stars out slowly (prophesiedIn close-approaching advent, not discerned),While still the cue-owls from the cypressesOf the Poggio called and counted every pulseOf the skyey palpitation. GraduallyThe purple and transparent shadows slowHad filled up the whole valley to the brim,And flooded all the city, which you sawAs some drowned city in some enchanted sea,Cut off from nature,—drawing you who gaze,With passionate desire, to leap and plunge,And find a sea-king with a voice of waves,And treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locksYou cannot kiss but you shall bring awayTheir salt upon your lips. The duomo-bellStrikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,So deep; and fifty churches answer itThe same, with fifty various instances.Some gaslights tremble along squares and streets;The Pitti’s palace-front is drawn in fire;And, past the quays, Maria Novella’s Place,In which the mystic obelisks stand upTriangular, pyramidal, each basedOn a single trine of brazen tortoises,To guard that fair church, Buonarroti’s Bride,That stares out from her large blind dial-eyes,Her quadrant and armillary dials, blackWith rhythms of many suns and moons, in vainEnquiry for so rich a soul as his,—Methinks I have plunged, I see it all so clear....And, oh my heart, ... the sea-king!In my earsThe sound of waters. There he stood, my king!I felt him, rather than beheld him. UpI rose, as if he were my king indeed,And then sate down, in trouble at myself,And struggling for my woman’s empery.’Tis pitiful; but women are so made:We’ll die for you, perhaps,—’tis probable;But we’ll not spare you an inch of our full height:We’ll have our whole just stature,—five feet four,Though laid out in our coffins: pitiful!—‘You, Romney!—— Lady Waldemar is here?’He answered in a voice which was not his.‘I have her letter; you shall read it soon:But first, I must be heard a little, I,Who have waited long and travelled far for that,Although you thought to have shut a tedious bookAnd farewell. Ah, you dog-eared such a page,And here you find me.’Did he touch my hand,Or but my sleeve? I trembled, hand and foot,—He must have touched me.—‘Will you sit?’ I asked,And motioned to a chair; but down he sate,A little slowly, as a man in doubt,Upon the couch beside me,—couch and chairBeing wheeled upon the terrace.‘You are come,My cousin Romney?—this is wonderful.But all is wonder on such summer-nights;And nothing should surprise us any more,Who see that miracle of stars. Behold.’I signed above, where all the stars were out,As if an urgent heat had started thereA secret writing from a sombre page,A blank last moment, crowded suddenlyWith hurrying splendours.‘Then you do not know’—He murmured.‘Yes, I know,’ I said, ‘I know.I had the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet I did not think you’d leave the workIn England, for so much even,—though, of course,You’ll make a work-day of your holiday,And turn it to our Tuscan people’s use,—Who much need helping since the Austrian boar(So bold to cross the Alp by LombardyAnd dash his brute front unabashed againstThe steep snow-bosses of that shield of GodWho soon shall rise in wrath and shake it clear,)Came hither also,—raking up our vinesAnd olive-gardens with his tyrannous tusks,And rolling on our maize with all his swine,’‘You had the news from Vincent Carrington,’He echoed,—picking up the phrase beyond,As if he knew the rest was merely talkTo fill a gap and keep out a strong wind,—‘You had, then, Vincent’s personal news?’‘His own,’I answered. ‘All that ruined world of yoursSeems crumbling into marriage. CarringtonHas chosen wisely.’‘Doyoutake it so?’He cried, ‘and is it possible at last’ ...He paused there,—and then, inward to himself,‘Too much at last, too late!—yet certainly’ ...(And there his voice swayed as an Alpine plankThat feels a passionate torrent underneath)‘The knowledge, if I had known it, first or last,Had never changed the actual case forme.And best, forher, at this time.’Nay, I thought,He loves Kate Ward, it seems, now, like a man,Because he has married Lady Waldemar.Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was movedTo hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wellsIn this world! Then I spoke,—‘I did not think,My cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.’‘In fact I never knew her. ’Tis enoughThat Vincent did, before he chose his wifeFor other reasons than those topaz eyesI’ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,For all that. One takes up the world with eyes.’—Including Romney Leigh, I thought again,Albeit he knows them only by repute.How vile must all men be, sincehe’sa man.His deep pathetic voice, as if he guessedI did not surely love him, took the word;‘You never got a letter from Lord HoweA month back, dear Aurora?’‘None,’ I said.‘I felt it was so,’ he replied: ‘Yet, strange!Sir Blaise Delorme has passed through Florence?’‘Ay,By chance I saw him in Our Lady’s church,(I saw him, mark you, but he saw not me)Clean-washed in holy water from the countOf things terrestrial,—letters and the rest;He had crossed us out together with his sins.Ay, strange; but only strange that good Lord HowePreferred him to the post because of pauls.For me I’m sworn to never trust a man—At least with letters.’‘There were facts to tell,—To smooth with eye and accent. Howe supposed ...Well, well, no matter! there was dubious need;You heard the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet perhaps you had been startled lessTo see me, dear Aurora, if you had readThat letter.’—Now he sets me down as vexed.I think I’ve draped myself in woman’s prideTo a perfect purpose. Oh, I’m vexed, it seems!My friend Lord Howe deputes his friend Sir Blaise,To break as softly as a sparrow’s eggThat lets a bird out tenderly, the newsOf Romney’s marriage to a certain saint;Tosmooth with eye and accent,—indicateHis possible presence. Excellently wellYou’ve played your part, my Lady Waldemar,—As I’ve played mine.‘Dear Romney,’ I began,‘You did not use, of old, to be so likeA Greek king coming from a taken Troy,’Twas needful that precursors spread your pathWith three-piled carpets, to receive your footAnd dull the sound of’t. For myself, be sure,Although it frankly ground the gravel here,I still could bear it. Yet I’m sorry, too,To lose this famous letter, which Sir BlaiseHas twisted to a lighter absentlyTo fire some holy taper with: Lord HoweWrites letters good for all things but to lose;And many a flower of London gossipryHas dropt wherever such a stem broke off,—Of course I know that, lonely among my vines,Where nothing’s talked of, save the blight again,And no more Chianti! Still the letter’s useAs preparation ... Did I start indeed?Last night I started at a cockchafer,And shook a half-hour after. Have you learntNo more of women, ’spite of privilege,Than still to take account too seriouslyOf such weak flutterings? Why, we like it, sir,—We get our powers and our effects that way.The trees stand stiff and still at time of frost,If no wind tears them; but, let summer come,When trees are happy,—and a breath availsTo set them trembling through a million leavesIn luxury of emotion. Something lessIt takes to move a woman: let her startAnd shake at pleasure,—nor conclude at yours,The winter’s bitter,—but the summer’s green.’He answered, ‘Be the summer ever greenWith you, Aurora!—though you sweep your sexWith somewhat bitter gusts from where you liveAbove them,—whirling downward from your heightsYour very own pine-cones, in a grand disdainOf the lowland burrs with which you scatter them.So high and cold to others and yourself,A little less to Romney, were unjust,And thus, I would not have you. Let it pass:I feel content, so. You can bear indeedMy sudden step beside you: but for me,’Twould move me sore to hear your softened voice,—Aurora’s voice,—if softened unawareIn pity of what I am.’Ah friend, I thought,As husband of the Lady WaldemarYou’re granted very sorely pitiable!And yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voiceFrom softening in the pity of your case,As if from lie or licence. CertainlyWe’ll soak up all the slush and soil of lifeWith softened voices, ere we come toyou.At which I interrupted my own thoughtAnd spoke out calmly. ‘Let us ponder, friend,Whate’er our state, we must have made it first;And though the thing displease us, ay, perhapsDisplease us warrantably, never doubtThat other states, thought possible once, and thenRejected by the instinct of our lives,—If then adopted, had displeased us moreThan this, in which the choice, the will, the love,Has stamped the honour of a patent actFrom henceforth. What we choose, may not be good;But, that we choose it, proves it good forusPotentially, fantastically, nowOr last year, rather than a thing we saw,And saw no need for choosing. Moths will burnTheir wings,—which proves that light is good for moths,Or else they had flown not, where they agonise,’‘Ay, light is good,’ he echoed, and there paused.And then abruptly, ... ‘Marian. Marian’s well?’I bowed my head, but found no word. ’Twas hardTo speak ofherto Lady Waldemar’sNew husband. How much did he know, at last?How much? how little?—— He would take no sign,But straight repeated,—‘Marian. Is she well?’‘She’s well,’ I answered.She was there in sightAn hour back, but the night had drawn her home;Where still I heard her in an upper room,Her low voice singing to the child in bed,Who restless with the summer-heat and playAnd slumber snatched at noon, was long sometimesAt falling off, and took a score of songsAnd mother-hushes, ere she saw him sound.‘She’s well,’ I answered.‘Here?’ he asked.‘Yes, here.’He stopped and sighed. ‘That shall be presently,But now this must be. I have words to say,And would be alone to say them, I with you,And no third troubling.’‘Speak then,’ I returned,‘She will not vex you.’At which, suddenlyHe turned his face upon me with its smile,As if to crush me. ‘I have read your book,Aurora.’‘You have read it,’ I replied,‘And I have writ it,—we have done with it.And now the rest?’‘The rest is like the first,’He answered,—‘for the book is in my heart,Lives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me:My daily bread tastes of it,—and my wineWhich has no smack of it, I pour it out;It seems unnatural drinking.’BitterlyI took the word up; ‘Never waste your wine.The book lived in me ere it lived in you;I know it closer than another does,And that it’s foolish, feeble, and afraid,And all unworthy so much compliment.Beseech you, keep your wine,—and, when you drink,Still wish some happier fortune to your friend,Than even to have written a far better book.’He answered gently, ‘That is consequent:The poet looks beyond the book he has made,Or else he had not made it. If a manCould make a man, he’d henceforth be a godIn feeling what a little thing is man:It is not my case. And this special book,I did not make it, to make light of it:It stands above my knowledge, draws me up;’Tis high to me. It may be that the bookIs not so high, but I so low, instead;Still high to me. I mean no compliment:I will not say there are not, young or old,Male writers, ay, or female,—let it pass,Who’ll write us richer and completer books.A man may love a woman perfectly,And yet by no means ignorantly maintainA thousand women have not larger eyes:Enough that she alone has looked at himWith eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.And so, this book, Aurora,—so, your book.’‘Alas,’ I answered, ‘is it so, indeed?’And then was silent.‘Is it so, indeed,’He echoed, ‘thatalasis all your word?’I said,—‘I’m thinking of a far-off June,When you and I, upon my birthday once,Discoursed of life and art, with both untried.I’m thinking, Romney, how ’twas morning then,And now ’tis night.’‘And now,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’‘I’m thinking,’ I resumed, ‘’tis somewhat sadThat if I had known, that morning in the dew,My cousin Romney would have said such wordsOn such a night, at close of many years,In speaking of a future book of mine,It would have pleased me better as a hope,Than as an actual grace it can at all.That’s sad, I’m thinking.’‘Ay,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’‘And there,’ I added lightly, ‘are the stars!And here, we’ll talk of stars, and not of books.’‘You have the stars,’ he murmured,—‘it is well:Be like them! shine, Aurora, on my dark,Though high and cold and only like a star,And for this short night only,—you, who keepThe same Aurora of the bright June dayThat withered up the flowers before my face,And turned me from the garden evermoreBecause I was not worthy. Oh, deserved,Deserved! That I, who verily had not learntGod’s lesson half, attaining as a dunceTo obliterate good words with fractious thumbsAnd cheat myself of the context,—Ishould pushAside, with male ferocious impudence,The world’s Aurora who had conned her partOn the other side the leaf! ignore her so,Because she was a woman and a queen,And had no beard to bristle through her song,—My teacher, who has taught me with a book,My Miriam, whose sweet mouth, when nearly drownedI still heard singing on the shore! Deserved,That here I should look up unto the starsAnd miss the glory’ ...‘Can I understand?’I broke in. ‘You speak wildly, Romney Leigh,Or I hear wildly. In that morning-timeWe recollect, the roses were too red,The trees too green, reproach too naturalIf one should see not what the other saw:And now, it’s night, remember; we have shadesIn place of colours; we are now grown cold,And old, my cousin Romney. Pardon me,—I’m very happy that you like my book,And very sorry that I quoted backA ten years’ birthday; ’twas so mad a thingIn any woman, I scarce marvel muchYou took it for a venturous piece of spite,Provoking such excuses, as indeedI cannot call you slack in.’‘Understand,’He answered sadly, ‘something, if but so.This night is softer than an English day,And men may well come hither when they’re sick,To draw in easier breath from larger air.’Tis thus with me; I’ve come to you,—to you,My Italy of women, just to breatheMy soul out once before you, ere I go,As humble as God makes me at the last,(I thank Him) quite out of the way of men,And yours, Aurora,—like a punished child,His cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness,To silence in a corner. I am comeTo speak, beloved’....‘Wisely, cousin Leigh,And worthily of us both!’‘Yes, worthily;For this time I must speak out and confessThat I, so truculent in assumption once,So absolute in dogma, proud in aim,And fierce in expectation,—I, who feltThe whole world tugging at my skirts for help,As if no other man than I, could pull,Nor woman, but I led her by the hand,Nor cloth hold, but I had it in my coat,—Do know myself to-night for what I wasOn that June-day, Aurora. Poor bright day,Which meant the best ... a woman and a rose, ...And which I smote upon the cheek with words,Until it turned and rent me! Young you were,That birthday, poet, but you talked the right:While I, ... I built up follies like a wallTo intercept the sunshine and your face.Your face! that’s worse.’‘Speak wisely, cousin Leigh.’‘Yes, wisely, dear Aurora, though too late:But then, not wisely. I was heavy then,And stupid, and distracted with the criesOf tortured prisoners in the polished brassOf that Phalarian bull, society,—Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,But, if you listen, moans and cries insteadDespairingly, like victims tossed and goredAnd trampled by their hoofs. I heard the criesToo close: I could not hear the angels liftA fold of rustling air, nor what they saidTo help my pity. I beheld the worldAs one great famishing carnivorous mouth,—A huge, deserted, callow, black, bird Thing,With piteous open beak that hurt my heart,Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped,And tore the violets up to get the worms.Worms, worms, was all my cry: an open mouth,A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips,No more! That poor men narrowed their demandsTo such an end, was virtue, I supposed,Adjudicating that to see it soWas reason. Oh, I did not push the caseUp higher, and ponder how it answers, whenThe rich take up the same cry for themselves,Professing equally,—‘an open mouthA gross want, food to fill us, and no more!’Why that’s so far from virtue, only viceFinds reason for it! That makes libertines:That slurs our cruel streets from end to endWith eighty thousand women in one smile,Who only smile at night beneath the gas:The body’s satisfaction and no more,Being used for argument against the soul’s,Here too! the want, here too, implying the right.—How dark I stood that morning in the sun,My best Aurora, though I saw your eyes,—When first you told me ... oh, I recollectThe words ... and how you lifted your white hand,And how your white dress and your burnished curlsWent greatening round you in the still blue air,As if an inspiration from withinHad blown them all out when you spoke the same,Even these,—‘You will not compass your poor endsOf barley-feeding and material ease,Without the poet’s individualismTo 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 an inch insideThe dust of the actual: and your Fouriers failed,Because not poets enough to understandThat life develops from within.’ I sayYour words,—I could say other words of yours;For none of all your words has been more lostThan sweet verbena, which, being brushed against,Will hold you three hours after by the smell,In spite of long walks on the windy hills.But these words dealt in sharper perfume,—theseWere ever on me, stinging through my dreams,And saying themselves for ever o’er my actsLike some unhappy verdict. That I failed,Is certain. Stye or no stye, to contriveThe swine’s propulsion toward the precipice,Proved easy and plain. I subtly organisedAnd ordered, built the cards up high and higher,Till, some one breathing, all fell flat again;In setting right society’s wide wrong,Mere life’s so fatal! So I failed indeedOnce, twice, and oftener,—hearing through the rentsOf obstinate purpose, still those words of yours,‘You will not compass your poor ends, not you!’But harder than you said them; every timeStill farther from your voice, until they cameTo overcrow me with triumphant scornWhich vexed me to resistance. Set down thisFor condemnation,—I was guilty here:I stood upon my deed and fought my doubt,As men will,—for I doubted,—till at lastMy deed gave way beneath me suddenly,And left me what I am. The curtain dropped,My part quite ended, all the footlights quenched,My own soul hissing at me through the dark,I, ready for confession,—I was wrong,I’ve sorely failed; I’ve slipped the ends of life,I yield; you have conquered.’‘Stay,’ I answered him;‘I’ve something for your hearing, also. IHave failed too.’‘You!’ he said, ‘you’re very great;The sadness of your greatness fits you well:As if the plume upon a hero’s casqueShould nod a shadow upon his victor face.’I took him up austerely,—‘You have readMy book, but not my heart; for recollect,’Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at.I’ve surely failed, I know; if failure meansTo look back sadly on work gladly done,—To wander on my mountains of Delight,So called, (I can remember a friend’s wordsAs well as you, sir,) weary and in wantOf even a sheep-path, thinking bitterly....Well, well! no matter. I but say so much,To keep you, Romney Leigh, from saying more,And let you feel I am not so high indeed,That I can bear to have you at my foot,—Or safe, that I can help you. That June-day,Too deeply sunk in craterous sunsets nowFor you or me to dig it up alive;To pluck it out all bleeding with spent flameAt the roots, before those moralising starsWe have got instead,—that poor lost day, you saidSome words as truthful as the thing of mineYou care to keep in memory: and I holdIf I, that day, and, being the girl I was,Had shown a gentler spirit, less arrogance,It had not hurt me. Ah, you’ll not mistakeThe point here. I but only think, you see,More justly, that’s more humbly, of myself,Than when I tried a crown on and supposed....Nay, laugh, sir,—I’ll laugh with you!—pray you, laugh.I’ve had so many birthdays since that day,I’ve learnt to prize mirth’s opportunities,Which come too seldom. Was it you who saidI was not changed? the same Aurora? Ah,We could laugh there, too! Why, Ulysses’ dogKnewhim, and wagged his tail and died: but ifI had owned a dog, I too, before my Troy,And, if you brought him here, ... I warrant youHe’d look into my face, bark lustily,And live on stoutly, as the creatures willWhose spirits are not troubled by long loves.A dog would never know me, I’m so changed;Much less a friend ... except that you’re misledBy the colour of the hair, the trick of the voice,Like that Aurora Leigh’s.’‘Sweet trick of voice!I would be a dog for this, to know it at last,And die upon the falls of it. O love,O best Aurora! are you then so sad,You scarcely had been sadder as my wife?’‘Your wife, sir! I must certainly be changed,If I, Aurora, can have said a thingSo light, it catches at the knightly spursOf a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh,And trips him from his honourable senseOf what befits’ ...‘You wholly misconceive,’He answered.I returned,—‘I’m glad of it;But keep from misconception, too, yourself:I am not humbled to so low a point,Nor so far saddened. If I am sad at all,Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head,Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth,Though ne’er so merry: I’m perforce more wise,And that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest,Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole,That birthday morning. ’Tis impossibleTo get at men excepting through their souls,However open their carnivorous jaws;And poets get directlier at the soul,Than any of your œconomists:—for which,You must not overlook the poet’s workWhen scheming for the world’s necessities.The soul’s the way. Not even Christ HimselfCan save man else than as He holds man’s soul;And therefore did He come into our flesh,As some wise hunter creeping on his kneesWith a torch, into the blackness of some cave,To face and quell the beast there,—take the soul,And so possess the whole man, body and soul.I said, so far, right, yes; not farther, though:We both were wrong that June-day,—both as wrongAs an east wind had been. I who talked of art,And you who grieved for all men’s griefs ... what then?We surely made too small a part for GodIn these things. What we are, imports us moreThan what we eat; and life, you’ve granted me,Develops from within. But innermostOf the inmost, most interior of the interne,God claims his own, Divine humanityRenewing nature,—or the piercingest verse,Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keepAs much upon the outside of a man,As the very bowl, in which he dips his beard.—And then, ... the rest. I cannot surely speak.Perhaps I doubt more than you doubted then,If I, the poet’s veritable charge,Have borne upon my forehead. If I have,It might feel somewhat liker to a crown,The foolish green one even.—Ah, I think,And chiefly when the sun shines, that I’ve failed.But what then, Romney? Though we fail indeed,You ... I ... a score of such weak workers, ... HeFails never. If He cannot work by us,He will work over us. Does He want a man,Much less a woman, think you? Every timeThe star winks there, so many souls are born,Who all shall work too. Let our own be calm:We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,Impatient that we’re nothing.’‘Could we sitJust so for ever, sweetest friend,’ he said,‘My failure would seem better than success.And yet, indeed, your book has dealt with meMore gently, cousin, than you ever will!The book brought down entire the bright June-day,And set me wandering in the garden-walks,And let me watch the garland in a place,You blushed so ... nay, forgive me; do not stir:I only thank the book for what it taught,And what, permitted. Poet, doubt yourself;But never doubt that you’re a poet to meFrom henceforth. Ah, you’ve written poems, sweet,Which moved me in secret, as the sap is movedIn still March-branches, signless as a stone:But this last book o’ercame me like soft rainWhich falls at midnight, when the tightened barkBreaks out into unhesitating buds,And sudden protestations of the spring.In all your other books, I saw butyou:A man may see the moon so, in a pond,And not be nearer therefore to the moon,Nor use the sight ... except to drown himself:And so I forced my heart back from the sight;For what hadI, I thought, to do withher,—Aurora ... Romney? But, in this last book,You showed me something separate from yourself,Beyond you; and I bore to take it in,And let it draw me. You have shown me truths,O June-day friend, that help me now at night,When June is over! truths not yours, indeed,But set within my reach by means of you:Presented by your voice and verse the wayTo take them clearest. Verily I was wrong;And verily, many thinkers of this age,Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,Are wrong in just my sense, who understoodOur natural world too insularly, as ifNo spiritual counterpart completed itConsummating its meaning, rounding allTo justice and perfection, line by line,Form by form, nothing single, nor alone,—The great below clenched by the great above;Shade here authenticating substance there;The body proving spirit, as the effectThe cause: we, meantime, being too grossly aptTo hold the natural, as dogs a bone,(Though reason and nature beat us in the face);So obstinately, that we’ll break our teethOr ever we let go. For everywhereWe’re too materialistic,—eating clay,(Like men of the west) instead of Adam’s cornAnd Noah’s wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,Until we’re filled up to the throat with clay,And grow the grimy colour of the groundOn which we are feeding. Ay, materialistThe age’s name is. God himself, with some,Is apprehended as the bare resultOf what his hand materially has made,Expressed in such an algebraic sign,Called God;—that is, to put it otherwise,They add up nature to a naught of GodAnd cross the quotient. There are many, even,Whose names are written in the Christian churchTo no dishonour,—diet still on mud,And splash the altars with it. You might thinkThe clay, Christ laid upon their eyelids when,Still blind, he called them to the use of sight,Remained there to retard its exerciseWith clogging incrustations. Close to heaven,They see, for mysteries, through the open doors,Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware;And fain would enter, when their time shall come,With quite a different body than St. PaulHas promised,—husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn,Or where’s the resurrection?’