Aurora Leigh: Book One

Of writing many books there is no end;     And I who have written much in prose and verse     For others' uses, will write now for mine,     Will write my story for my better self,     As when you paint your portrait for a friend,     Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it     Long after he has ceased to love you, just     To hold together what he was and is.     I, writing thus, am still what men call young;     I have not so far left the coasts of life     To travel inland, that I cannot hear     That murmur of the outer Infinite     Which unweaned babies smile at in their sleep     When wondered at for smiling; not so far,     But still I catch my mother at her post     Beside the nursery door, with finger up,     "Hush, hush here's too much noise!" while her sweet eyes     Leap forward, taking part against her word     In the child's riot. Still I sit and feel     My father's slow hand, when she had left us both,     Stroke out my childish curls across his knee,     And hear Assunta's daily jest (she knew     He liked it better than a better jest)     Inquire how many golden scudi went     To make such ringlets. O my father's hand,     Stroke heavily, heavily the poor hair down,     Draw, press the child's head closer to thy knee!     I'm still too young, too young, to sit alone.     I write. My mother was a Florentine,     Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me     When scarcely I was four years old, my life     A poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp     Which went out therefore. She was weak and frail;     She could not bear the joy of giving life,     The mother's rapture slew her. If her kiss     Had left a longer weight upon my lips     It might have steadied the uneasy breath,     And reconciled and fraternised my soul     With the new order. As it was, indeed,     I felt a mother-want about the world,     And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb     Left out at night in shutting up the fold,     As restless as a nest-deserted bird     Grown chill through something being away, though what     It knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was born     To make my father sadder, and myself     Not overjoyous, truly. Women know     The way to rear up children (to be just),     They know a simple, merry, tender knack     Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,     And stringing pretty words that make no sense,     And kissing full sense into empty words,     Which things are corals to cut life upon,     Although such trifles: children learn by such,     Love's holy earnest in a pretty play     And get not over-early solemnised,     But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love's Divine     Which burns and hurts not, not a single bloom,     Become aware and unafraid of Love.     Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well     Mine did, I know, but still with heavier brains,     And wills more consciously responsible,     And not as wisely, since less foolishly;     So mothers have God's license to be missed.     My father was an austere Englishman,     Who, after a dry lifetime spent at home     In college-learning, law, and parish talk,     Was flooded with a passion unaware,     His whole provisioned and complacent past     Drowned out from him that moment. As he stood     In Florence, where he had come to spend a month     And note the secret of Da Vinci's drains,     He musing somewhat absently perhaps     Some English question . . . whether men should pay     The unpopular but necessary tax     With left or right hand in the alien sun     In that great square of the Santissima     There drifted past him (scarcely marked enough     To move his comfortable island scorn)     A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm,     The white-veiled rose-crowned maidens holding up     Tall tapers, weighty for such wrists, aslant     To the blue luminous tremor of the air,     And letting drop the white wax as they went     To eat the bishop's wafer at the church;     From which long trail of chanting priests and girls,     A face flashed like a cymbal on his face     And shook with silent clangour brain and heart,     Transfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus,     He too received his sacramental gift     With eucharistic meanings; for he loved.     And thus beloved, she died. I've heard it said     That but to see him in the first surprise     Of widower and father, nursing me,     Unmothered little child of four years old,     His large man's hands afraid to touch my curls,     As if the gold would tarnish, his grave lips     Contriving such a miserable smile     As if he knew needs must, or I should die,     And yet 'twas hard, would almost make the stones     Cry out for pity. There's a verse he set     In Santa Croce to her memory,     "Weep for an infant too young to weep much     When death removed this mother" stops the mirth     To-day on women's faces when they walk     With rosy children hanging on their gowns,     Under the cloister to escape the sun     That scorches in the piazza. After which     He left our Florence and made haste to hide     Himself, his prattling child, and silent grief,     Among the mountains above Pelago;     Because unmothered babes, he thought, had need     Of mother nature more than others use,     And Pan's white goats, with udders warm and full     Of mystic contemplations, come to feed     Poor milkless lips of orphans like his own     Such scholar-scraps he talked, I've heard from friends,     For even prosaic men who wear grief long     Will get to wear it as a hat aside     With a flower stuck in't. Father, then, and child,     We lived among the mountains many years,     God's silence on the outside of the house,     And we who did not speak too loud within,     And old Assunta to make up the fire,     Crossing herself whene'er a sudden flame     Which lightened from the firewood, made alive     That picture of my mother on the wall.     The painter drew it after she was dead,     And when the face was finished, throat and hands,     Her cameriera carried him, in hate     Of the English-fashioned shroud, the last brocade     She dressed in at the Pitti; "he should paint     No sadder thing than that," she swore, "to wrong     Her poor signora." Therefore very strange     The effect was. I, a little child, would crouch     For hours upon the floor with knees drawn up,     And gaze across them, half in terror, half     In adoration, at the picture there,     That swan-like supernatural white life     Just sailing upward from the red stiff silk     Which seemed to have no part in it nor power     To keep it from quite breaking out of bounds.     For hours I sat and stared. Assunta's awe     And my poor father's melancholy eyes     Still pointed that way. That way went my thoughts     When wandering beyond sight. And as I grew     In years, I mixed, confused, unconsciously,     Whatever I last read or heard or dreamed,     Abhorrent, admirable, beautiful,     Pathetical, or ghastly, or grotesque,     With still that face . . . which did not therefore change,     But kept the mystic level of all forms,     Hates, fears, and admirations, was by turns     Ghost, fiend, and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite,     A dauntless Muse who eyes a dreadful Fate,     A loving Psyche who loses sight of Love,     A still Medusa with mild milky brows     All curdled and all clothed upon with snakes     Whose slime falls fast as sweat will; or anon     Our Lady of the Passion, stabbed with swords     Where the Babe sucked; or Lamia in her first     Moonlighted pallor, ere she shrunk and blinked     And shuddering wriggled down to the unclean;     Or my own mother, leaving her last smile     In her last kiss upon the baby-mouth     My father pushed down on the bed for that,     Or my dead mother, without smile or kiss,     Buried at Florence. All which images,     Concentred on the picture, glassed themselves     Before my meditative childhood, as     The incoherencies of change and death     Are represented fully, mixed and merged,     In the smooth fair mystery of perpetual Life.     And while I stared away my childish wits     Upon my mother's picture (ah, poor child!),     My father, who through love had suddenly     Thrown off the old conventions, broken loose     From chin-bands of the soul, like Lazarus,     Yet had no time to learn to talk and walk     Or grow anew familiar with the sun,     Who had reached to freedom, not to action, lived,     But lived as one entranced, with thoughts, not aims,     Whom love had unmade from a common man     But not completed to an uncommon man,     My father taught me what he had learnt the best     Before he died and left me, grief and love.     And, seeing we had books among the hills,     Strong words of counselling souls confederate     With vocal pines and waters, out of books     He taught me all the ignorance of men,     And how God laughs in heaven when any man     Says "Here I'm learned; this, I understand;     In that, I am never caught at fault or doubt."     He sent the schools to school, demonstrating     A fool will pass for such through one mistake,     While a philosopher will pass for such,     Through said mistakes being ventured in the gross     And heaped up to a system.     I am like,     They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows     Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth     Of delicate features, paler, near as grave;     But then my mother's smile breaks up the whole,     And makes it better sometimes than itself.     So, nine full years, our days were hid with God     Among his mountains: I was just thirteen,     Still growing like the plants from unseen roots     In tongue-tied Springs, and suddenly awoke     To full life and life's needs and agonies     With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside     A stone-dead father. Life, struck sharp on death,     Makes awful lightning. His last word was "Love "     "Love, my child, love, love!" (then he had done with grief)     "Love, my child." Ere I answered he was gone,     And none was left to love in all the world.     There, ended childhood. What succeeded next     I recollect as, after fevers, men     Thread back the passage of delirium,     Missing the turn still, baffled by the door;     Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives,     A weary, wormy darkness, spurred i' the flank     With flame, that it should eat and end itself     Like some tormented scorpion. Then at last     I do remember clearly how there came     A stranger with authority, not right     (I thought not), who commanded, caught me up     From old Assunta's neck; how, with a shriek,     She let me go, while I, with ears too full     Of my father's silence to shriek back a word,     In all a child's astonishment at grief     Stared at the wharf-edge where she stood and moaned,     My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned!     