‘Thus it is,’I sighed. And he resumed with mournful face.‘Beginning so, and filling up with clayThe wards of this great key, the natural world,And fumbling vainly therefore at the lockOf the spiritual,—we feel ourselves shut inWith all the wild-beast roar of struggling life,The terrors and compunctions of our souls,As saints with lions,—we who are not saints,And have no heavenly lordship in our stareTo awe them backward! Ay, we are forced, so pent,To judge the whole too partially, ... confoundConclusions. Is there any common phraseSignificant, when the adverb’s heard alone,The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?But we, distracted in the roar of life,Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,And bruit against Him that his thought is void,His meaning hopeless;—cry, that everywhereThe government is slipping from his hand,Unless some other Christ ... say Romney Leigh ...Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world,For which the First has proved inadequate,However we talk bigly of His workAnd piously of His person. We blasphemeAt last, to finish that doxology,Despairing on the earth for which He died.’‘So now,’ I asked, ‘you have more hope of men?’‘I hope,’ he answered: ‘I am come to thinkThat God will have his work done, as you said,And that we need not be disturbed too muchFor Romney Leigh or others having failedWith this or that quack nostrum,—recipesFor keeping summits by annulling depths,For learning wrestling with long lounging sleeves,And perfect heroism without a scratch.We fail,—what, then? Aurora, if I smiledTo see you, in your lovely morning-pride,Try on the poet’s wreath which suits the noon,—(Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stainBefore they grow the ivy!) certainlyI stood myself there worthier of contempt,Self-rated, in disastrous arrogance,As competent to sorrow for mankindAnd even their odds. A man may well despair,Who counts himself so needful to success.I failed. I throw the remedy back on God,And sit down here beside you, in good hope.’‘And yet, take heed,’ I answered, ‘lest we leanToo dangerously on the other side,And so fail twice. Be sure, no earnest workOf any honest creature, howbeit weak,Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,It is not gathered as a grain of sandTo enlarge the sum of human action usedFor carrying out God’s end. No creature worksSo ill, observe, that therefore he’s cashiered.The honest earnest man must stand and work;The woman also; otherwise she dropsAt once below the dignity of man,Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work:Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.’He cried, ‘True. After Adam, work was curse;The natural creature labours, sweats and frets.But, after Christ, work turns to privilege;And henceforth one with our humanity,The Six-day Worker, working still in us,Has called us freely to work on with HimIn high companionship. So, happiest!I count that Heaven itself is only workTo a surer issue. Let us work, indeed,—But, no more, work as Adam ... nor as LeighErewhile, as if the only man on earth,Responsible for all the thistles blownAnd tigers couchant,—struggling in amazeAgainst disease and winter,—snarling onFor ever, that the world’s not paradise.Oh cousin, let us be content, in work,To do the thing we can, and not presumeTo fret because it’s little. ’Twill employSeven men, they say, to make a perfect pin:Who makes the head, content to miss the point,—Who makes the point, agreed to leave the join:And if a man should cry, ‘I want a pin,And I must make it straightway, head and point,’—His wisdom is not worth the pin he wants.Seven men to a pin,—and not a man too much!Seven generations, haply, to this world,To right it visibly, a finger’s breadth,And mend its rents a little. Oh, to stormAnd say,—‘This world here is intolerable;I will not eat this corn, nor drink this wine,Nor love this woman, flinging her my soulWithout a bond for’t, as a lover should,Nor use the generous leave of happinessAs not too good for using generously’—(Since virtue kindles at the touch of joy,Like a man’s cheek laid on a woman’s hand;And God, who knows it, looks for quick returnsFrom joys)!—to stand and claim to have a lifeBeyond the bounds of the individual man,And raze all personal cloisters of the soulTo build up public stores and magazines,As if God’s creatures otherwise were lost,The builder surely saved by any means!To think,—I have a pattern on my nail,And I will carve the world new after it,And solve so, these hard social questions,—nay,Impossible social questions,—since their rootsStrike deep in Evil’s own existence here,Which God permits because the question’s hardTo abolish evil nor attaint free-will.Ay, hard to God, but not to Romney Leigh!For Romney has a pattern on his nail,(Whatever may be lacking on the Mount)And not being overnice to separateWhat’s element from what’s convention, hastesBy line on line, to draw you out a world,Without your help indeed, unless you takeHis yoke upon you and will learn of him,—So much he has to teach! so good a world!The same, the whole creation’s groaning for!No rich nor poor, no gain nor loss nor stint,No potage in it able to excludeA brother’s birthright, and no right of birth,The potage,—both secured to every man;And perfect virtue dealt out like the rest,Gratuitously, with the soup at six,To whoso does not seek it.’‘Softly, sir,’I interrupted,—‘I had a cousin onceI held in reverence. If he strained too wide,It was not to take honour, but give help;The gesture was heroic. If his handAccomplished nothing ... (well, it is not proved)That empty hand thrown impotently outWere sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven,Than many a hand that reaped a harvest inAnd keeps the scythe’s glow on it. Pray you, then,For my sake merely, use less bitternessIn speaking of my cousin.’‘Ah,’ he said,‘Aurora! when the prophet beats the ass,The angel intercedes.’ He shook his head—‘And yet to mean so well, and fail so foul,Expresses ne’er another beast than man;The antithesis is human. Harken, dear;There’s too much abstract willing, purposing,In this poor world. We talk by aggregates,And think by systems; and, being used to faceOur evils in statistics, are inclinedTo cap them with unreal remediesDrawn out in haste on the other side the slate.’‘That’s true,’ I answered, fain to throw up thought,And make a game of’t; ‘Oh, we generaliseEnough to please you. If we pray at all,We pray no longer for our daily bread,But next centenary’s harvests. If we give,Our cup of water is not tendered tillWe lay down pipes and found a CompanyWith Branches. Ass or angel, ’tis the same:A woman cannot do the thing she ought,Which means whatever perfect thing she can,In life, in art, in science, but she fearsTo let the perfect action take her partAnd rest there: she must prove what she can doBefore she does it,—prate of woman’s rights,Of woman’s mission, woman’s function, tillThe men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,‘A woman’s function plainly is ... to talk.’Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!They cannot hear each other speak.’‘And you,An artist, judge so?’‘I, an artist,—yes,Because, precisely, I’m an artist, sir,And woman,—if another sate in sight,I’d whisper,—Soft, my sister! not a word!By speaking we prove only we can speak;Which he, the man here, never doubted. WhatHe doubts, is whether we candothe thingWith decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all:Now, do it; bring your statue,—you have room!He’ll see it even by the starlight here;And if ’tis e’er so little like the godWho looks out from the marble silentlyAlong the track of his own shining dartThrough the dusk of ages,—there’s no need to speak;The universe shall henceforth speak for you,And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was bornTo do it,—claims her license in her work.’—And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech:Who rights a land’s finances, is excusedFor touching coppers, though her hands be white,—But we, we talk!’‘It is the age’s mood,’He said; ‘we boast, and do not. We put upHostelry signs where’er we lodge a day,—Some red colossal cow, with mighty papsA Cyclops’ fingers could not strain to milk;Then bring out presently our saucer-fullOf curds. We want more quiet in our works,More knowledge of the bounds in which we work;More knowledge that each individual manRemains an Adam to the general race,Constrained to see, like Adam, that he keepHis personal state’s condition honestly,Or vain all thoughts of his to help the world,Which still must be developed from itsone,If bettered in its many. We, indeed,Who think to lay it out new like a park,We take a work on us which is not man’s;For God alone sits far enough above,To speculate so largely. None of us(Not Romney Leigh) is mad enough to say,We’ll have a grove of oaks upon that slopeAnd sink the need of acorns. Government,If veritable and lawful, is not givenBy imposition of the foreign hand,—Nor chosen from a pretty pattern-bookOf some domestic idealogue, who sitsAnd coldly chooses empire, where as wellHe might republic. Genuine governmentIs but the expression of a nation, goodOr less good,—even as all society,Howe’er unequal, monstrous, crazed, and cursed,Is but the expression of men’s single lives,The loud sum of the silent units. What,We’d change the aggregate and yet retainEach separate figure? Whom do we cheat by that?Now, not even Romney.’‘Cousin, you are sad.Did all your social labour at Leigh HallAnd elsewhere, come to nought then?’‘Itwasnought,’He answered mildly. ‘There is room indeed,For statues still, in this large world of God’s,But not for vacuums,—so I am not sad:Not sadder than is good for what I am.My vain phalanstery dissolved itself;My men and women of disordered lives,I brought in orderly to dine and sleep,Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,With fierce contortions of the natural face;And cursed me for my tyrannous constraintIn forcing crooked creatures to live straight;And set the country hounds upon my backTo bite and tear me for my wicked deedOf trying to do good without the churchOr even the squires, Aurora. Do you mindYour ancient neighbours? The great book-club teemsWith ‘sketches,’ ‘summaries,’ and ‘last tracts’ but twelve,On socialistic troublers of close bondsBetwixt the generous rich and grateful poor.The vicar preached from ‘Revelations,’ (tillThe doctor woke) and found me with ‘the frogs’On three successive Sundays; ay, and stoppedTo weep a little (for he’s getting old)That such perdition should o’ertake a manOf such fair acres,—in the parish, too!He printed his discourses ‘by request;’And if your book shall sell as his did, thenYour verses are less good than I suppose.The women of the neighbourhood subscribed,And sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk,Tooled edges, blazoned with the arms of Leigh:I own that touched me.’‘What, the pretty ones?Poor Romney!’‘Otherwise the effect was small.I had my windows broken once or twiceBy liberal peasants, naturally incensedAt such a vexer of Arcadian peace,Who would not let men call their wives their ownTo kick like Britons,—and made obstaclesWhen things went smoothly as a baby drugged,Toward freedom and starvation; bringing downThe wicked London tavern-thieves and drabs,To affront the blessed hillside drabs and thievesWith mended morals, quotha,—fine new lives!—My windows paid for’t. I was shot at, once,By an active poacher who had hit a hareFrom the other barrel, tired of springeing gameSo long upon my acres, undisturbed,And restless for the country’s virtue, (yetHe missed me)—ay, and pelted very oftIn riding through the village. ‘There he goes,Who’d drive away our Christian gentlefolks,To catch us undefended in the trapHe baits with poisonous cheese, and lock us upIn that pernicious prison of Leigh HallWith all his murderers! Give another name,And say Leigh Hell, and burn it up with fire.’And so they did, at last, Aurora.’‘Did?’‘You never heard it, cousin? Vincent’s newsCame stinted, then.’‘They did? they burnt Leigh Hall?’‘You’re sorry, dear Aurora? Yes indeed,They did it perfectly: a thorough work,And not a failure, this time. Let us grant’Tis somewhat easier, though, to burn a houseThan build a system:—yet that’s easy, too,In a dream. Books, pictures,—ay, the pictures! what,You think your dear Vandykes would give them pause?Our proud ancestral Leighs with those peaked beards,Or bosoms white as foam thrown up on rocksFrom the old-spent wave. Such calm defiant looksThey flared up with! now, nevermore they’ll twitThe bones in the family-vault with ugly death.Not one was rescued, save the Lady Maud,Who threw you down, that morning you were born,The undeniable lineal mouth and chin,To wear for ever for her gracious sake;For which good deed I saved her: the rest went:And you, you’re sorry, cousin. Well, for me,With all my phalansterians safely out,(Poor hearts, they helped the burners, it was said,And certainly a few clapped hands and yelled)The ruin did not hurt me as it might,—As when for instance I was hurt one day,A certain letter being destroyed. In fact,To see the great house flare so ... oaken floors,Our fathers made so fine with rushes once,Before our mothers furbished them with trains,—Carved wainscoats, panelled walls, the favourite slideFor draining off a martyr, (or a rogue)The echoing galleries, half a half-mile long,And all the various stairs that took you upAnd took you down, and took you round aboutUpon their slippery darkness, recollect,All helping to keep up one blazing jest;The flames through all the casements pushing forth,Like red-hot devils crinkled into snakes,All signifying,—‘Look you, Romney Leigh,We save the people from your saving, here,Yet so as by fire! we make a pretty showBesides,—and that’s the best you’ve ever done.’——To see this, almost moved myself to clap!The ‘vale et plaude’ came, too, with effect,When, in the roof fell, and the fire, that paused,Stunned momently beneath the stroke of slatesAnd tumbling rafters, rose at once and roared,And wrapping the whole house, (which disappearedIn a mounting whirlwind of dilated flame,)Blew upward, straight, its drift of fiery chaffIn the face of Heaven, ... which blenched, and ran up higher.’‘Poor Romney!’‘Sometimes when I dream,’ he said,‘I hear the silence after; ’twas so still.For all those wild beasts, yelling, cursing round,Were suddenly silent, while you counted five!So silent, that you heard a young bird fallFrom the top-nest in the neighbouring rookeryThrough edging over-rashly toward the light.The old rooks had already fled too far,To hear the screech they fled with, though you sawSome flying on still, like scatterings of dead leavesIn autumn-gusts, seen dark against the sky:All flying,—ousted, like the House of Leigh.’‘Dear Romney!’‘Evidently ’twould have beenA fine sight for a poet, sweet, like you,To make the verse blaze after. I myself,Even I, felt something in the grand old trees,Which stood that moment like brute Druid godsAmazed upon the rim of ruin, where,As into a blackened socket, the great fireHad dropped,—still throwing up splinters now and then,To show them grey with all their centuries,Left there to witness that on such a dayThe house went out.’‘Ah!’‘While you counted fiveI seemed to feel a little like a Leigh,—But then it passed, Aurora. A child cried;And I had enough to think of what to doWith all those houseless wretches in the dark,And ponder where they’d dance the next time, theyWho had burnt the viol.’‘Did you think of that?Who burns his viol will not dance, I know,To cymbals, Romney.’‘O my sweet sad voice,’He cried,—‘O voice that speaks and overcomes!The sun is silent, but Aurora speaks.’‘Alas,’ I said; ‘I speak I know not what:I’m back in childhood, thinking as a child,A foolish fancy—will it make you smile?I shall not from the window of my roomCatch sight of those old chimneys any more.’‘No more,’ he answered. ‘If you pushed one dayThrough all the green hills to our fathers’ house,You’d come upon a great charred circle whereThe patient earth was singed an acre round;With one stone-stair, symbolic of my life,Ascending, winding, leading up to nought!’Tis worth a poet’s seeing. Will you go?’I made no answer. Had I any rightTo weep with this man, that I dared to speak?A woman stood between his soul and mine,And waved us off from touching evermoreWith those unclean white hands of hers. Enough.We had burnt our viols and were silent.So,The silence lengthened till it pressed. I spoke,To breathe: ‘I think you were ill afterward.’‘More ill,’ he answered, ‘had been scarcely ill.I hoped this feeble fumbling at life’s knotMight end concisely,—but I failed to die,As formerly I failed to live,—and thusGrew willing, having tried all other ways,To try just God’s. Humility’s so good,When pride’s impossible. Mark us, how we makeOur virtues, cousin, from our worn-out sins,Which smack of them from henceforth. Is it right,For instance, to wed here, while you love there?And yet because a man sins once, the sinCleaves to him, in necessity to sin;That if he sin notso, to damn himself,He sinsso, to damn others with himself:And thus, to wed here, loving there, becomesA duty. Virtue buds a dubious leafRound mortal brows; your ivy’s better, dear.—Yet she, ’tis certain, is my very wife;The very lamb left mangled by the wolvesThrough my own bad shepherding: and could I chooseBut take her on my shoulder past this stretchOf rough, uneasy wilderness, poor lamb,Poor child, poor child?—Aurora, my belov’d,I will not vex you any more to-night;But, having spoken what I came to say,The rest shall please you. What she can, in me,—Protection, tender liking, freedom, ease,She shall have surely, liberally, for herAnd hers, Aurora. Small amends they’ll makeFor hideous evils (which she had not knownExcept by me) and for this imminent loss,This forfeit presence of a gracious friend,Which also she must forfeit for my sake,Since, ... drop your hand in mine a moment, sweet,We’re parting!—— Ah, my snowdrop, what a touch,As if the wind had swept it off! you grudgeYour gelid sweetness on my palm but so,A moment? angry, that I could not bearYou... speaking, breathing, living, side by sideWith some one called my wife ... and live, myself?Nay, be not cruel—you must understand!Your lightest footfall on a floor of mineWould shake the house, my lintel being uncrossed’Gainst angels: henceforth it is night with me,And so, henceforth, I put the shutters up;Auroras must not come to spoil my dark.’He smiled so feebly, with an empty handStretched sideway from me,—as indeed he lookedTo any one but me to give him help,—And, while the moon came suddenly out full,The double-rose of our Italian moons,Sufficient, plainly, for the heaven and earth,(The stars, struck dumb and washed away in dewsOf golden glory, and the mountains steepedIn divine languor) he, the man, appearedSo pale and patient, like the marble manA sculptor puts his personal sadness inTo join his grandeur of ideal thought,—As if his mallet struck me from my heightOf passionate indignation, I who had risenPale,—doubting, paused, ... Was Romney mad indeed?Had all this wrong of heart made sick the brain?Then quiet, with a sort of tremulous pride,‘Go, cousin,’ I said coldly. ‘A farewellWas sooner spoken ’twixt a pair of friendsIn those old days, than seems to suit you now:And if, since then, I’ve writ a book or two,I’m somewhat dull still in the manly artOf phrase and metaphrase. Why, any manCan carve a score of white Loves out of snow,As Buonarroti down in Florence there,And set them on the wall in some safe shade,As safe, sir, as your marriage! very good;Though if a woman took one from the ledgeTo put it on the table by her flowers,And let it mind her of a certain friend,’Twould drop at once, (so better,) would not bearHer nail-mark even, where she took it upA little tenderly; so best, I say:For me, I would not touch so light a thing,And risk to spoil it half an hour beforeThe sun shall shine to melt it: leave it there.I’m plain at speech, direct in purpose: whenI speak, you’ll take the meaning as it is,And not allow for puckerings in the silksBy clever stitches. I’m a woman, sir,And use the woman’s figures naturally,As you, the male license. So, I wish you well.I’m simply sorry for the griefs you’ve had—And not for your sake only, but mankind’s.This race is never grateful: from the first,One fills their cup at supper with pure wine,Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge,In bitter vinegar.’‘If gratefuller,’He murmured,—‘by so much less pitiable!God’s self would never have come down to die,Could man have thanked him for it.’‘Happily’Tis patent that, whatever,’ I resumed,‘You suffered from this thanklessness of men,You sink no more than Moses’ bulrush-boat,When once relieved of Moses; for you’re light,You’re light, my cousin! which is well for you,And manly. For myself,—now mark me, sir,They burnt Leigh Hall; but if, consummatedTo devils, heightened beyond Lucifers,They had burnt instead a star or two, of thoseWe saw above there just a moment back,Before the moon abolished them,—destroyedAnd riddled them in ashes through a sieveOn the head of the foundering universe,—what then?If you and I remained still you and I,It would not shift our places as mere friends,Nor render decent you should toss a phraseBeyond the point of actual feeling!—nay,You shall not interrupt me: as you said,We’re parting. Certainly, not once or twice,To-night you’ve mocked me somewhat, or yourself;And I, at least, have not deserved it soThat I should meet it unsurprised. But now,Enough: we’re parting ... parting. Cousin Leigh,I wish you well through all the acts of lifeAnd life’s relations, wedlock, not the least;And it shall ‘please me,’ in your words, to knowYou yield your wife, protection, freedom, ease,And very tender liking. May you liveSo happy with her, Romney, that your friendsMay praise her for it. Meantime, some of usAre wholly dull in keeping ignorantOf what she has suffered by you, and what debtOf sorrow your rich love sits down to pay:But if ’tis sweet for love to pay its debt,’Tis sweeter still for love to give its gift;And you, be liberal in the sweeter way,—You can, I think. At least, as touches me,You owe her, cousin Romney, no amends;She is not used to hold my gown so fast,You need entreat her now to let it go:The lady never was a friend of mine,Nor capable,—I thought you knew as much,—Of losing for your sake so poor a prizeAs such a worthless friendship. Be content,Good cousin, therefore, both for her and you!I’ll never spoil your dark, nor dull your noon,Nor vex you when you’re merry, nor when you rest:You shall not need to put a shutter upTo keep out this Aurora. Ah, your northCan make Auroras which vex nobody,Scarce known from evenings! also, let me say,My larks fly higher than some windows. Right;You’ve read your Leighs. Indeed ’twould shake a house,If such as I came in with outstretched hand,Still warm and thrilling from the clasp of one ...Of one we know, ... to acknowledge, palm to palm,As mistress there ... the Lady Waldemar.’‘Now God be with us’ ... with a sudden clashOf voice he interrupted—‘what name’s that?You spoke a name, Aurora.’‘Pardon me;I would that, Romney, I could name your wifeNor wound you, yet be worthy.’‘Are we mad?’He echoed—‘wife! mine! Lady Waldemar!I think you said my wife.’ He sprang to his feet,And threw his noble head back toward the moonAs one who swims against a stormy sea,And laughed with such a helpless, hopeless scorn,I stood and trembled.‘May God judge me so,’He said at last,—‘I came convicted here,And humbled sorely if not enough. I came,Because this woman from her crystal soulHad shown me something which a man calls light:Because too, formerly, I sinned by herAs, then and ever since, I have, by God,Through arrogance of nature,—though I loved ...Whom best, I need not say, ... since that is writToo plainly in the book of my misdeeds;And thus I came here to abase myself,And fasten, kneeling, on her regent browsA garland which I startled thence one dayOf her beautiful June-youth. But here againI’m baffled!—fail in my abasement asMy aggrandisement: there’s no room left for me,At any woman’s foot, who misconceivesMy nature, purpose, possible actions. What!Are you the Aurora who made large my dreamsTo frame your greatness? you conceive so small?You stand so less than woman, through being more,And lose your natural instinct, like a beast,Through intellectual culture? since indeedI do not think that any common sheWould dare adopt such fancy-forgeriesFor the legible life-signature of suchAs I, with all my blots: with all my blots!At last then, peerless cousin, we are peers—At last we’re even. Ah, you’ve left your height;And here upon my level we take hands,And here I reach you to forgive you, sweet,And that’s a fall, Aurora. Long agoYou seldom understood me,—but, before,I could not blame you. Then, you only seemedSo high above, you could not see below;But now I breathe,—but now I pardon!—nay,We’re parting. Dearest, men have burnt my house,Maligned my motives,—but not one, I swear,Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has,Who called the Lady Waldemar my wife.’‘Not married to her! yet you said’ ...‘Again?Nay, read the lines’ (he held a letter out)‘She sent you through me.’By the moonlight there,I tore the meaning out with passionate hasteMuch rather than I read it. Thus it ran.