The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy,     Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck,     Like one in anger drawing back her skirts     Which suppliants catch at. Then the bitter sea     Inexorably pushed between us both     And, sweeping up the ship with my despair,     Threw us out as a pasture to the stars.     Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep;     Ten nights and days without the common face     Of any day or night; the moon and sun     Cut off from the green reconciling earth,     To starve into a blind ferocity     And glare unnatural; the very sky     (Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea,     As if no human heart should 'scape alive)     Bedraggled with the desolating salt,     Until it seemed no more that holy heaven     To which my father went. All new and strange;     The universe turned stranger, for a child.     Then, land! then, England! oh, the frosty cliffs     Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home     Among those mean red houses through the fog?     And when I heard my father's language first     From alien lips which had no kiss for mine     I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept,     And some one near me said the child was mad     Through much sea-sickness. The train swept us on:     Was this my father's England? the great isle?     The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship     Of verdure, field from field, as man from man;     The skies themselves looked low and positive,     As almost you could touch them with a hand,     And dared to do it they were so far off     From God's celestial crystals; all things blurred     And dull and vague. Did Shakespeare and his mates     Absorb the light here? not a hill or stone     With heart to strike a radiant colour up     Or active outline on the indifferent air.     I think I see my father's sister stand     Upon the hall-step of her country-house     To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,     Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight     As if for taming accidental thoughts     From possible pulses; brown hair pricked with gray     By frigid use of life (she was not old,     Although my father's elder by a year),     A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines;     A close mild mouth, a little soured about     The ends, through speaking unrequited loves     Or peradventure niggardly half-truths;     Eyes of no colour, once they might have smiled,     But never, never have forgot themselves     In smiling; cheeks, in which was yet a rose     Of perished summers, like a rose in a book,     Kept more for ruth than pleasure, if past bloom,     Past fading also.     She had lived, we'll say,     A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,     A quiet life, which was not life at all     (But that, she had not lived enough to know),     Between the vicar and the county squires,     The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes     From the empyrean to assure their souls     Against chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss,     The apothecary, looked on once a year     To prove their soundness of humility.     The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts     Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,     Because we are of one flesh, after all,     And need one flannel (with a proper sense     Of difference in the quality) and still     The book-club, guarded from your modern trick     Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,     Preserved her intellectual. She had lived     A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,     Accounting that to leap from perch to perch     Was act and joy enough for any bird.     Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live     In thickets, and eat berries!     I, alas,     A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,     And she was there to meet me. Very kind.     Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.     She stood upon the steps to welcome me,     Calm, in black garb. I clung about her neck,     Young babes, who catch at every shred of wool     To draw the new light closer, catch and cling     Less blindly. In my ears my father's word     Hummed ignorantly, as the sea in shells,     "Love, love, my child." She, black there with my grief,     Might feel my love she was his sister once     I clung to her. A moment she seemed moved,     Kissed me with cold lips, suffered me to cling,     And drew me feebly through the hall into     The room she sat in.     There, with some strange spasm     Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands     Imperiously, and held me at arm's length,     And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyes     Searched through my face, ay, stabbed it through and through,     Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find     A wicked murderer in my innocent face,     If not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath,     She struggled for her ordinary calm     And missed it rather, told me not to shrink,     As if she had told me not to lie or swear,     "She loved my father and would love me too     As long as I deserved it." Very kind.     I understood her meaning afterward;     She thought to find my mother in my face,     And questioned it for that. For she, my aunt,     Had loved my father truly, as she could,     And hated, with the gall of gentle souls,     My Tuscan mother who had fooled away     A wise man from wise courses, a good man     From obvious duties, and, depriving her,     His sister, of the household precedence,     Had wronged his tenants, robbed his native land,     And made him mad, alike by life and death,     In love and sorrow. She had pored for years     What sort of woman could be suitable     To her sort of hate, to entertain it with,     And so, her very curiosity     Became hate too, and all the idealism     She ever used in life was used for hate,     Till hate, so nourished, did exceed at last     The love from which it grew, in strength and heat,     And wrinkled her smooth conscience with a sense     Of disputable virtue (say not, sin)     When Christian doctrine was enforced at church.     And thus my father's sister was to me     My mother's hater. From that day she did     Her duty to me (I appreciate it     In her own word as spoken to herself),     Her duty, in large measure, well pressed out,     But measured always. She was generous, bland,     More courteous than was tender, gave me still     The first place, as if fearful that God's saints     Would look down suddenly and say "Herein     You missed a point, I think, through lack of love."     Alas, a mother never is afraid     Of speaking angerly to any child,     Since love, she knows, is justified of love.     And I, I was a good child on the whole,     A meek and manageable child. Why not?     I did not live, to have the faults of life:     There seemed more true life in my father's grave     Than in all England. Since that threw me off     Who fain would cleave (his latest will, they say,     Consigned me to his land), I only thought     Of lying quiet there where I was thrown     Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffering her     To prick me to a pattern with her pin,     Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf,     And dry out from my drowned anatomy     The last sea-salt left in me.     So it was.     I broke the copious curls upon my head     In braids, because she liked smooth-ordered hair.     I left off saying my sweet Tuscan words     Which still at any stirring of the heart     Came up to float across the English phrase     As lilies (Bene or Che che), because     She liked my father's child to speak his tongue.     I learnt the collects and the catechism,     The creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice,     The Articles, the Tracts against the times     (By no means Buonaventure's "Prick of Love"),     And various popular synopses of     Inhuman doctrines never taught by John,     Because she liked instructed piety.     I learnt my complement of classic French     (Kept pure of Balzac and neologism)     And German also, since she liked a range     Of liberal education, tongues, not books.     I learnt a little algebra, a little     Of the mathematics, brushed with extreme flounce     The circle of the sciences, because     She misliked women who are frivolous.     I learnt the royal genealogies     Of Oviedo, the internal laws     Of the Burmese empire, by how many feet     Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe,     What navigable river joins itself     To Lara, and what census of the year five     Was taken at Klagenfurt, because she liked     A general insight into useful facts.     I learnt much music, such as would have been     As quite impossible in Johnson's day     As still it might be wished fine sleights of hand     And unimagined fingering, shuffling off     The hearer's soul through hurricanes of notes     To a noisy Tophet; and I drew . . . costumes     From French engravings, nereids neatly draped     (With smirks of simmering godship): I washed in     Landscapes from nature (rather say, washed out).     I danced the polka and Cellarius,     Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax,     Because she liked accomplishments in girls.     I read a score of books on womanhood     To prove, if women do not think at all,     They may teach thinking (to a maiden aunt     Or else the author), books that boldly assert     Their right of comprehending husband's talk     When not too deep, and even of answering     With pretty "may it please you," or "so it is,"     Their rapid insight and fine aptitude,     Particular worth and general missionariness,     As long as they keep quiet by the fire     And never say "no" when the world says "ay,"     For that is fatal, their angelic reach     Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn,     And fatten household sinners, their, in brief,     Potential faculty in everything     Of abdicating power in it: she owned     She liked a woman to be womanly,     And English women, she thanked God and sighed     (Some people always sigh in thanking God),     Were models to the universe. And last     I learnt cross-stitch, because she did not like     To see me wear the night with empty hands     A-doing nothing. So, my shepherdess     Was something after all (the pastoral saints     Be praised for't), leaning lovelorn with pink eyes     To match her shoes, when I mistook the silks;     Her head uncrushed by that round weight of hat     So strangely similar to the tortoise-shell     Which slew the tragic poet.     