Oneeve it happened, when I sate alone,Alone, upon the terrace of my tower,A book upon my knees, to counterfeitThe reading that I never read at all,While Marian, in the garden down below,Knelt by the fountain (I could just hear thrillThe drowsy silence of the exhausted day)And peeled a new fig from that purple heapIn the grass beside her,—turning out the redTo feed her eager child, who sucked at itWith vehement lips across a gap of airAs he stood opposite, face and curls a-flameWith that last sun-ray, crying, ‘give me, give,’And stamping with imperious baby-feet,(We’re all born princes)—something startled me,—The laugh of sad and innocent souls, that breaksAbruptly, as if frightened at itself;’Twas Marian laughed. I saw her glance aboveIn sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,And straightway dropped my eyes upon my book,And knew, the first time, ’twas Boccaccio’s tales,The Falcon’s,—of the lover who for loveDestroyed the best that loved him. Some of usDo it still, and then we sit and laugh no more.Laughyou, sweet Marian! you’ve the right to laugh,Since God himself is for you, and a child!For me there’s somewhat less,—and so, I sigh.The heavens were making room to hold the night,The sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gatesTo let the stars out slowly (prophesiedIn close-approaching advent, not discerned),While still the cue-owls from the cypressesOf the Poggio called and counted every pulseOf the skyey palpitation. GraduallyThe purple and transparent shadows slowHad filled up the whole valley to the brim,And flooded all the city, which you sawAs some drowned city in some enchanted sea,Cut off from nature,—drawing you who gaze,With passionate desire, to leap and plunge,And find a sea-king with a voice of waves,And treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locksYou cannot kiss but you shall bring awayTheir salt upon your lips. The duomo-bellStrikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,So deep; and fifty churches answer itThe same, with fifty various instances.Some gaslights tremble along squares and streets;The Pitti’s palace-front is drawn in fire;And, past the quays, Maria Novella’s Place,In which the mystic obelisks stand upTriangular, pyramidal, each basedOn a single trine of brazen tortoises,To guard that fair church, Buonarroti’s Bride,That stares out from her large blind dial-eyes,Her quadrant and armillary dials, blackWith rhythms of many suns and moons, in vainEnquiry for so rich a soul as his,—Methinks I have plunged, I see it all so clear....And, oh my heart, ... the sea-king!In my earsThe sound of waters. There he stood, my king!I felt him, rather than beheld him. UpI rose, as if he were my king indeed,And then sate down, in trouble at myself,And struggling for my woman’s empery.’Tis pitiful; but women are so made:We’ll die for you, perhaps,—’tis probable;But we’ll not spare you an inch of our full height:We’ll have our whole just stature,—five feet four,Though laid out in our coffins: pitiful!—‘You, Romney!—— Lady Waldemar is here?’He answered in a voice which was not his.‘I have her letter; you shall read it soon:But first, I must be heard a little, I,Who have waited long and travelled far for that,Although you thought to have shut a tedious bookAnd farewell. Ah, you dog-eared such a page,And here you find me.’Did he touch my hand,Or but my sleeve? I trembled, hand and foot,—He must have touched me.—‘Will you sit?’ I asked,And motioned to a chair; but down he sate,A little slowly, as a man in doubt,Upon the couch beside me,—couch and chairBeing wheeled upon the terrace.‘You are come,My cousin Romney?—this is wonderful.But all is wonder on such summer-nights;And nothing should surprise us any more,Who see that miracle of stars. Behold.’I signed above, where all the stars were out,As if an urgent heat had started thereA secret writing from a sombre page,A blank last moment, crowded suddenlyWith hurrying splendours.‘Then you do not know’—He murmured.‘Yes, I know,’ I said, ‘I know.I had the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet I did not think you’d leave the workIn England, for so much even,—though, of course,You’ll make a work-day of your holiday,And turn it to our Tuscan people’s use,—Who much need helping since the Austrian boar(So bold to cross the Alp by LombardyAnd dash his brute front unabashed againstThe steep snow-bosses of that shield of GodWho soon shall rise in wrath and shake it clear,)Came hither also,—raking up our vinesAnd olive-gardens with his tyrannous tusks,And rolling on our maize with all his swine,’‘You had the news from Vincent Carrington,’He echoed,—picking up the phrase beyond,As if he knew the rest was merely talkTo fill a gap and keep out a strong wind,—‘You had, then, Vincent’s personal news?’‘His own,’I answered. ‘All that ruined world of yoursSeems crumbling into marriage. CarringtonHas chosen wisely.’‘Doyoutake it so?’He cried, ‘and is it possible at last’ ...He paused there,—and then, inward to himself,‘Too much at last, too late!—yet certainly’ ...(And there his voice swayed as an Alpine plankThat feels a passionate torrent underneath)‘The knowledge, if I had known it, first or last,Had never changed the actual case forme.And best, forher, at this time.’Nay, I thought,He loves Kate Ward, it seems, now, like a man,Because he has married Lady Waldemar.Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was movedTo hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wellsIn this world! Then I spoke,—‘I did not think,My cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.’‘In fact I never knew her. ’Tis enoughThat Vincent did, before he chose his wifeFor other reasons than those topaz eyesI’ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,For all that. One takes up the world with eyes.’—Including Romney Leigh, I thought again,Albeit he knows them only by repute.How vile must all men be, sincehe’sa man.His deep pathetic voice, as if he guessedI did not surely love him, took the word;‘You never got a letter from Lord HoweA month back, dear Aurora?’‘None,’ I said.‘I felt it was so,’ he replied: ‘Yet, strange!Sir Blaise Delorme has passed through Florence?’‘Ay,By chance I saw him in Our Lady’s church,(I saw him, mark you, but he saw not me)Clean-washed in holy water from the countOf things terrestrial,—letters and the rest;He had crossed us out together with his sins.Ay, strange; but only strange that good Lord HowePreferred him to the post because of pauls.For me I’m sworn to never trust a man—At least with letters.’‘There were facts to tell,—To smooth with eye and accent. Howe supposed ...Well, well, no matter! there was dubious need;You heard the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet perhaps you had been startled lessTo see me, dear Aurora, if you had readThat letter.’—Now he sets me down as vexed.I think I’ve draped myself in woman’s prideTo a perfect purpose. Oh, I’m vexed, it seems!My friend Lord Howe deputes his friend Sir Blaise,To break as softly as a sparrow’s eggThat lets a bird out tenderly, the newsOf Romney’s marriage to a certain saint;Tosmooth with eye and accent,—indicateHis possible presence. Excellently wellYou’ve played your part, my Lady Waldemar,—As I’ve played mine.‘Dear Romney,’ I began,‘You did not use, of old, to be so likeA Greek king coming from a taken Troy,’Twas needful that precursors spread your pathWith three-piled carpets, to receive your footAnd dull the sound of’t. For myself, be sure,Although it frankly ground the gravel here,I still could bear it. Yet I’m sorry, too,To lose this famous letter, which Sir BlaiseHas twisted to a lighter absentlyTo fire some holy taper with: Lord HoweWrites letters good for all things but to lose;And many a flower of London gossipryHas dropt wherever such a stem broke off,—Of course I know that, lonely among my vines,Where nothing’s talked of, save the blight again,And no more Chianti! Still the letter’s useAs preparation ... Did I start indeed?Last night I started at a cockchafer,And shook a half-hour after. Have you learntNo more of women, ’spite of privilege,Than still to take account too seriouslyOf such weak flutterings? Why, we like it, sir,—We get our powers and our effects that way.The trees stand stiff and still at time of frost,If no wind tears them; but, let summer come,When trees are happy,—and a breath availsTo set them trembling through a million leavesIn luxury of emotion. Something lessIt takes to move a woman: let her startAnd shake at pleasure,—nor conclude at yours,The winter’s bitter,—but the summer’s green.’He answered, ‘Be the summer ever greenWith you, Aurora!—though you sweep your sexWith somewhat bitter gusts from where you liveAbove them,—whirling downward from your heightsYour very own pine-cones, in a grand disdainOf the lowland burrs with which you scatter them.So high and cold to others and yourself,A little less to Romney, were unjust,And thus, I would not have you. Let it pass:I feel content, so. You can bear indeedMy sudden step beside you: but for me,’Twould move me sore to hear your softened voice,—Aurora’s voice,—if softened unawareIn pity of what I am.’Ah friend, I thought,As husband of the Lady WaldemarYou’re granted very sorely pitiable!And yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voiceFrom softening in the pity of your case,As if from lie or licence. CertainlyWe’ll soak up all the slush and soil of lifeWith softened voices, ere we come toyou.At which I interrupted my own thoughtAnd spoke out calmly. ‘Let us ponder, friend,Whate’er our state, we must have made it first;And though the thing displease us, ay, perhapsDisplease us warrantably, never doubtThat other states, thought possible once, and thenRejected by the instinct of our lives,—If then adopted, had displeased us moreThan this, in which the choice, the will, the love,Has stamped the honour of a patent actFrom henceforth. What we choose, may not be good;But, that we choose it, proves it good forusPotentially, fantastically, nowOr last year, rather than a thing we saw,And saw no need for choosing. Moths will burnTheir wings,—which proves that light is good for moths,Or else they had flown not, where they agonise,’‘Ay, light is good,’ he echoed, and there paused.And then abruptly, ... ‘Marian. Marian’s well?’I bowed my head, but found no word. ’Twas hardTo speak ofherto Lady Waldemar’sNew husband. How much did he know, at last?How much? how little?—— He would take no sign,But straight repeated,—‘Marian. Is she well?’‘She’s well,’ I answered.She was there in sightAn hour back, but the night had drawn her home;Where still I heard her in an upper room,Her low voice singing to the child in bed,Who restless with the summer-heat and playAnd slumber snatched at noon, was long sometimesAt falling off, and took a score of songsAnd mother-hushes, ere she saw him sound.‘She’s well,’ I answered.‘Here?’ he asked.‘Yes, here.’He stopped and sighed. ‘That shall be presently,But now this must be. I have words to say,And would be alone to say them, I with you,And no third troubling.’‘Speak then,’ I returned,‘She will not vex you.’At which, suddenlyHe turned his face upon me with its smile,As if to crush me. ‘I have read your book,Aurora.’‘You have read it,’ I replied,‘And I have writ it,—we have done with it.And now the rest?’‘The rest is like the first,’He answered,—‘for the book is in my heart,Lives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me:My daily bread tastes of it,—and my wineWhich has no smack of it, I pour it out;It seems unnatural drinking.’BitterlyI took the word up; ‘Never waste your wine.The book lived in me ere it lived in you;I know it closer than another does,And that it’s foolish, feeble, and afraid,And all unworthy so much compliment.Beseech you, keep your wine,—and, when you drink,Still wish some happier fortune to your friend,Than even to have written a far better book.’He answered gently, ‘That is consequent:The poet looks beyond the book he has made,Or else he had not made it. If a manCould make a man, he’d henceforth be a godIn feeling what a little thing is man:It is not my case. And this special book,I did not make it, to make light of it:It stands above my knowledge, draws me up;’Tis high to me. It may be that the bookIs not so high, but I so low, instead;Still high to me. I mean no compliment:I will not say there are not, young or old,Male writers, ay, or female,—let it pass,Who’ll write us richer and completer books.A man may love a woman perfectly,And yet by no means ignorantly maintainA thousand women have not larger eyes:Enough that she alone has looked at himWith eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.And so, this book, Aurora,—so, your book.’‘Alas,’ I answered, ‘is it so, indeed?’And then was silent.‘Is it so, indeed,’He echoed, ‘thatalasis all your word?’I said,—‘I’m thinking of a far-off June,When you and I, upon my birthday once,Discoursed of life and art, with both untried.I’m thinking, Romney, how ’twas morning then,And now ’tis night.’‘And now,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’‘I’m thinking,’ I resumed, ‘’tis somewhat sadThat if I had known, that morning in the dew,My cousin Romney would have said such wordsOn such a night, at close of many years,In speaking of a future book of mine,It would have pleased me better as a hope,Than as an actual grace it can at all.That’s sad, I’m thinking.’‘Ay,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’‘And there,’ I added lightly, ‘are the stars!And here, we’ll talk of stars, and not of books.’‘You have the stars,’ he murmured,—‘it is well:Be like them! shine, Aurora, on my dark,Though high and cold and only like a star,And for this short night only,—you, who keepThe same Aurora of the bright June dayThat withered up the flowers before my face,And turned me from the garden evermoreBecause I was not worthy. Oh, deserved,Deserved! That I, who verily had not learntGod’s lesson half, attaining as a dunceTo obliterate good words with fractious thumbsAnd cheat myself of the context,—Ishould pushAside, with male ferocious impudence,The world’s Aurora who had conned her partOn the other side the leaf! ignore her so,Because she was a woman and a queen,And had no beard to bristle through her song,—My teacher, who has taught me with a book,My Miriam, whose sweet mouth, when nearly drownedI still heard singing on the shore! Deserved,That here I should look up unto the starsAnd miss the glory’ ...‘Can I understand?’I broke in. ‘You speak wildly, Romney Leigh,Or I hear wildly. In that morning-timeWe recollect, the roses were too red,The trees too green, reproach too naturalIf one should see not what the other saw:And now, it’s night, remember; we have shadesIn place of colours; we are now grown cold,And old, my cousin Romney. Pardon me,—I’m very happy that you like my book,And very sorry that I quoted backA ten years’ birthday; ’twas so mad a thingIn any woman, I scarce marvel muchYou took it for a venturous piece of spite,Provoking such excuses, as indeedI cannot call you slack in.’‘Understand,’He answered sadly, ‘something, if but so.This night is softer than an English day,And men may well come hither when they’re sick,To draw in easier breath from larger air.’Tis thus with me; I’ve come to you,—to you,My Italy of women, just to breatheMy soul out once before you, ere I go,As humble as God makes me at the last,(I thank Him) quite out of the way of men,And yours, Aurora,—like a punished child,His cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness,To silence in a corner. I am comeTo speak, beloved’....‘Wisely, cousin Leigh,And worthily of us both!’‘Yes, worthily;For this time I must speak out and confessThat I, so truculent in assumption once,So absolute in dogma, proud in aim,And fierce in expectation,—I, who feltThe whole world tugging at my skirts for help,As if no other man than I, could pull,Nor woman, but I led her by the hand,Nor cloth hold, but I had it in my coat,—Do know myself to-night for what I wasOn that June-day, Aurora. Poor bright day,Which meant the best ... a woman and a rose, ...And which I smote upon the cheek with words,Until it turned and rent me! Young you were,That birthday, poet, but you talked the right:While I, ... I built up follies like a wallTo intercept the sunshine and your face.Your face! that’s worse.’‘Speak wisely, cousin Leigh.’‘Yes, wisely, dear Aurora, though too late:But then, not wisely. I was heavy then,And stupid, and distracted with the criesOf tortured prisoners in the polished brassOf that Phalarian bull, society,—Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,But, if you listen, moans and cries insteadDespairingly, like victims tossed and goredAnd trampled by their hoofs. I heard the criesToo close: I could not hear the angels liftA fold of rustling air, nor what they saidTo help my pity. I beheld the worldAs one great famishing carnivorous mouth,—A huge, deserted, callow, black, bird Thing,With piteous open beak that hurt my heart,Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped,And tore the violets up to get the worms.Worms, worms, was all my cry: an open mouth,A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips,No more! That poor men narrowed their demandsTo such an end, was virtue, I supposed,Adjudicating that to see it soWas reason. Oh, I did not push the caseUp higher, and ponder how it answers, whenThe rich take up the same cry for themselves,Professing equally,—‘an open mouthA gross want, food to fill us, and no more!’Why that’s so far from virtue, only viceFinds reason for it! That makes libertines:That slurs our cruel streets from end to endWith eighty thousand women in one smile,Who only smile at night beneath the gas:The body’s satisfaction and no more,Being used for argument against the soul’s,Here too! the want, here too, implying the right.—How dark I stood that morning in the sun,My best Aurora, though I saw your eyes,—When first you told me ... oh, I recollectThe words ... and how you lifted your white hand,And how your white dress and your burnished curlsWent greatening round you in the still blue air,As if an inspiration from withinHad blown them all out when you spoke the same,Even these,—‘You will not compass your poor endsOf barley-feeding and material ease,Without the poet’s individualismTo 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 an inch insideThe dust of the actual: and your Fouriers failed,Because not poets enough to understandThat life develops from within.’ I sayYour words,—I could say other words of yours;For none of all your words has been more lostThan sweet verbena, which, being brushed against,Will hold you three hours after by the smell,In spite of long walks on the windy hills.But these words dealt in sharper perfume,—theseWere ever on me, stinging through my dreams,And saying themselves for ever o’er my actsLike some unhappy verdict. That I failed,Is certain. Stye or no stye, to contriveThe swine’s propulsion toward the precipice,Proved easy and plain. I subtly organisedAnd ordered, built the cards up high and higher,Till, some one breathing, all fell flat again;In setting right society’s wide wrong,Mere life’s so fatal! So I failed indeedOnce, twice, and oftener,—hearing through the rentsOf obstinate purpose, still those words of yours,‘You will not compass your poor ends, not you!’But harder than you said them; every timeStill farther from your voice, until they cameTo overcrow me with triumphant scornWhich vexed me to resistance. Set down thisFor condemnation,—I was guilty here:I stood upon my deed and fought my doubt,As men will,—for I doubted,—till at lastMy deed gave way beneath me suddenly,And left me what I am. The curtain dropped,My part quite ended, all the footlights quenched,My own soul hissing at me through the dark,I, ready for confession,—I was wrong,I’ve sorely failed; I’ve slipped the ends of life,I yield; you have conquered.’‘Stay,’ I answered him;‘I’ve something for your hearing, also. IHave failed too.’‘You!’ he said, ‘you’re very great;The sadness of your greatness fits you well:As if the plume upon a hero’s casqueShould nod a shadow upon his victor face.’I took him up austerely,—‘You have readMy book, but not my heart; for recollect,’Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at.I’ve surely failed, I know; if failure meansTo look back sadly on work gladly done,—To wander on my mountains of Delight,So called, (I can remember a friend’s wordsAs well as you, sir,) weary and in wantOf even a sheep-path, thinking bitterly....Well, well! no matter. I but say so much,To keep you, Romney Leigh, from saying more,And let you feel I am not so high indeed,That I can bear to have you at my foot,—Or safe, that I can help you. That June-day,Too deeply sunk in craterous sunsets nowFor you or me to dig it up alive;To pluck it out all bleeding with spent flameAt the roots, before those moralising starsWe have got instead,—that poor lost day, you saidSome words as truthful as the thing of mineYou care to keep in memory: and I holdIf I, that day, and, being the girl I was,Had shown a gentler spirit, less arrogance,It had not hurt me. Ah, you’ll not mistakeThe point here. I but only think, you see,More justly, that’s more humbly, of myself,Than when I tried a crown on and supposed....Nay, laugh, sir,—I’ll laugh with you!—pray you, laugh.I’ve had so many birthdays since that day,I’ve learnt to prize mirth’s opportunities,Which come too seldom. Was it you who saidI was not changed? the same Aurora? Ah,We could laugh there, too! Why, Ulysses’ dogKnewhim, and wagged his tail and died: but ifI had owned a dog, I too, before my Troy,And, if you brought him here, ... I warrant youHe’d look into my face, bark lustily,And live on stoutly, as the creatures willWhose spirits are not troubled by long loves.A dog would never know me, I’m so changed;Much less a friend ... except that you’re misledBy the colour of the hair, the trick of the voice,Like that Aurora Leigh’s.’‘Sweet trick of voice!I would be a dog for this, to know it at last,And die upon the falls of it. O love,O best Aurora! are you then so sad,You scarcely had been sadder as my wife?’‘Your wife, sir! I must certainly be changed,If I, Aurora, can have said a thingSo light, it catches at the knightly spursOf a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh,And trips him from his honourable senseOf what befits’ ...‘You wholly misconceive,’He answered.I returned,—‘I’m glad of it;But keep from misconception, too, yourself:I am not humbled to so low a point,Nor so far saddened. If I am sad at all,Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head,Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth,Though ne’er so merry: I’m perforce more wise,And that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest,Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole,That birthday morning. ’Tis impossibleTo get at men excepting through their souls,However open their carnivorous jaws;And poets get directlier at the soul,Than any of your œconomists:—for which,You must not overlook the poet’s workWhen scheming for the world’s necessities.The soul’s the way. Not even Christ HimselfCan save man else than as He holds man’s soul;And therefore did He come into our flesh,As some wise hunter creeping on his kneesWith a torch, into the blackness of some cave,To face and quell the beast there,—take the soul,And so possess the whole man, body and soul.I said, so far, right, yes; not farther, though:We both were wrong that June-day,—both as wrongAs an east wind had been. I who talked of art,And you who grieved for all men’s griefs ... what then?We surely made too small a part for GodIn these things. What we are, imports us moreThan what we eat; and life, you’ve granted me,Develops from within. But innermostOf the inmost, most interior of the interne,God claims his own, Divine humanityRenewing nature,—or the piercingest verse,Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keepAs much upon the outside of a man,As the very bowl, in which he dips his beard.—And then, ... the rest. I cannot surely speak.Perhaps I doubt more than you doubted then,If I, the poet’s veritable charge,Have borne upon my forehead. If I have,It might feel somewhat liker to a crown,The foolish green one even.—Ah, I think,And chiefly when the sun shines, that I’ve failed.But what then, Romney? Though we fail indeed,You ... I ... a score of such weak workers, ... HeFails never. If He cannot work by us,He will work over us. Does He want a man,Much less a woman, think you? Every timeThe star winks there, so many souls are born,Who all shall work too. Let our own be calm:We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,Impatient that we’re nothing.’‘Could we sitJust so for ever, sweetest friend,’ he said,‘My failure would seem better than success.And yet, indeed, your book has dealt with meMore gently, cousin, than you ever will!The book brought down entire the bright June-day,And set me wandering in the garden-walks,And let me watch the garland in a place,You blushed so ... nay, forgive me; do not stir:I only thank the book for what it taught,And what, permitted. Poet, doubt yourself;But never doubt that you’re a poet to meFrom henceforth. Ah, you’ve written poems, sweet,Which moved me in secret, as the sap is movedIn still March-branches, signless as a stone:But this last book o’ercame me like soft rainWhich falls at midnight, when the tightened barkBreaks out into unhesitating buds,And sudden protestations of the spring.In all your other books, I saw butyou:A man may see the moon so, in a pond,And not be nearer therefore to the moon,Nor use the sight ... except to drown himself:And so I forced my heart back from the sight;For what hadI, I thought, to do withher,—Aurora ... Romney? But, in this last book,You showed me something separate from yourself,Beyond you; and I bore to take it in,And let it draw me. You have shown me truths,O June-day friend, that help me now at night,When June is over! truths not yours, indeed,But set within my reach by means of you:Presented by your voice and verse the wayTo take them clearest. Verily I was wrong;And verily, many thinkers of this age,Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,Are wrong in just my sense, who understoodOur natural world too insularly, as ifNo spiritual counterpart completed itConsummating its meaning, rounding allTo justice and perfection, line by line,Form by form, nothing single, nor alone,—The great below clenched by the great above;Shade here authenticating substance there;The body proving spirit, as the effectThe cause: we, meantime, being too grossly aptTo hold the natural, as dogs a bone,(Though reason and nature beat us in the face);So obstinately, that we’ll break our teethOr ever we let go. For everywhereWe’re too materialistic,—eating clay,(Like men of the west) instead of Adam’s cornAnd Noah’s wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,Until we’re filled up to the throat with clay,And grow the grimy colour of the groundOn which we are feeding. Ay, materialistThe age’s name is. God himself, with some,Is apprehended as the bare resultOf what his hand materially has made,Expressed in such an algebraic sign,Called God;—that is, to put it otherwise,They add up nature to a naught of GodAnd cross the quotient. There are many, even,Whose names are written in the Christian churchTo no dishonour,—diet still on mud,And splash the altars with it. You might thinkThe clay, Christ laid upon their eyelids when,Still blind, he called them to the use of sight,Remained there to retard its exerciseWith clogging incrustations. Close to heaven,They see, for mysteries, through the open doors,Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware;And fain would enter, when their time shall come,With quite a different body than St. PaulHas promised,—husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn,Or where’s the resurrection?’