By the way,     The works of women are symbolical.     We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,     Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,     To put on when you're weary or a stool     To stumble over and vex you . . . "curse that stool!"     Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean     And sleep, and dream of something we are not     But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!     This hurts most, this that, after all, we are paid     The worth of our work, perhaps.      In looking down     Those years of education (to return)     I wonder if Brinvilliers suffered more     In the water-torture . . . flood succeeding flood     To drench the incapable throat and split the veins . . .     Than I did. Certain of your feebler souls     Go out in such a process; many pine     To a sick, inodorous light; my own endured:     I had relations in the Unseen, and drew     The elemental nutriment and heat     From nature, as earth feels the sun at nights,     Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark.     I kept the life thrust on me, on the outside     Of the inner life with all its ample room     For heart and lungs, for will and intellect,     Inviolable by conventions. God,     I thank thee for that grace of thine!                     At first     I felt no life which was not patience, did     The thing she bade me, without heed to a thing     Beyond it, sat in just the chair she placed,     With back against the window, to exclude     The sight of the great lime-tree on the lawn,     Which seemed to have come on purpose from the woods     To bring the house a message, ay, and walked     Demurely in her carpeted low rooms,     As if I should not, hearkening my own steps,     Misdoubt I was alive. I read her books,     Was civil to her cousin, Romney Leigh,     Gave ear to her vicar, tea to her visitors,     And heard them whisper, when I changed a cup     (I blushed for joy at that), "The Italian child,     For all her blue eyes and her quiet ways,     Thrives ill in England: she is paler yet     Than when we came the last time; she will die."     "Will die." My cousin, Romney Leigh, blushed too,     With sudden anger, and approaching me     Said low between his teeth, "You're wicked now?     You wish to die and leave the world a-dusk     For others, with your naughty light blown out?"     I looked into his face defyingly;     He might have known that, being what I was,     'Twas natural to like to get away     As far as dead folk can: and then indeed     Some people make no trouble when they die.     He turned and went abruptly, slammed the door,     And shut his dog out.     Romney, Romney Leigh.     I have not named my cousin hitherto,     And yet I used him as a sort of friend;     My elder by few years, but cold and shy     And absent . . . tender, when he thought of it,     Which scarcely was imperative, grave betimes,     As well as early master of Leigh Hall,     Whereof the nightmare sat upon his youth,     Repressing all its seasonable delights,     And agonising with a ghastly sense     Of universal hideous want and wrong     To incriminate possession. When he came     From college to the country, very oft     He crossed the hill on visits to my aunt,     With gifts of blue grapes from the hothouses,     A book in one hand, mere statistics (if     I chanced to lift the cover), count of all     The goats whose beards grow sprouting down toward hell     Against God's separative judgment-hour.     And she, she almost loved him, even allowed     That sometimes he should seem to sigh my way;     It made him easier to be pitiful,     And sighing was his gift. So, undisturbed,     At whiles she let him shut my music up     And push my needles down, and lead me out     To see in that south angle of the house     The figs grow black as if by a Tuscan rock,     On some light pretext. She would turn her head     At other moments, go to fetch a thing,     And leave me breath enough to speak with him,     For his sake; it was simple.     Sometimes too     He would have saved me utterly, it seemed,     He stood and looked so.     Once, he stood so near,     He dropped a sudden hand upon my head     Bent down on woman's work, as soft as rain     But then I rose and shook it off as fire,     The stranger's touch that took my father's place     Yet dared seem soft.     I used him for a friend     Before I ever knew him for a friend.     'Twas better, 'twas worse also, afterward:     We came so close, we saw our differences     Too intimately. Always Romney Leigh     Was looking for the worms, I for the gods.     A godlike nature his; the gods look down,     Incurious of themselves; and certainly     'Tis well I should remember, how, those days,     I was a worm too, and he looked on me.     A little by his act perhaps, yet more     By something in me, surely not my will,     I did not die. But slowly, as one in swoon,     To whom life creeps back in the form of death,     With a sense of separation, a blind pain     Of blank obstruction, and a roar i' the ears     Of visionary chariots which retreat     As earth grows clearer . . . slowly, by degrees,     I woke, rose up . . . where was I? in the world;     For uses therefore I must count worth while.     I had a little chamber in the house,     As green as any privet-hedge a bird     Might choose to build in, though the nest itself     Could show but dead-brown sticks and straws; the walls     Were green, the carpet was pure green, the straight     Small bed was curtained greenly, and the folds     Hung green about the window which let in     The out-door world with all its greenery.     You could not push your head out and escape     A dash of dawn-dew from the honeysuckle,     But so you were baptized into the grace     And privilege of seeing. . . .     First, the lime     (I had enough there, of the lime, be sure,     My morning-dream was often hummed away     By the bees in it); past the lime, the lawn,     Which, after sweeping broadly round the house,     Went trickling through the shrubberies in a stream     Of tender turf, and wore and lost itself     Among the acacias, over which you saw     The irregular line of elms by the deep lane     Which stopped the grounds and dammed the overflow     Of arbutus and laurel. Out of sight     The lane was; sunk so deep, no foreign tramp     Nor drover of wild ponies out of Wales     Could guess if lady's hall or tenant's lodge     Dispensed such odours, though his stick well-crooked     Might reach the lowest trail of blossoming briar     Which dipped upon the wall. Behind the elms,     And through their tops, you saw the folded hills     Striped up and down with hedges (burly oaks     Projecting from the line to show themselves),     Through which my cousin Romney's chimneys smoked     As still as when a silent mouth in frost     Breathes, showing where the woodlands hid Leigh Hall;     While, far above, a jut of table-land,     A promontory without water, stretched,     You could not catch it if the days were thick,     Or took it for a cloud; but, otherwise,     The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve     And use it for an anvil till he had filled     The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts,     Protesting against night and darkness: then,     When all his setting trouble was resolved     To a trance of passive glory, you might see     In apparition on the golden sky     (Alas, my Giotto's background!) the sheep run     Along the fine clear outline, small as mice     That run along a witch's scarlet thread.     Not a grand nature. Not my chestnut-woods     Of Vallombrosa, cleaving by the spurs     To the precipices. Not my headlong leaps     Of waters, that cry out for joy or fear     In leaping through the palpitating pines,     Like a white soul tossed out to eternity     With thrills of time upon it. Not indeed     My multitudinous mountains, sitting in     The magic circle, with the mutual touch     Electric, panting from their full deep hearts     Beneath the influent heavens, and waiting for     Communion and commission. Italy     Is one thing, England one.     On English ground     You understand the letter, ere the fall     How Adam lived in a garden. All the fields     Are tied up fast with hedges, nosegay-like;     The hills are crumpled plains, the plains parterres,     The trees, round, woolly, ready to be clipped,     And if you seek for any wilderness     You find, at best, a park. A nature tamed     And grown domestic like a barn-door fowl,     Which does not awe you with its claws and beak,     Nor tempt you to an eyrie too high up,     But which, in cackling, sets you thinking of     Your eggs to-morrow at breakfast, in the pause     Of finer meditation.     Rather say,     A sweet familiar nature, stealing in     As a dog might, or child, to touch your hand     Or pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so     Of presence and affection, excellent     For inner uses, from the things without.     I could not be unthankful, I who was     Entreated thus and holpen. In the room     I speak of, ere the house was well awake,     And also after it was well asleep,     I sat alone, and drew the blessing in     Of all that nature. With a gradual step,     A stir among the leaves, a breath, a ray,     It came in softly, while the angels made     A place for it beside me. The moon came,     And swept my chamber clean of foolish thoughts.     The sun came, saying, "Shall I lift this light     Against the lime-tree, and you will not look?     I make the birds sing listen! but, for you,     God never hears your voice, excepting when     You lie upon the bed at nights and weep."     Then, something moved me. Then, I wakened up     More slowly than I verily write now,     But wholly, at last, I wakened, opened wide     The window and my soul, and let the airs     And out-door sights sweep gradual gospels in,     Regenerating what I was. O Life,     How oft we throw it off and think, "Enough,     Enough of life in so much! here's a cause     For rupture; herein we must break with Life,     Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged,     Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell, Life!"     