‘Thus it is,’I sighed. And he resumed with mournful face.‘Beginning so, and filling up with clayThe wards of this great key, the natural world,And fumbling vainly therefore at the lockOf the spiritual,—we feel ourselves shut inWith all the wild-beast roar of struggling life,The terrors and compunctions of our souls,As saints with lions,—we who are not saints,And have no heavenly lordship in our stareTo awe them backward! Ay, we are forced, so pent,To judge the whole too partially, ... confoundConclusions. Is there any common phraseSignificant, when the adverb’s heard alone,The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?But we, distracted in the roar of life,Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,And bruit against Him that his thought is void,His meaning hopeless;—cry, that everywhereThe government is slipping from his hand,Unless some other Christ ... say Romney Leigh ...Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world,For which the First has proved inadequate,However we talk bigly of His workAnd piously of His person. We blasphemeAt last, to finish that doxology,Despairing on the earth for which He died.’‘So now,’ I asked, ‘you have more hope of men?’‘I hope,’ he answered: ‘I am come to thinkThat God will have his work done, as you said,And that we need not be disturbed too muchFor Romney Leigh or others having failedWith this or that quack nostrum,—recipesFor keeping summits by annulling depths,For learning wrestling with long lounging sleeves,And perfect heroism without a scratch.We fail,—what, then? Aurora, if I smiledTo see you, in your lovely morning-pride,Try on the poet’s wreath which suits the noon,—(Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stainBefore they grow the ivy!) certainlyI stood myself there worthier of contempt,Self-rated, in disastrous arrogance,As competent to sorrow for mankindAnd even their odds. A man may well despair,Who counts himself so needful to success.I failed. I throw the remedy back on God,And sit down here beside you, in good hope.’‘And yet, take heed,’ I answered, ‘lest we leanToo dangerously on the other side,And so fail twice. Be sure, no earnest workOf any honest creature, howbeit weak,Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,It is not gathered as a grain of sandTo enlarge the sum of human action usedFor carrying out God’s end. No creature worksSo ill, observe, that therefore he’s cashiered.The honest earnest man must stand and work;The woman also; otherwise she dropsAt once below the dignity of man,Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work:Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.’He cried, ‘True. After Adam, work was curse;The natural creature labours, sweats and frets.But, after Christ, work turns to privilege;And henceforth one with our humanity,The Six-day Worker, working still in us,Has called us freely to work on with HimIn high companionship. So, happiest!I count that Heaven itself is only workTo a surer issue. Let us work, indeed,—But, no more, work as Adam ... nor as LeighErewhile, as if the only man on earth,Responsible for all the thistles blownAnd tigers couchant,—struggling in amazeAgainst disease and winter,—snarling onFor ever, that the world’s not paradise.Oh cousin, let us be content, in work,To do the thing we can, and not presumeTo fret because it’s little. ’Twill employSeven men, they say, to make a perfect pin:Who makes the head, content to miss the point,—Who makes the point, agreed to leave the join:And if a man should cry, ‘I want a pin,And I must make it straightway, head and point,’—His wisdom is not worth the pin he wants.Seven men to a pin,—and not a man too much!Seven generations, haply, to this world,To right it visibly, a finger’s breadth,And mend its rents a little. Oh, to stormAnd say,—‘This world here is intolerable;I will not eat this corn, nor drink this wine,Nor love this woman, flinging her my soulWithout a bond for’t, as a lover should,Nor use the generous leave of happinessAs not too good for using generously’—(Since virtue kindles at the touch of joy,Like a man’s cheek laid on a woman’s hand;And God, who knows it, looks for quick returnsFrom joys)!—to stand and claim to have a lifeBeyond the bounds of the individual man,And raze all personal cloisters of the soulTo build up public stores and magazines,As if God’s creatures otherwise were lost,The builder surely saved by any means!To think,—I have a pattern on my nail,And I will carve the world new after it,And solve so, these hard social questions,—nay,Impossible social questions,—since their rootsStrike deep in Evil’s own existence here,Which God permits because the question’s hardTo abolish evil nor attaint free-will.Ay, hard to God, but not to Romney Leigh!For Romney has a pattern on his nail,(Whatever may be lacking on the Mount)And not being overnice to separateWhat’s element from what’s convention, hastesBy line on line, to draw you out a world,Without your help indeed, unless you takeHis yoke upon you and will learn of him,—So much he has to teach! so good a world!The same, the whole creation’s groaning for!No rich nor poor, no gain nor loss nor stint,No potage in it able to excludeA brother’s birthright, and no right of birth,The potage,—both secured to every man;And perfect virtue dealt out like the rest,Gratuitously, with the soup at six,To whoso does not seek it.’‘Softly, sir,’I interrupted,—‘I had a cousin onceI held in reverence. If he strained too wide,It was not to take honour, but give help;The gesture was heroic. If his handAccomplished nothing ... (well, it is not proved)That empty hand thrown impotently outWere sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven,Than many a hand that reaped a harvest inAnd keeps the scythe’s glow on it. Pray you, then,For my sake merely, use less bitternessIn speaking of my cousin.’‘Ah,’ he said,‘Aurora! when the prophet beats the ass,The angel intercedes.’ He shook his head—‘And yet to mean so well, and fail so foul,Expresses ne’er another beast than man;The antithesis is human. Harken, dear;There’s too much abstract willing, purposing,In this poor world. We talk by aggregates,And think by systems; and, being used to faceOur evils in statistics, are inclinedTo cap them with unreal remediesDrawn out in haste on the other side the slate.’‘That’s true,’ I answered, fain to throw up thought,And make a game of’t; ‘Oh, we generaliseEnough to please you. If we pray at all,We pray no longer for our daily bread,But next centenary’s harvests. If we give,Our cup of water is not tendered tillWe lay down pipes and found a CompanyWith Branches. Ass or angel, ’tis the same:A woman cannot do the thing she ought,Which means whatever perfect thing she can,In life, in art, in science, but she fearsTo let the perfect action take her partAnd rest there: she must prove what she can doBefore she does it,—prate of woman’s rights,Of woman’s mission, woman’s function, tillThe men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,‘A woman’s function plainly is ... to talk.’Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!They cannot hear each other speak.’‘And you,An artist, judge so?’‘I, an artist,—yes,Because, precisely, I’m an artist, sir,And woman,—if another sate in sight,I’d whisper,—Soft, my sister! not a word!By speaking we prove only we can speak;Which he, the man here, never doubted. WhatHe doubts, is whether we candothe thingWith decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all:Now, do it; bring your statue,—you have room!He’ll see it even by the starlight here;And if ’tis e’er so little like the godWho looks out from the marble silentlyAlong the track of his own shining dartThrough the dusk of ages,—there’s no need to speak;The universe shall henceforth speak for you,And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was bornTo do it,—claims her license in her work.’—And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech:Who rights a land’s finances, is excusedFor touching coppers, though her hands be white,—But we, we talk!’‘It is the age’s mood,’He said; ‘we boast, and do not. We put upHostelry signs where’er we lodge a day,—Some red colossal cow, with mighty papsA Cyclops’ fingers could not strain to milk;Then bring out presently our saucer-fullOf curds. We want more quiet in our works,More knowledge of the bounds in which we work;More knowledge that each individual manRemains an Adam to the general race,Constrained to see, like Adam, that he keepHis personal state’s condition honestly,Or vain all thoughts of his to help the world,Which still must be developed from itsone,If bettered in its many. We, indeed,Who think to lay it out new like a park,We take a work on us which is not man’s;For God alone sits far enough above,To speculate so largely. None of us(Not Romney Leigh) is mad enough to say,We’ll have a grove of oaks upon that slopeAnd sink the need of acorns. Government,If veritable and lawful, is not givenBy imposition of the foreign hand,—Nor chosen from a pretty pattern-bookOf some domestic idealogue, who sitsAnd coldly chooses empire, where as wellHe might republic. Genuine governmentIs but the expression of a nation, goodOr less good,—even as all society,Howe’er unequal, monstrous, crazed, and cursed,Is but the expression of men’s single lives,The loud sum of the silent units. What,We’d change the aggregate and yet retainEach separate figure? Whom do we cheat by that?Now, not even Romney.’‘Cousin, you are sad.Did all your social labour at Leigh HallAnd elsewhere, come to nought then?’‘Itwasnought,’He answered mildly. ‘There is room indeed,For statues still, in this large world of God’s,But not for vacuums,—so I am not sad:Not sadder than is good for what I am.My vain phalanstery dissolved itself;My men and women of disordered lives,I brought in orderly to dine and sleep,Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,With fierce contortions of the natural face;And cursed me for my tyrannous constraintIn forcing crooked creatures to live straight;And set the country hounds upon my backTo bite and tear me for my wicked deedOf trying to do good without the churchOr even the squires, Aurora. Do you mindYour ancient neighbours? The great book-club teemsWith ‘sketches,’ ‘summaries,’ and ‘last tracts’ but twelve,On socialistic troublers of close bondsBetwixt the generous rich and grateful poor.The vicar preached from ‘Revelations,’ (tillThe doctor woke) and found me with ‘the frogs’On three successive Sundays; ay, and stoppedTo weep a little (for he’s getting old)That such perdition should o’ertake a manOf such fair acres,—in the parish, too!He printed his discourses ‘by request;’And if your book shall sell as his did, thenYour verses are less good than I suppose.The women of the neighbourhood subscribed,And sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk,Tooled edges, blazoned with the arms of Leigh:I own that touched me.’‘What, the pretty ones?Poor Romney!’‘Otherwise the effect was small.I had my windows broken once or twiceBy liberal peasants, naturally incensedAt such a vexer of Arcadian peace,Who would not let men call their wives their ownTo kick like Britons,—and made obstaclesWhen things went smoothly as a baby drugged,Toward freedom and starvation; bringing downThe wicked London tavern-thieves and drabs,To affront the blessed hillside drabs and thievesWith mended morals, quotha,—fine new lives!—My windows paid for’t. I was shot at, once,By an active poacher who had hit a hareFrom the other barrel, tired of springeing gameSo long upon my acres, undisturbed,And restless for the country’s virtue, (yetHe missed me)—ay, and pelted very oftIn riding through the village. ‘There he goes,Who’d drive away our Christian gentlefolks,To catch us undefended in the trapHe baits with poisonous cheese, and lock us upIn that pernicious prison of Leigh HallWith all his murderers! Give another name,And say Leigh Hell, and burn it up with fire.’And so they did, at last, Aurora.’‘Did?’‘You never heard it, cousin? Vincent’s newsCame stinted, then.’‘They did? they burnt Leigh Hall?’‘You’re sorry, dear Aurora? Yes indeed,They did it perfectly: a thorough work,And not a failure, this time. Let us grant’Tis somewhat easier, though, to burn a houseThan build a system:—yet that’s easy, too,In a dream. Books, pictures,—ay, the pictures! what,You think your dear Vandykes would give them pause?Our proud ancestral Leighs with those peaked beards,Or bosoms white as foam thrown up on rocksFrom the old-spent wave. Such calm defiant looksThey flared up with! now, nevermore they’ll twitThe bones in the family-vault with ugly death.Not one was rescued, save the Lady Maud,Who threw you down, that morning you were born,The undeniable lineal mouth and chin,To wear for ever for her gracious sake;For which good deed I saved her: the rest went:And you, you’re sorry, cousin. Well, for me,With all my phalansterians safely out,(Poor hearts, they helped the burners, it was said,And certainly a few clapped hands and yelled)The ruin did not hurt me as it might,—As when for instance I was hurt one day,A certain letter being destroyed. In fact,To see the great house flare so ... oaken floors,Our fathers made so fine with rushes once,Before our mothers furbished them with trains,—Carved wainscoats, panelled walls, the favourite slideFor draining off a martyr, (or a rogue)The echoing galleries, half a half-mile long,And all the various stairs that took you upAnd took you down, and took you round aboutUpon their slippery darkness, recollect,All helping to keep up one blazing jest;The flames through all the casements pushing forth,Like red-hot devils crinkled into snakes,All signifying,—‘Look you, Romney Leigh,We save the people from your saving, here,Yet so as by fire! we make a pretty showBesides,—and that’s the best you’ve ever done.’——To see this, almost moved myself to clap!The ‘vale et plaude’ came, too, with effect,When, in the roof fell, and the fire, that paused,Stunned momently beneath the stroke of slatesAnd tumbling rafters, rose at once and roared,And wrapping the whole house, (which disappearedIn a mounting whirlwind of dilated flame,)Blew upward, straight, its drift of fiery chaffIn the face of Heaven, ... which blenched, and ran up higher.’‘Poor Romney!’‘Sometimes when I dream,’ he said,‘I hear the silence after; ’twas so still.For all those wild beasts, yelling, cursing round,Were suddenly silent, while you counted five!So silent, that you heard a young bird fallFrom the top-nest in the neighbouring rookeryThrough edging over-rashly toward the light.The old rooks had already fled too far,To hear the screech they fled with, though you sawSome flying on still, like scatterings of dead leavesIn autumn-gusts, seen dark against the sky:All flying,—ousted, like the House of Leigh.’‘Dear Romney!’‘Evidently ’twould have beenA fine sight for a poet, sweet, like you,To make the verse blaze after. I myself,Even I, felt something in the grand old trees,Which stood that moment like brute Druid godsAmazed upon the rim of ruin, where,As into a blackened socket, the great fireHad dropped,—still throwing up splinters now and then,To show them grey with all their centuries,Left there to witness that on such a dayThe house went out.’‘Ah!’‘While you counted fiveI seemed to feel a little like a Leigh,—But then it passed, Aurora. A child cried;And I had enough to think of what to doWith all those houseless wretches in the dark,And ponder where they’d dance the next time, theyWho had burnt the viol.’‘Did you think of that?Who burns his viol will not dance, I know,To cymbals, Romney.’‘O my sweet sad voice,’He cried,—‘O voice that speaks and overcomes!The sun is silent, but Aurora speaks.’‘Alas,’ I said; ‘I speak I know not what:I’m back in childhood, thinking as a child,A foolish fancy—will it make you smile?I shall not from the window of my roomCatch sight of those old chimneys any more.’‘No more,’ he answered. ‘If you pushed one dayThrough all the green hills to our fathers’ house,You’d come upon a great charred circle whereThe patient earth was singed an acre round;With one stone-stair, symbolic of my life,Ascending, winding, leading up to nought!’Tis worth a poet’s seeing. Will you go?’I made no answer. Had I any rightTo weep with this man, that I dared to speak?A woman stood between his soul and mine,And waved us off from touching evermoreWith those unclean white hands of hers. Enough.We had burnt our viols and were silent.So,The silence lengthened till it pressed. I spoke,To breathe: ‘I think you were ill afterward.’‘More ill,’ he answered, ‘had been scarcely ill.I hoped this feeble fumbling at life’s knotMight end concisely,—but I failed to die,As formerly I failed to live,—and thusGrew willing, having tried all other ways,To try just God’s. Humility’s so good,When pride’s impossible. Mark us, how we makeOur virtues, cousin, from our worn-out sins,Which smack of them from henceforth. Is it right,For instance, to wed here, while you love there?And yet because a man sins once, the sinCleaves to him, in necessity to sin;That if he sin notso, to damn himself,He sinsso, to damn others with himself:And thus, to wed here, loving there, becomesA duty. Virtue buds a dubious leafRound mortal brows; your ivy’s better, dear.—Yet she, ’tis certain, is my very wife;The very lamb left mangled by the wolvesThrough my own bad shepherding: and could I chooseBut take her on my shoulder past this stretchOf rough, uneasy wilderness, poor lamb,Poor child, poor child?—Aurora, my belov’d,I will not vex you any more to-night;But, having spoken what I came to say,The rest shall please you. What she can, in me,—Protection, tender liking, freedom, ease,She shall have surely, liberally, for herAnd hers, Aurora. Small amends they’ll makeFor hideous evils (which she had not knownExcept by me) and for this imminent loss,This forfeit presence of a gracious friend,Which also she must forfeit for my sake,Since, ... drop your hand in mine a moment, sweet,We’re parting!—— Ah, my snowdrop, what a touch,As if the wind had swept it off! you grudgeYour gelid sweetness on my palm but so,A moment? angry, that I could not bearYou... speaking, breathing, living, side by sideWith some one called my wife ... and live, myself?Nay, be not cruel—you must understand!Your lightest footfall on a floor of mineWould shake the house, my lintel being uncrossed’Gainst angels: henceforth it is night with me,And so, henceforth, I put the shutters up;Auroras must not come to spoil my dark.’He smiled so feebly, with an empty handStretched sideway from me,—as indeed he lookedTo any one but me to give him help,—And, while the moon came suddenly out full,The double-rose of our Italian moons,Sufficient, plainly, for the heaven and earth,(The stars, struck dumb and washed away in dewsOf golden glory, and the mountains steepedIn divine languor) he, the man, appearedSo pale and patient, like the marble manA sculptor puts his personal sadness inTo join his grandeur of ideal thought,—As if his mallet struck me from my heightOf passionate indignation, I who had risenPale,—doubting, paused, ... Was Romney mad indeed?Had all this wrong of heart made sick the brain?Then quiet, with a sort of tremulous pride,‘Go, cousin,’ I said coldly. ‘A farewellWas sooner spoken ’twixt a pair of friendsIn those old days, than seems to suit you now:And if, since then, I’ve writ a book or two,I’m somewhat dull still in the manly artOf phrase and metaphrase. Why, any manCan carve a score of white Loves out of snow,As Buonarroti down in Florence there,And set them on the wall in some safe shade,As safe, sir, as your marriage! very good;Though if a woman took one from the ledgeTo put it on the table by her flowers,And let it mind her of a certain friend,’Twould drop at once, (so better,) would not bearHer nail-mark even, where she took it upA little tenderly; so best, I say:For me, I would not touch so light a thing,And risk to spoil it half an hour beforeThe sun shall shine to melt it: leave it there.I’m plain at speech, direct in purpose: whenI speak, you’ll take the meaning as it is,And not allow for puckerings in the silksBy clever stitches. I’m a woman, sir,And use the woman’s figures naturally,As you, the male license. So, I wish you well.I’m simply sorry for the griefs you’ve had—And not for your sake only, but mankind’s.This race is never grateful: from the first,One fills their cup at supper with pure wine,Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge,In bitter vinegar.’‘If gratefuller,’He murmured,—‘by so much less pitiable!God’s self would never have come down to die,Could man have thanked him for it.’‘Happily’Tis patent that, whatever,’ I resumed,‘You suffered from this thanklessness of men,You sink no more than Moses’ bulrush-boat,When once relieved of Moses; for you’re light,You’re light, my cousin! which is well for you,And manly. For myself,—now mark me, sir,They burnt Leigh Hall; but if, consummatedTo devils, heightened beyond Lucifers,They had burnt instead a star or two, of thoseWe saw above there just a moment back,Before the moon abolished them,—destroyedAnd riddled them in ashes through a sieveOn the head of the foundering universe,—what then?If you and I remained still you and I,It would not shift our places as mere friends,Nor render decent you should toss a phraseBeyond the point of actual feeling!—nay,You shall not interrupt me: as you said,We’re parting. Certainly, not once or twice,To-night you’ve mocked me somewhat, or yourself;And I, at least, have not deserved it soThat I should meet it unsurprised. But now,Enough: we’re parting ... parting. Cousin Leigh,I wish you well through all the acts of lifeAnd life’s relations, wedlock, not the least;And it shall ‘please me,’ in your words, to knowYou yield your wife, protection, freedom, ease,And very tender liking. May you liveSo happy with her, Romney, that your friendsMay praise her for it. Meantime, some of usAre wholly dull in keeping ignorantOf what she has suffered by you, and what debtOf sorrow your rich love sits down to pay:But if ’tis sweet for love to pay its debt,’Tis sweeter still for love to give its gift;And you, be liberal in the sweeter way,—You can, I think. At least, as touches me,You owe her, cousin Romney, no amends;She is not used to hold my gown so fast,You need entreat her now to let it go:The lady never was a friend of mine,Nor capable,—I thought you knew as much,—Of losing for your sake so poor a prizeAs such a worthless friendship. Be content,Good cousin, therefore, both for her and you!I’ll never spoil your dark, nor dull your noon,Nor vex you when you’re merry, nor when you rest:You shall not need to put a shutter upTo keep out this Aurora. Ah, your northCan make Auroras which vex nobody,Scarce known from evenings! also, let me say,My larks fly higher than some windows. Right;You’ve read your Leighs. Indeed ’twould shake a house,If such as I came in with outstretched hand,Still warm and thrilling from the clasp of one ...Of one we know, ... to acknowledge, palm to palm,As mistress there ... the Lady Waldemar.’‘Now God be with us’ ... with a sudden clashOf voice he interrupted—‘what name’s that?You spoke a name, Aurora.’‘Pardon me;I would that, Romney, I could name your wifeNor wound you, yet be worthy.’‘Are we mad?’He echoed—‘wife! mine! Lady Waldemar!I think you said my wife.’ He sprang to his feet,And threw his noble head back toward the moonAs one who swims against a stormy sea,And laughed with such a helpless, hopeless scorn,I stood and trembled.‘May God judge me so,’He said at last,—‘I came convicted here,And humbled sorely if not enough. I came,Because this woman from her crystal soulHad shown me something which a man calls light:Because too, formerly, I sinned by herAs, then and ever since, I have, by God,Through arrogance of nature,—though I loved ...Whom best, I need not say, ... since that is writToo plainly in the book of my misdeeds;And thus I came here to abase myself,And fasten, kneeling, on her regent browsA garland which I startled thence one dayOf her beautiful June-youth. But here againI’m baffled!—fail in my abasement asMy aggrandisement: there’s no room left for me,At any woman’s foot, who misconceivesMy nature, purpose, possible actions. What!Are you the Aurora who made large my dreamsTo frame your greatness? you conceive so small?You stand so less than woman, through being more,And lose your natural instinct, like a beast,Through intellectual culture? since indeedI do not think that any common sheWould dare adopt such fancy-forgeriesFor the legible life-signature of suchAs I, with all my blots: with all my blots!At last then, peerless cousin, we are peers—At last we’re even. Ah, you’ve left your height;And here upon my level we take hands,And here I reach you to forgive you, sweet,And that’s a fall, Aurora. Long agoYou seldom understood me,—but, before,I could not blame you. Then, you only seemedSo high above, you could not see below;But now I breathe,—but now I pardon!—nay,We’re parting. Dearest, men have burnt my house,Maligned my motives,—but not one, I swear,Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has,Who called the Lady Waldemar my wife.’‘Not married to her! yet you said’ ...‘Again?Nay, read the lines’ (he held a letter out)‘She sent you through me.’By the moonlight there,I tore the meaning out with passionate hasteMuch rather than I read it. Thus it ran.