And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes     And think all ended. Then, Life calls to us     In some transformed, apocalyptic voice,     Above us, or below us, or around:     Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's,     Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed     To own our compensations than our griefs:     Still, Life's voice! still, we make our peace with Life.     And I, so young then, was not sullen. Soon     I used to get up early, just to sit     And watch the morning quicken in the gray,     And hear the silence open like a flower     Leaf after leaf, and stroke with listless hand     The woodbine through the window, till at last     I came to do it with a sort of love,     At foolish unaware: whereat I smiled,     A melancholy smile, to catch myself     Smiling for joy.     Capacity for joy     Admits temptation. It seemed, next, worth while     To dodge the sharp sword set against my life;     To slip down stairs through all the sleepy house,     As mute as any dream there, and escape     As a soul from the body, out of doors,     Glide through the shrubberies, drop into the lane,     And wander on the hills an hour or two,     Then back again before the house should stir.     Or else I sat on in my chamber green,     And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed     My prayers without the vicar; read my books,     Without considering whether they were fit     To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good     By being ungenerous, even to a book,     And calculating profits, so much help     By so much reading. It is rather when     We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge     Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,     Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth     'Tis then we get the right good from a book.     I read much. What my father taught before     From many a volume, Love re-emphasised     Upon the self-same pages: Theophrast     Grew tender with the memory of his eyes,     And lian made mine wet. The trick of Greek     And Latin he had taught me, as he would     Have taught me wrestling or the game of fives     If such he had known, most like a shipwrecked man     Who heaps his single platter with goats' cheese     And scarlet berries; or like any man     Who loves but one, and so gives all at once,     Because he has it, rather than because     He counts it worthy. Thus, my father gave;     And thus, as did the women formerly     By young Achilles, when they pinned a veil     Across the boy's audacious front, and swept     With tuneful laughs the silver-fretted rocks,     He wrapt his little daughter in his large     Man's doublet, careless did it fit or no.     But, after I had read for memory,     I read for hope. The path my father's foot     Had trod me out (which suddenly broke off     What time he dropped the wallet of the flesh     And passed), alone I carried on, and set     My child-heart 'gainst the thorny underwood,     To reach the grassy shelter of the trees.     Ah babe i' the wood, without a brother-babe!     My own self-pity, like the red-breast bird,     Flies back to cover all that past with leaves.     Sublimest danger, over which none weeps,     When any young wayfaring soul goes forth     Alone, unconscious of the perilous road,     The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes,     To thrust his own way, he an alien, through     The world of books! Ah, you! you think it fine,     You clap hands "A fair day!" you cheer him on,     As if the worst, could happen, were to rest     Too long beside a fountain. Yet, behold,     Behold! the world of books is still the world,     And worldings in it are less merciful     And more puissant. For the wicked there     Are winged like angels; every knife that strikes     Is edged from elemental fire to assail     A spiritual life; the beautiful seems right     By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong     Because of weakness; power is justified     Though armed against Saint Michael; many a crown     Covers bald foreheads. In the book-world, true,     There's no lack, neither, of God's saints and kings,     That shake the ashes of the grave aside     From their calm locks and undiscomfited     Look steadfast truths against Time's changing mask.     True, many a prophet teaches in the roads;     True, many a seer pulls down the flaming heavens     Upon his own head in strong martyrdom     In order to light men a moment's space.     But stay! who judges? who distinguishes     'Twixt Saul and Nahash justly, at first sight,     And leaves king Saul precisely at the sin,     To serve king David? who discerns at once     The sound of the trumpets, when the trumpets blow     For Alaric as well as Charlemagne?     Who judges wizards, and can tell true seers     From conjurers? the child, there? Would you leave     That child to wander in a battle-field     And push his innocent smile against the guns;     Or even in a catacomb, his torch     Grown ragged in the fluttering air, and all     The dark a-mutter round him? not a child.     