Oneeve it happened, when I sate alone,Alone, upon the terrace of my tower,A book upon my knees, to counterfeitThe reading that I never read at all,While Marian, in the garden down below,Knelt by the fountain (I could just hear thrillThe drowsy silence of the exhausted day)And peeled a new fig from that purple heapIn the grass beside her,—turning out the redTo feed her eager child, who sucked at itWith vehement lips across a gap of airAs he stood opposite, face and curls a-flameWith that last sun-ray, crying, ‘give me, give,’And stamping with imperious baby-feet,(We’re all born princes)—something startled me,—The laugh of sad and innocent souls, that breaksAbruptly, as if frightened at itself;’Twas Marian laughed. I saw her glance aboveIn sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,And straightway dropped my eyes upon my book,And knew, the first time, ’twas Boccaccio’s tales,The Falcon’s,—of the lover who for loveDestroyed the best that loved him. Some of usDo it still, and then we sit and laugh no more.Laughyou, sweet Marian! you’ve the right to laugh,Since God himself is for you, and a child!For me there’s somewhat less,—and so, I sigh.

The heavens were making room to hold the night,The sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gatesTo let the stars out slowly (prophesiedIn close-approaching advent, not discerned),While still the cue-owls from the cypressesOf the Poggio called and counted every pulseOf the skyey palpitation. GraduallyThe purple and transparent shadows slowHad filled up the whole valley to the brim,And flooded all the city, which you sawAs some drowned city in some enchanted sea,Cut off from nature,—drawing you who gaze,With passionate desire, to leap and plunge,And find a sea-king with a voice of waves,And treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locksYou cannot kiss but you shall bring awayTheir salt upon your lips. The duomo-bellStrikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,So deep; and fifty churches answer itThe same, with fifty various instances.Some gaslights tremble along squares and streets;The Pitti’s palace-front is drawn in fire;And, past the quays, Maria Novella’s Place,In which the mystic obelisks stand upTriangular, pyramidal, each basedOn a single trine of brazen tortoises,To guard that fair church, Buonarroti’s Bride,That stares out from her large blind dial-eyes,Her quadrant and armillary dials, blackWith rhythms of many suns and moons, in vainEnquiry for so rich a soul as his,—Methinks I have plunged, I see it all so clear....And, oh my heart, ... the sea-king!

In my earsThe sound of waters. There he stood, my king!

I felt him, rather than beheld him. UpI rose, as if he were my king indeed,And then sate down, in trouble at myself,And struggling for my woman’s empery.’Tis pitiful; but women are so made:We’ll die for you, perhaps,—’tis probable;But we’ll not spare you an inch of our full height:We’ll have our whole just stature,—five feet four,Though laid out in our coffins: pitiful!—‘You, Romney!—— Lady Waldemar is here?’

He answered in a voice which was not his.‘I have her letter; you shall read it soon:But first, I must be heard a little, I,Who have waited long and travelled far for that,Although you thought to have shut a tedious bookAnd farewell. Ah, you dog-eared such a page,And here you find me.’Did he touch my hand,Or but my sleeve? I trembled, hand and foot,—He must have touched me.—‘Will you sit?’ I asked,And motioned to a chair; but down he sate,A little slowly, as a man in doubt,Upon the couch beside me,—couch and chairBeing wheeled upon the terrace.‘You are come,My cousin Romney?—this is wonderful.But all is wonder on such summer-nights;And nothing should surprise us any more,Who see that miracle of stars. Behold.’

I signed above, where all the stars were out,As if an urgent heat had started thereA secret writing from a sombre page,A blank last moment, crowded suddenlyWith hurrying splendours.‘Then you do not know’—He murmured.‘Yes, I know,’ I said, ‘I know.I had the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet I did not think you’d leave the workIn England, for so much even,—though, of course,You’ll make a work-day of your holiday,And turn it to our Tuscan people’s use,—Who much need helping since the Austrian boar(So bold to cross the Alp by LombardyAnd dash his brute front unabashed againstThe steep snow-bosses of that shield of GodWho soon shall rise in wrath and shake it clear,)Came hither also,—raking up our vinesAnd olive-gardens with his tyrannous tusks,And rolling on our maize with all his swine,’

‘You had the news from Vincent Carrington,’He echoed,—picking up the phrase beyond,As if he knew the rest was merely talkTo fill a gap and keep out a strong wind,—‘You had, then, Vincent’s personal news?’‘His own,’I answered. ‘All that ruined world of yoursSeems crumbling into marriage. CarringtonHas chosen wisely.’‘Doyoutake it so?’He cried, ‘and is it possible at last’ ...He paused there,—and then, inward to himself,‘Too much at last, too late!—yet certainly’ ...(And there his voice swayed as an Alpine plankThat feels a passionate torrent underneath)‘The knowledge, if I had known it, first or last,Had never changed the actual case forme.And best, forher, at this time.’Nay, I thought,He loves Kate Ward, it seems, now, like a man,Because he has married Lady Waldemar.Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was movedTo hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wellsIn this world! Then I spoke,—‘I did not think,My cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.’

‘In fact I never knew her. ’Tis enoughThat Vincent did, before he chose his wifeFor other reasons than those topaz eyesI’ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,For all that. One takes up the world with eyes.’

—Including Romney Leigh, I thought again,Albeit he knows them only by repute.How vile must all men be, sincehe’sa man.

His deep pathetic voice, as if he guessedI did not surely love him, took the word;‘You never got a letter from Lord HoweA month back, dear Aurora?’

‘None,’ I said.

‘I felt it was so,’ he replied: ‘Yet, strange!Sir Blaise Delorme has passed through Florence?’‘Ay,By chance I saw him in Our Lady’s church,(I saw him, mark you, but he saw not me)Clean-washed in holy water from the countOf things terrestrial,—letters and the rest;He had crossed us out together with his sins.Ay, strange; but only strange that good Lord HowePreferred him to the post because of pauls.For me I’m sworn to never trust a man—At least with letters.’

‘There were facts to tell,—To smooth with eye and accent. Howe supposed ...Well, well, no matter! there was dubious need;You heard the news from Vincent Carrington.And yet perhaps you had been startled lessTo see me, dear Aurora, if you had readThat letter.’—Now he sets me down as vexed.I think I’ve draped myself in woman’s prideTo a perfect purpose. Oh, I’m vexed, it seems!My friend Lord Howe deputes his friend Sir Blaise,To break as softly as a sparrow’s eggThat lets a bird out tenderly, the newsOf Romney’s marriage to a certain saint;Tosmooth with eye and accent,—indicateHis possible presence. Excellently wellYou’ve played your part, my Lady Waldemar,—As I’ve played mine.‘Dear Romney,’ I began,‘You did not use, of old, to be so likeA Greek king coming from a taken Troy,’Twas needful that precursors spread your pathWith three-piled carpets, to receive your footAnd dull the sound of’t. For myself, be sure,Although it frankly ground the gravel here,I still could bear it. Yet I’m sorry, too,To lose this famous letter, which Sir BlaiseHas twisted to a lighter absentlyTo fire some holy taper with: Lord HoweWrites letters good for all things but to lose;And many a flower of London gossipryHas dropt wherever such a stem broke off,—Of course I know that, lonely among my vines,Where nothing’s talked of, save the blight again,And no more Chianti! Still the letter’s useAs preparation ... Did I start indeed?Last night I started at a cockchafer,And shook a half-hour after. Have you learntNo more of women, ’spite of privilege,Than still to take account too seriouslyOf such weak flutterings? Why, we like it, sir,—We get our powers and our effects that way.The trees stand stiff and still at time of frost,If no wind tears them; but, let summer come,When trees are happy,—and a breath availsTo set them trembling through a million leavesIn luxury of emotion. Something lessIt takes to move a woman: let her startAnd shake at pleasure,—nor conclude at yours,The winter’s bitter,—but the summer’s green.’

He answered, ‘Be the summer ever greenWith you, Aurora!—though you sweep your sexWith somewhat bitter gusts from where you liveAbove them,—whirling downward from your heightsYour very own pine-cones, in a grand disdainOf the lowland burrs with which you scatter them.So high and cold to others and yourself,A little less to Romney, were unjust,And thus, I would not have you. Let it pass:I feel content, so. You can bear indeedMy sudden step beside you: but for me,’Twould move me sore to hear your softened voice,—Aurora’s voice,—if softened unawareIn pity of what I am.’Ah friend, I thought,As husband of the Lady WaldemarYou’re granted very sorely pitiable!And yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voiceFrom softening in the pity of your case,As if from lie or licence. CertainlyWe’ll soak up all the slush and soil of lifeWith softened voices, ere we come toyou.

At which I interrupted my own thoughtAnd spoke out calmly. ‘Let us ponder, friend,Whate’er our state, we must have made it first;And though the thing displease us, ay, perhapsDisplease us warrantably, never doubtThat other states, thought possible once, and thenRejected by the instinct of our lives,—If then adopted, had displeased us moreThan this, in which the choice, the will, the love,Has stamped the honour of a patent actFrom henceforth. What we choose, may not be good;But, that we choose it, proves it good forusPotentially, fantastically, nowOr last year, rather than a thing we saw,And saw no need for choosing. Moths will burnTheir wings,—which proves that light is good for moths,Or else they had flown not, where they agonise,’

‘Ay, light is good,’ he echoed, and there paused.And then abruptly, ... ‘Marian. Marian’s well?’

I bowed my head, but found no word. ’Twas hardTo speak ofherto Lady Waldemar’sNew husband. How much did he know, at last?How much? how little?—— He would take no sign,But straight repeated,—‘Marian. Is she well?’

‘She’s well,’ I answered.

She was there in sightAn hour back, but the night had drawn her home;Where still I heard her in an upper room,Her low voice singing to the child in bed,Who restless with the summer-heat and playAnd slumber snatched at noon, was long sometimesAt falling off, and took a score of songsAnd mother-hushes, ere she saw him sound.

‘She’s well,’ I answered.

‘Here?’ he asked.‘Yes, here.’

He stopped and sighed. ‘That shall be presently,But now this must be. I have words to say,And would be alone to say them, I with you,And no third troubling.’

‘Speak then,’ I returned,‘She will not vex you.’

At which, suddenlyHe turned his face upon me with its smile,As if to crush me. ‘I have read your book,Aurora.’‘You have read it,’ I replied,‘And I have writ it,—we have done with it.And now the rest?’‘The rest is like the first,’He answered,—‘for the book is in my heart,Lives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me:My daily bread tastes of it,—and my wineWhich has no smack of it, I pour it out;It seems unnatural drinking.’BitterlyI took the word up; ‘Never waste your wine.The book lived in me ere it lived in you;I know it closer than another does,And that it’s foolish, feeble, and afraid,And all unworthy so much compliment.Beseech you, keep your wine,—and, when you drink,Still wish some happier fortune to your friend,Than even to have written a far better book.’

He answered gently, ‘That is consequent:The poet looks beyond the book he has made,Or else he had not made it. If a manCould make a man, he’d henceforth be a godIn feeling what a little thing is man:It is not my case. And this special book,I did not make it, to make light of it:It stands above my knowledge, draws me up;’Tis high to me. It may be that the bookIs not so high, but I so low, instead;Still high to me. I mean no compliment:I will not say there are not, young or old,Male writers, ay, or female,—let it pass,Who’ll write us richer and completer books.A man may love a woman perfectly,And yet by no means ignorantly maintainA thousand women have not larger eyes:Enough that she alone has looked at himWith eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.And so, this book, Aurora,—so, your book.’

‘Alas,’ I answered, ‘is it so, indeed?’And then was silent.

‘Is it so, indeed,’He echoed, ‘thatalasis all your word?’I said,—‘I’m thinking of a far-off June,When you and I, upon my birthday once,Discoursed of life and art, with both untried.I’m thinking, Romney, how ’twas morning then,And now ’tis night.’

‘And now,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’

‘I’m thinking,’ I resumed, ‘’tis somewhat sadThat if I had known, that morning in the dew,My cousin Romney would have said such wordsOn such a night, at close of many years,In speaking of a future book of mine,It would have pleased me better as a hope,Than as an actual grace it can at all.That’s sad, I’m thinking.’‘Ay,’ he said, ‘’tis night.’

‘And there,’ I added lightly, ‘are the stars!And here, we’ll talk of stars, and not of books.’

‘You have the stars,’ he murmured,—‘it is well:Be like them! shine, Aurora, on my dark,Though high and cold and only like a star,And for this short night only,—you, who keepThe same Aurora of the bright June dayThat withered up the flowers before my face,And turned me from the garden evermoreBecause I was not worthy. Oh, deserved,Deserved! That I, who verily had not learntGod’s lesson half, attaining as a dunceTo obliterate good words with fractious thumbsAnd cheat myself of the context,—Ishould pushAside, with male ferocious impudence,The world’s Aurora who had conned her partOn the other side the leaf! ignore her so,Because she was a woman and a queen,And had no beard to bristle through her song,—My teacher, who has taught me with a book,My Miriam, whose sweet mouth, when nearly drownedI still heard singing on the shore! Deserved,That here I should look up unto the starsAnd miss the glory’ ...‘Can I understand?’I broke in. ‘You speak wildly, Romney Leigh,Or I hear wildly. In that morning-timeWe recollect, the roses were too red,The trees too green, reproach too naturalIf one should see not what the other saw:And now, it’s night, remember; we have shadesIn place of colours; we are now grown cold,And old, my cousin Romney. Pardon me,—I’m very happy that you like my book,And very sorry that I quoted backA ten years’ birthday; ’twas so mad a thingIn any woman, I scarce marvel muchYou took it for a venturous piece of spite,Provoking such excuses, as indeedI cannot call you slack in.’‘Understand,’He answered sadly, ‘something, if but so.This night is softer than an English day,And men may well come hither when they’re sick,To draw in easier breath from larger air.’Tis thus with me; I’ve come to you,—to you,My Italy of women, just to breatheMy soul out once before you, ere I go,As humble as God makes me at the last,(I thank Him) quite out of the way of men,And yours, Aurora,—like a punished child,His cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness,To silence in a corner. I am comeTo speak, beloved’....‘Wisely, cousin Leigh,And worthily of us both!’‘Yes, worthily;For this time I must speak out and confessThat I, so truculent in assumption once,So absolute in dogma, proud in aim,And fierce in expectation,—I, who feltThe whole world tugging at my skirts for help,As if no other man than I, could pull,Nor woman, but I led her by the hand,Nor cloth hold, but I had it in my coat,—Do know myself to-night for what I wasOn that June-day, Aurora. Poor bright day,Which meant the best ... a woman and a rose, ...And which I smote upon the cheek with words,Until it turned and rent me! Young you were,That birthday, poet, but you talked the right:While I, ... I built up follies like a wallTo intercept the sunshine and your face.Your face! that’s worse.’‘Speak wisely, cousin Leigh.’

‘Yes, wisely, dear Aurora, though too late:But then, not wisely. I was heavy then,And stupid, and distracted with the criesOf tortured prisoners in the polished brassOf that Phalarian bull, society,—Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,But, if you listen, moans and cries insteadDespairingly, like victims tossed and goredAnd trampled by their hoofs. I heard the criesToo close: I could not hear the angels liftA fold of rustling air, nor what they saidTo help my pity. I beheld the worldAs one great famishing carnivorous mouth,—A huge, deserted, callow, black, bird Thing,With piteous open beak that hurt my heart,Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped,And tore the violets up to get the worms.Worms, worms, was all my cry: an open mouth,A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips,No more! That poor men narrowed their demandsTo such an end, was virtue, I supposed,Adjudicating that to see it soWas reason. Oh, I did not push the caseUp higher, and ponder how it answers, whenThe rich take up the same cry for themselves,Professing equally,—‘an open mouthA gross want, food to fill us, and no more!’Why that’s so far from virtue, only viceFinds reason for it! That makes libertines:That slurs our cruel streets from end to endWith eighty thousand women in one smile,Who only smile at night beneath the gas:The body’s satisfaction and no more,Being used for argument against the soul’s,Here too! the want, here too, implying the right.—How dark I stood that morning in the sun,My best Aurora, though I saw your eyes,—When first you told me ... oh, I recollectThe words ... and how you lifted your white hand,And how your white dress and your burnished curlsWent greatening round you in the still blue air,As if an inspiration from withinHad blown them all out when you spoke the same,Even these,—‘You will not compass your poor endsOf barley-feeding and material ease,Without the poet’s individualismTo 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 an inch insideThe dust of the actual: and your Fouriers failed,Because not poets enough to understandThat life develops from within.’ I sayYour words,—I could say other words of yours;For none of all your words has been more lostThan sweet verbena, which, being brushed against,Will hold you three hours after by the smell,In spite of long walks on the windy hills.But these words dealt in sharper perfume,—theseWere ever on me, stinging through my dreams,And saying themselves for ever o’er my actsLike some unhappy verdict. That I failed,Is certain. Stye or no stye, to contriveThe swine’s propulsion toward the precipice,Proved easy and plain. I subtly organisedAnd ordered, built the cards up high and higher,Till, some one breathing, all fell flat again;In setting right society’s wide wrong,Mere life’s so fatal! So I failed indeedOnce, twice, and oftener,—hearing through the rentsOf obstinate purpose, still those words of yours,‘You will not compass your poor ends, not you!’But harder than you said them; every timeStill farther from your voice, until they cameTo overcrow me with triumphant scornWhich vexed me to resistance. Set down thisFor condemnation,—I was guilty here:I stood upon my deed and fought my doubt,As men will,—for I doubted,—till at lastMy deed gave way beneath me suddenly,And left me what I am. The curtain dropped,My part quite ended, all the footlights quenched,My own soul hissing at me through the dark,I, ready for confession,—I was wrong,I’ve sorely failed; I’ve slipped the ends of life,I yield; you have conquered.’‘Stay,’ I answered him;‘I’ve something for your hearing, also. IHave failed too.’‘You!’ he said, ‘you’re very great;The sadness of your greatness fits you well:As if the plume upon a hero’s casqueShould nod a shadow upon his victor face.’

I took him up austerely,—‘You have readMy book, but not my heart; for recollect,’Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at.I’ve surely failed, I know; if failure meansTo look back sadly on work gladly done,—To wander on my mountains of Delight,So called, (I can remember a friend’s wordsAs well as you, sir,) weary and in wantOf even a sheep-path, thinking bitterly....Well, well! no matter. I but say so much,To keep you, Romney Leigh, from saying more,And let you feel I am not so high indeed,That I can bear to have you at my foot,—Or safe, that I can help you. That June-day,Too deeply sunk in craterous sunsets nowFor you or me to dig it up alive;To pluck it out all bleeding with spent flameAt the roots, before those moralising starsWe have got instead,—that poor lost day, you saidSome words as truthful as the thing of mineYou care to keep in memory: and I holdIf I, that day, and, being the girl I was,Had shown a gentler spirit, less arrogance,It had not hurt me. Ah, you’ll not mistakeThe point here. I but only think, you see,More justly, that’s more humbly, of myself,Than when I tried a crown on and supposed....Nay, laugh, sir,—I’ll laugh with you!—pray you, laugh.I’ve had so many birthdays since that day,I’ve learnt to prize mirth’s opportunities,Which come too seldom. Was it you who saidI was not changed? the same Aurora? Ah,We could laugh there, too! Why, Ulysses’ dogKnewhim, and wagged his tail and died: but ifI had owned a dog, I too, before my Troy,And, if you brought him here, ... I warrant youHe’d look into my face, bark lustily,And live on stoutly, as the creatures willWhose spirits are not troubled by long loves.A dog would never know me, I’m so changed;Much less a friend ... except that you’re misledBy the colour of the hair, the trick of the voice,Like that Aurora Leigh’s.’‘Sweet trick of voice!I would be a dog for this, to know it at last,And die upon the falls of it. O love,O best Aurora! are you then so sad,You scarcely had been sadder as my wife?’

‘Your wife, sir! I must certainly be changed,If I, Aurora, can have said a thingSo light, it catches at the knightly spursOf a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh,And trips him from his honourable senseOf what befits’ ...‘You wholly misconceive,’He answered.I returned,—‘I’m glad of it;But keep from misconception, too, yourself:I am not humbled to so low a point,Nor so far saddened. If I am sad at all,Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head,Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth,Though ne’er so merry: I’m perforce more wise,And that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest,Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole,That birthday morning. ’Tis impossibleTo get at men excepting through their souls,However open their carnivorous jaws;And poets get directlier at the soul,Than any of your œconomists:—for which,You must not overlook the poet’s workWhen scheming for the world’s necessities.The soul’s the way. Not even Christ HimselfCan save man else than as He holds man’s soul;And therefore did He come into our flesh,As some wise hunter creeping on his kneesWith a torch, into the blackness of some cave,To face and quell the beast there,—take the soul,And so possess the whole man, body and soul.I said, so far, right, yes; not farther, though:We both were wrong that June-day,—both as wrongAs an east wind had been. I who talked of art,And you who grieved for all men’s griefs ... what then?We surely made too small a part for GodIn these things. What we are, imports us moreThan what we eat; and life, you’ve granted me,Develops from within. But innermostOf the inmost, most interior of the interne,God claims his own, Divine humanityRenewing nature,—or the piercingest verse,Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keepAs much upon the outside of a man,As the very bowl, in which he dips his beard.—And then, ... the rest. I cannot surely speak.Perhaps I doubt more than you doubted then,If I, the poet’s veritable charge,Have borne upon my forehead. If I have,It might feel somewhat liker to a crown,The foolish green one even.—Ah, I think,And chiefly when the sun shines, that I’ve failed.But what then, Romney? Though we fail indeed,You ... I ... a score of such weak workers, ... HeFails never. If He cannot work by us,He will work over us. Does He want a man,Much less a woman, think you? Every timeThe star winks there, so many souls are born,Who all shall work too. Let our own be calm:We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,Impatient that we’re nothing.’‘Could we sitJust so for ever, sweetest friend,’ he said,‘My failure would seem better than success.And yet, indeed, your book has dealt with meMore gently, cousin, than you ever will!The book brought down entire the bright June-day,And set me wandering in the garden-walks,And let me watch the garland in a place,You blushed so ... nay, forgive me; do not stir:I only thank the book for what it taught,And what, permitted. Poet, doubt yourself;But never doubt that you’re a poet to meFrom henceforth. Ah, you’ve written poems, sweet,Which moved me in secret, as the sap is movedIn still March-branches, signless as a stone:But this last book o’ercame me like soft rainWhich falls at midnight, when the tightened barkBreaks out into unhesitating buds,And sudden protestations of the spring.In all your other books, I saw butyou:A man may see the moon so, in a pond,And not be nearer therefore to the moon,Nor use the sight ... except to drown himself:And so I forced my heart back from the sight;For what hadI, I thought, to do withher,—Aurora ... Romney? But, in this last book,You showed me something separate from yourself,Beyond you; and I bore to take it in,And let it draw me. You have shown me truths,O June-day friend, that help me now at night,When June is over! truths not yours, indeed,But set within my reach by means of you:Presented by your voice and verse the wayTo take them clearest. Verily I was wrong;And verily, many thinkers of this age,Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,Are wrong in just my sense, who understoodOur natural world too insularly, as ifNo spiritual counterpart completed itConsummating its meaning, rounding allTo justice and perfection, line by line,Form by form, nothing single, nor alone,—The great below clenched by the great above;Shade here authenticating substance there;The body proving spirit, as the effectThe cause: we, meantime, being too grossly aptTo hold the natural, as dogs a bone,(Though reason and nature beat us in the face);So obstinately, that we’ll break our teethOr ever we let go. For everywhereWe’re too materialistic,—eating clay,(Like men of the west) instead of Adam’s cornAnd Noah’s wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,Until we’re filled up to the throat with clay,And grow the grimy colour of the groundOn which we are feeding. Ay, materialistThe age’s name is. God himself, with some,Is apprehended as the bare resultOf what his hand materially has made,Expressed in such an algebraic sign,Called God;—that is, to put it otherwise,They add up nature to a naught of GodAnd cross the quotient. There are many, even,Whose names are written in the Christian churchTo no dishonour,—diet still on mud,And splash the altars with it. You might thinkThe clay, Christ laid upon their eyelids when,Still blind, he called them to the use of sight,Remained there to retard its exerciseWith clogging incrustations. Close to heaven,They see, for mysteries, through the open doors,Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware;And fain would enter, when their time shall come,With quite a different body than St. PaulHas promised,—husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn,Or where’s the resurrection?’‘Thus it is,’I sighed. And he resumed with mournful face.‘Beginning so, and filling up with clayThe wards of this great key, the natural world,And fumbling vainly therefore at the lockOf the spiritual,—we feel ourselves shut inWith all the wild-beast roar of struggling life,The terrors and compunctions of our souls,As saints with lions,—we who are not saints,And have no heavenly lordship in our stareTo awe them backward! Ay, we are forced, so pent,To judge the whole too partially, ... confoundConclusions. Is there any common phraseSignificant, when the adverb’s heard alone,The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?But we, distracted in the roar of life,Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,And bruit against Him that his thought is void,His meaning hopeless;—cry, that everywhereThe government is slipping from his hand,Unless some other Christ ... say Romney Leigh ...Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world,For which the First has proved inadequate,However we talk bigly of His workAnd piously of His person. We blasphemeAt last, to finish that doxology,Despairing on the earth for which He died.’

‘So now,’ I asked, ‘you have more hope of men?’

‘I hope,’ he answered: ‘I am come to thinkThat God will have his work done, as you said,And that we need not be disturbed too muchFor Romney Leigh or others having failedWith this or that quack nostrum,—recipesFor keeping summits by annulling depths,For learning wrestling with long lounging sleeves,And perfect heroism without a scratch.We fail,—what, then? Aurora, if I smiledTo see you, in your lovely morning-pride,Try on the poet’s wreath which suits the noon,—(Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stainBefore they grow the ivy!) certainlyI stood myself there worthier of contempt,Self-rated, in disastrous arrogance,As competent to sorrow for mankindAnd even their odds. A man may well despair,Who counts himself so needful to success.I failed. I throw the remedy back on God,And sit down here beside you, in good hope.’

‘And yet, take heed,’ I answered, ‘lest we leanToo dangerously on the other side,And so fail twice. Be sure, no earnest workOf any honest creature, howbeit weak,Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,It is not gathered as a grain of sandTo enlarge the sum of human action usedFor carrying out God’s end. No creature worksSo ill, observe, that therefore he’s cashiered.The honest earnest man must stand and work;The woman also; otherwise she dropsAt once below the dignity of man,Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work:Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.’

He cried, ‘True. After Adam, work was curse;The natural creature labours, sweats and frets.But, after Christ, work turns to privilege;And henceforth one with our humanity,The Six-day Worker, working still in us,Has called us freely to work on with HimIn high companionship. So, happiest!I count that Heaven itself is only workTo a surer issue. Let us work, indeed,—But, no more, work as Adam ... nor as LeighErewhile, as if the only man on earth,Responsible for all the thistles blownAnd tigers couchant,—struggling in amazeAgainst disease and winter,—snarling onFor ever, that the world’s not paradise.Oh cousin, let us be content, in work,To do the thing we can, and not presumeTo fret because it’s little. ’Twill employSeven men, they say, to make a perfect pin:Who makes the head, content to miss the point,—Who makes the point, agreed to leave the join:And if a man should cry, ‘I want a pin,And I must make it straightway, head and point,’—His wisdom is not worth the pin he wants.Seven men to a pin,—and not a man too much!Seven generations, haply, to this world,To right it visibly, a finger’s breadth,And mend its rents a little. Oh, to stormAnd say,—‘This world here is intolerable;I will not eat this corn, nor drink this wine,Nor love this woman, flinging her my soulWithout a bond for’t, as a lover should,Nor use the generous leave of happinessAs not too good for using generously’—(Since virtue kindles at the touch of joy,Like a man’s cheek laid on a woman’s hand;And God, who knows it, looks for quick returnsFrom joys)!—to stand and claim to have a lifeBeyond the bounds of the individual man,And raze all personal cloisters of the soulTo build up public stores and magazines,As if God’s creatures otherwise were lost,The builder surely saved by any means!To think,—I have a pattern on my nail,And I will carve the world new after it,And solve so, these hard social questions,—nay,Impossible social questions,—since their rootsStrike deep in Evil’s own existence here,Which God permits because the question’s hardTo abolish evil nor attaint free-will.Ay, hard to God, but not to Romney Leigh!For Romney has a pattern on his nail,(Whatever may be lacking on the Mount)And not being overnice to separateWhat’s element from what’s convention, hastesBy line on line, to draw you out a world,Without your help indeed, unless you takeHis yoke upon you and will learn of him,—So much he has to teach! so good a world!The same, the whole creation’s groaning for!No rich nor poor, no gain nor loss nor stint,No potage in it able to excludeA brother’s birthright, and no right of birth,The potage,—both secured to every man;And perfect virtue dealt out like the rest,Gratuitously, with the soup at six,To whoso does not seek it.’‘Softly, sir,’I interrupted,—‘I had a cousin onceI held in reverence. If he strained too wide,It was not to take honour, but give help;The gesture was heroic. If his handAccomplished nothing ... (well, it is not proved)That empty hand thrown impotently outWere sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven,Than many a hand that reaped a harvest inAnd keeps the scythe’s glow on it. Pray you, then,For my sake merely, use less bitternessIn speaking of my cousin.’‘Ah,’ he said,‘Aurora! when the prophet beats the ass,The angel intercedes.’ He shook his head—‘And yet to mean so well, and fail so foul,Expresses ne’er another beast than man;The antithesis is human. Harken, dear;There’s too much abstract willing, purposing,In this poor world. We talk by aggregates,And think by systems; and, being used to faceOur evils in statistics, are inclinedTo cap them with unreal remediesDrawn out in haste on the other side the slate.’

‘That’s true,’ I answered, fain to throw up thought,And make a game of’t; ‘Oh, we generaliseEnough to please you. If we pray at all,We pray no longer for our daily bread,But next centenary’s harvests. If we give,Our cup of water is not tendered tillWe lay down pipes and found a CompanyWith Branches. Ass or angel, ’tis the same:A woman cannot do the thing she ought,Which means whatever perfect thing she can,In life, in art, in science, but she fearsTo let the perfect action take her partAnd rest there: she must prove what she can doBefore she does it,—prate of woman’s rights,Of woman’s mission, woman’s function, tillThe men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,‘A woman’s function plainly is ... to talk.’Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!They cannot hear each other speak.’‘And you,An artist, judge so?’‘I, an artist,—yes,Because, precisely, I’m an artist, sir,And woman,—if another sate in sight,I’d whisper,—Soft, my sister! not a word!By speaking we prove only we can speak;Which he, the man here, never doubted. WhatHe doubts, is whether we candothe thingWith decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all:Now, do it; bring your statue,—you have room!He’ll see it even by the starlight here;And if ’tis e’er so little like the godWho looks out from the marble silentlyAlong the track of his own shining dartThrough the dusk of ages,—there’s no need to speak;The universe shall henceforth speak for you,And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was bornTo do it,—claims her license in her work.’—And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech:Who rights a land’s finances, is excusedFor touching coppers, though her hands be white,—But we, we talk!’‘It is the age’s mood,’He said; ‘we boast, and do not. We put upHostelry signs where’er we lodge a day,—Some red colossal cow, with mighty papsA Cyclops’ fingers could not strain to milk;Then bring out presently our saucer-fullOf curds. We want more quiet in our works,More knowledge of the bounds in which we work;More knowledge that each individual manRemains an Adam to the general race,Constrained to see, like Adam, that he keepHis personal state’s condition honestly,Or vain all thoughts of his to help the world,Which still must be developed from itsone,If bettered in its many. We, indeed,Who think to lay it out new like a park,We take a work on us which is not man’s;For God alone sits far enough above,To speculate so largely. None of us(Not Romney Leigh) is mad enough to say,We’ll have a grove of oaks upon that slopeAnd sink the need of acorns. Government,If veritable and lawful, is not givenBy imposition of the foreign hand,—Nor chosen from a pretty pattern-bookOf some domestic idealogue, who sitsAnd coldly chooses empire, where as wellHe might republic. Genuine governmentIs but the expression of a nation, goodOr less good,—even as all society,Howe’er unequal, monstrous, crazed, and cursed,Is but the expression of men’s single lives,The loud sum of the silent units. What,We’d change the aggregate and yet retainEach separate figure? Whom do we cheat by that?Now, not even Romney.’‘Cousin, you are sad.Did all your social labour at Leigh HallAnd elsewhere, come to nought then?’‘Itwasnought,’He answered mildly. ‘There is room indeed,For statues still, in this large world of God’s,But not for vacuums,—so I am not sad:Not sadder than is good for what I am.My vain phalanstery dissolved itself;My men and women of disordered lives,I brought in orderly to dine and sleep,Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,With fierce contortions of the natural face;And cursed me for my tyrannous constraintIn forcing crooked creatures to live straight;And set the country hounds upon my backTo bite and tear me for my wicked deedOf trying to do good without the churchOr even the squires, Aurora. Do you mindYour ancient neighbours? The great book-club teemsWith ‘sketches,’ ‘summaries,’ and ‘last tracts’ but twelve,On socialistic troublers of close bondsBetwixt the generous rich and grateful poor.The vicar preached from ‘Revelations,’ (tillThe doctor woke) and found me with ‘the frogs’On three successive Sundays; ay, and stoppedTo weep a little (for he’s getting old)That such perdition should o’ertake a manOf such fair acres,—in the parish, too!He printed his discourses ‘by request;’And if your book shall sell as his did, thenYour verses are less good than I suppose.The women of the neighbourhood subscribed,And sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk,Tooled edges, blazoned with the arms of Leigh:I own that touched me.’‘What, the pretty ones?Poor Romney!’‘Otherwise the effect was small.I had my windows broken once or twiceBy liberal peasants, naturally incensedAt such a vexer of Arcadian peace,Who would not let men call their wives their ownTo kick like Britons,—and made obstaclesWhen things went smoothly as a baby drugged,Toward freedom and starvation; bringing downThe wicked London tavern-thieves and drabs,To affront the blessed hillside drabs and thievesWith mended morals, quotha,—fine new lives!—My windows paid for’t. I was shot at, once,By an active poacher who had hit a hareFrom the other barrel, tired of springeing gameSo long upon my acres, undisturbed,And restless for the country’s virtue, (yetHe missed me)—ay, and pelted very oftIn riding through the village. ‘There he goes,Who’d drive away our Christian gentlefolks,To catch us undefended in the trapHe baits with poisonous cheese, and lock us upIn that pernicious prison of Leigh HallWith all his murderers! Give another name,And say Leigh Hell, and burn it up with fire.’And so they did, at last, Aurora.’‘Did?’

‘You never heard it, cousin? Vincent’s newsCame stinted, then.’‘They did? they burnt Leigh Hall?’

‘You’re sorry, dear Aurora? Yes indeed,They did it perfectly: a thorough work,And not a failure, this time. Let us grant’Tis somewhat easier, though, to burn a houseThan build a system:—yet that’s easy, too,In a dream. Books, pictures,—ay, the pictures! what,You think your dear Vandykes would give them pause?Our proud ancestral Leighs with those peaked beards,Or bosoms white as foam thrown up on rocksFrom the old-spent wave. Such calm defiant looksThey flared up with! now, nevermore they’ll twitThe bones in the family-vault with ugly death.Not one was rescued, save the Lady Maud,Who threw you down, that morning you were born,The undeniable lineal mouth and chin,To wear for ever for her gracious sake;For which good deed I saved her: the rest went:And you, you’re sorry, cousin. Well, for me,With all my phalansterians safely out,(Poor hearts, they helped the burners, it was said,And certainly a few clapped hands and yelled)The ruin did not hurt me as it might,—As when for instance I was hurt one day,A certain letter being destroyed. In fact,To see the great house flare so ... oaken floors,Our fathers made so fine with rushes once,Before our mothers furbished them with trains,—Carved wainscoats, panelled walls, the favourite slideFor draining off a martyr, (or a rogue)The echoing galleries, half a half-mile long,And all the various stairs that took you upAnd took you down, and took you round aboutUpon their slippery darkness, recollect,All helping to keep up one blazing jest;The flames through all the casements pushing forth,Like red-hot devils crinkled into snakes,All signifying,—‘Look you, Romney Leigh,We save the people from your saving, here,Yet so as by fire! we make a pretty showBesides,—and that’s the best you’ve ever done.’——To see this, almost moved myself to clap!The ‘vale et plaude’ came, too, with effect,When, in the roof fell, and the fire, that paused,Stunned momently beneath the stroke of slatesAnd tumbling rafters, rose at once and roared,And wrapping the whole house, (which disappearedIn a mounting whirlwind of dilated flame,)Blew upward, straight, its drift of fiery chaffIn the face of Heaven, ... which blenched, and ran up higher.’

‘Poor Romney!’‘Sometimes when I dream,’ he said,‘I hear the silence after; ’twas so still.For all those wild beasts, yelling, cursing round,Were suddenly silent, while you counted five!So silent, that you heard a young bird fallFrom the top-nest in the neighbouring rookeryThrough edging over-rashly toward the light.The old rooks had already fled too far,To hear the screech they fled with, though you sawSome flying on still, like scatterings of dead leavesIn autumn-gusts, seen dark against the sky:All flying,—ousted, like the House of Leigh.’

‘Dear Romney!’‘Evidently ’twould have beenA fine sight for a poet, sweet, like you,To make the verse blaze after. I myself,Even I, felt something in the grand old trees,Which stood that moment like brute Druid godsAmazed upon the rim of ruin, where,As into a blackened socket, the great fireHad dropped,—still throwing up splinters now and then,To show them grey with all their centuries,Left there to witness that on such a dayThe house went out.’‘Ah!’‘While you counted fiveI seemed to feel a little like a Leigh,—But then it passed, Aurora. A child cried;And I had enough to think of what to doWith all those houseless wretches in the dark,And ponder where they’d dance the next time, theyWho had burnt the viol.’‘Did you think of that?Who burns his viol will not dance, I know,To cymbals, Romney.’‘O my sweet sad voice,’He cried,—‘O voice that speaks and overcomes!The sun is silent, but Aurora speaks.’

‘Alas,’ I said; ‘I speak I know not what:I’m back in childhood, thinking as a child,A foolish fancy—will it make you smile?I shall not from the window of my roomCatch sight of those old chimneys any more.’

‘No more,’ he answered. ‘If you pushed one dayThrough all the green hills to our fathers’ house,You’d come upon a great charred circle whereThe patient earth was singed an acre round;With one stone-stair, symbolic of my life,Ascending, winding, leading up to nought!’Tis worth a poet’s seeing. Will you go?’

I made no answer. Had I any rightTo weep with this man, that I dared to speak?A woman stood between his soul and mine,And waved us off from touching evermoreWith those unclean white hands of hers. Enough.We had burnt our viols and were silent.So,The silence lengthened till it pressed. I spoke,To breathe: ‘I think you were ill afterward.’

‘More ill,’ he answered, ‘had been scarcely ill.I hoped this feeble fumbling at life’s knotMight end concisely,—but I failed to die,As formerly I failed to live,—and thusGrew willing, having tried all other ways,To try just God’s. Humility’s so good,When pride’s impossible. Mark us, how we makeOur virtues, cousin, from our worn-out sins,Which smack of them from henceforth. Is it right,For instance, to wed here, while you love there?And yet because a man sins once, the sinCleaves to him, in necessity to sin;That if he sin notso, to damn himself,He sinsso, to damn others with himself:And thus, to wed here, loving there, becomesA duty. Virtue buds a dubious leafRound mortal brows; your ivy’s better, dear.—Yet she, ’tis certain, is my very wife;The very lamb left mangled by the wolvesThrough my own bad shepherding: and could I chooseBut take her on my shoulder past this stretchOf rough, uneasy wilderness, poor lamb,Poor child, poor child?—Aurora, my belov’d,I will not vex you any more to-night;But, having spoken what I came to say,The rest shall please you. What she can, in me,—Protection, tender liking, freedom, ease,She shall have surely, liberally, for herAnd hers, Aurora. Small amends they’ll makeFor hideous evils (which she had not knownExcept by me) and for this imminent loss,This forfeit presence of a gracious friend,Which also she must forfeit for my sake,Since, ... drop your hand in mine a moment, sweet,We’re parting!—— Ah, my snowdrop, what a touch,As if the wind had swept it off! you grudgeYour gelid sweetness on my palm but so,A moment? angry, that I could not bearYou... speaking, breathing, living, side by sideWith some one called my wife ... and live, myself?Nay, be not cruel—you must understand!Your lightest footfall on a floor of mineWould shake the house, my lintel being uncrossed’Gainst angels: henceforth it is night with me,And so, henceforth, I put the shutters up;Auroras must not come to spoil my dark.’

He smiled so feebly, with an empty handStretched sideway from me,—as indeed he lookedTo any one but me to give him help,—And, while the moon came suddenly out full,The double-rose of our Italian moons,Sufficient, plainly, for the heaven and earth,(The stars, struck dumb and washed away in dewsOf golden glory, and the mountains steepedIn divine languor) he, the man, appearedSo pale and patient, like the marble manA sculptor puts his personal sadness inTo join his grandeur of ideal thought,—As if his mallet struck me from my heightOf passionate indignation, I who had risenPale,—doubting, paused, ... Was Romney mad indeed?Had all this wrong of heart made sick the brain?

Then quiet, with a sort of tremulous pride,‘Go, cousin,’ I said coldly. ‘A farewellWas sooner spoken ’twixt a pair of friendsIn those old days, than seems to suit you now:And if, since then, I’ve writ a book or two,I’m somewhat dull still in the manly artOf phrase and metaphrase. Why, any manCan carve a score of white Loves out of snow,As Buonarroti down in Florence there,And set them on the wall in some safe shade,As safe, sir, as your marriage! very good;Though if a woman took one from the ledgeTo put it on the table by her flowers,And let it mind her of a certain friend,’Twould drop at once, (so better,) would not bearHer nail-mark even, where she took it upA little tenderly; so best, I say:For me, I would not touch so light a thing,And risk to spoil it half an hour beforeThe sun shall shine to melt it: leave it there.I’m plain at speech, direct in purpose: whenI speak, you’ll take the meaning as it is,And not allow for puckerings in the silksBy clever stitches. I’m a woman, sir,And use the woman’s figures naturally,As you, the male license. So, I wish you well.I’m simply sorry for the griefs you’ve had—And not for your sake only, but mankind’s.This race is never grateful: from the first,One fills their cup at supper with pure wine,Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge,In bitter vinegar.’‘If gratefuller,’He murmured,—‘by so much less pitiable!God’s self would never have come down to die,Could man have thanked him for it.’‘Happily’Tis patent that, whatever,’ I resumed,‘You suffered from this thanklessness of men,You sink no more than Moses’ bulrush-boat,When once relieved of Moses; for you’re light,You’re light, my cousin! which is well for you,And manly. For myself,—now mark me, sir,They burnt Leigh Hall; but if, consummatedTo devils, heightened beyond Lucifers,They had burnt instead a star or two, of thoseWe saw above there just a moment back,Before the moon abolished them,—destroyedAnd riddled them in ashes through a sieveOn the head of the foundering universe,—what then?If you and I remained still you and I,It would not shift our places as mere friends,Nor render decent you should toss a phraseBeyond the point of actual feeling!—nay,You shall not interrupt me: as you said,We’re parting. Certainly, not once or twice,To-night you’ve mocked me somewhat, or yourself;And I, at least, have not deserved it soThat I should meet it unsurprised. But now,Enough: we’re parting ... parting. Cousin Leigh,I wish you well through all the acts of lifeAnd life’s relations, wedlock, not the least;And it shall ‘please me,’ in your words, to knowYou yield your wife, protection, freedom, ease,And very tender liking. May you liveSo happy with her, Romney, that your friendsMay praise her for it. Meantime, some of usAre wholly dull in keeping ignorantOf what she has suffered by you, and what debtOf sorrow your rich love sits down to pay:But if ’tis sweet for love to pay its debt,’Tis sweeter still for love to give its gift;And you, be liberal in the sweeter way,—You can, I think. At least, as touches me,You owe her, cousin Romney, no amends;She is not used to hold my gown so fast,You need entreat her now to let it go:The lady never was a friend of mine,Nor capable,—I thought you knew as much,—Of losing for your sake so poor a prizeAs such a worthless friendship. Be content,Good cousin, therefore, both for her and you!I’ll never spoil your dark, nor dull your noon,Nor vex you when you’re merry, nor when you rest:You shall not need to put a shutter upTo keep out this Aurora. Ah, your northCan make Auroras which vex nobody,Scarce known from evenings! also, let me say,My larks fly higher than some windows. Right;You’ve read your Leighs. Indeed ’twould shake a house,If such as I came in with outstretched hand,Still warm and thrilling from the clasp of one ...Of one we know, ... to acknowledge, palm to palm,As mistress there ... the Lady Waldemar.’

‘Now God be with us’ ... with a sudden clashOf voice he interrupted—‘what name’s that?You spoke a name, Aurora.’‘Pardon me;I would that, Romney, I could name your wifeNor wound you, yet be worthy.’‘Are we mad?’He echoed—‘wife! mine! Lady Waldemar!I think you said my wife.’ He sprang to his feet,And threw his noble head back toward the moonAs one who swims against a stormy sea,And laughed with such a helpless, hopeless scorn,I stood and trembled.‘May God judge me so,’He said at last,—‘I came convicted here,And humbled sorely if not enough. I came,Because this woman from her crystal soulHad shown me something which a man calls light:Because too, formerly, I sinned by herAs, then and ever since, I have, by God,Through arrogance of nature,—though I loved ...Whom best, I need not say, ... since that is writToo plainly in the book of my misdeeds;And thus I came here to abase myself,And fasten, kneeling, on her regent browsA garland which I startled thence one dayOf her beautiful June-youth. But here againI’m baffled!—fail in my abasement asMy aggrandisement: there’s no room left for me,At any woman’s foot, who misconceivesMy nature, purpose, possible actions. What!Are you the Aurora who made large my dreamsTo frame your greatness? you conceive so small?You stand so less than woman, through being more,And lose your natural instinct, like a beast,Through intellectual culture? since indeedI do not think that any common sheWould dare adopt such fancy-forgeriesFor the legible life-signature of suchAs I, with all my blots: with all my blots!At last then, peerless cousin, we are peers—At last we’re even. Ah, you’ve left your height;And here upon my level we take hands,And here I reach you to forgive you, sweet,And that’s a fall, Aurora. Long agoYou seldom understood me,—but, before,I could not blame you. Then, you only seemedSo high above, you could not see below;But now I breathe,—but now I pardon!—nay,We’re parting. Dearest, men have burnt my house,Maligned my motives,—but not one, I swear,Has wronged my soul as this Aurora has,Who called the Lady Waldemar my wife.’

‘Not married to her! yet you said’ ...‘Again?Nay, read the lines’ (he held a letter out)‘She sent you through me.’By the moonlight there,I tore the meaning out with passionate hasteMuch rather than I read it. Thus it ran.

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