I read books bad and good some bad and good     At once (good aims not always make good books:     Well-tempered spades turn up ill-smelling soils     In digging vineyards even); books that prove     God's being so definitely, that man's doubt     Grows self-defined the other side the line,     Made atheist by suggestion; moral books,     Exasperating to license; genial books,     Discounting from the human dignity;     And merry books, which set you weeping when     The sun shines, ay, and melancholy books,     Which make you laugh that any one should weep     In this disjointed life for one wrong more.     The world of books is still the world, I write,     And both worlds have God's providence, thank God,     To keep and hearten: with some struggle, indeed,     Among the breakers, some hard swimming through     The deeps I lost breath in my soul sometimes     And cried "God save me if there's any God,"     But, even so, God saved me; and, being dashed     From error on to error, every turn     Still brought me nearer to the central truth.     I thought so. All this anguish in the thick     Of men's opinions . . . press and counterpress,     Now up, now down, now underfoot, and now     Emergent . . . all the best of it, perhaps,     But throws you back upon a noble trust     And use of your own instinct, merely proves     Pure reason stronger than bare inference     At strongest. Try it, fix against heaven's wall     The scaling-ladders of school logic mount     Step by step! sight goes faster; that still ray     Which strikes out from you, how, you cannot tell,     And why, you know not (did you eliminate,     That such as you indeed should analyse?)     Goes straight and fast as light, and high as God.     The cygnet finds the water, but the man     Is born in ignorance of his element     And feels out blind at first, disorganised     By sin i' the blood, his spirit-insight dulled     And crossed by his sensations. Presently     He feels it quicken in the dark sometimes,     When, mark, be reverent, be obedient,     For such dumb motions of imperfect life     Are oracles of vital Deity     Attesting the Hereafter. Let who says     "The soul's a clean white paper," rather say,     A palimpsest, a prophet's holograph     Defiled, erased and covered by a monk's,     The apocalypse, by a Longus! poring on     Which obscene text, we may discern perhaps     Some fair, fine trace of what was written once,     Some upstroke of an alpha and omega     Expressing the old scripture.     Books, books, books!     I had found the secret of a garret-room     Piled high with cases in my father's name,     Piled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out     Among the giant fossils of my past,     Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs     Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there     At this or that box, pulling through the gap,     In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,     The first book first. And how I felt it beat     Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,     An hour before the sun would let me read!     My books! At last because the time was ripe,     I chanced upon the poets.     As the earth     Plunges in fury, when the internal fires     Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat     The marts and temples, the triumphal gates     And towers of observation, clears herself     To elemental freedom thus, my soul,     At poetry's divine first finger-touch,     Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,     Convicted of the great eternities     Before two worlds.     What's this, Aurora Leigh,     You write so of the poets, and not laugh?     Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark,     Exaggerators of the sun and moon,     And soothsayers in a tea-cup?     I write so     Of the only truth-tellers now left to God,     The only speakers of essential truth,     Opposed to relative, comparative,     And temporal truths; the only holders by     His sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms;     The only teachers who instruct mankind     From just a shadow on a charnel-wall     To find man's veritable stature out     Erect, sublime, the measure of a man,     And that's the measure of an angel, says     The apostle. Ay, and while your common men     Lay telegraphs, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine,     And dust the flaunty carpets of the world     For kings to walk on, or our president,     The poet suddenly will catch them up     With his voice like a thunder, "This is soul,     This is life, this word is being said in heaven,     Here's God down on us! what are you about?"     How all those workers start amid their work,     Look round, look up, and feel, a moment's space,     That carpet-dusting, though a pretty trade,     Is not the imperative labour after all.     My own best poets, am I one with you,     That thus I love you, or but one through love?     Does all this smell of thyme about my feet     Conclude my visit to your holy hill     In personal presence, or but testify     The rustling of your vesture through my dreams     With influent odours? When my joy and pain,     My thought and aspiration, like the stops     Of pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb     Unless melodious, do you play on me     My pipers, and if, sooth, you did not blow,     Would no sound come? or is the music mine,     As a man's voice or breath is called his own,     Inbreathed by the Life-breather? There's a doubt     For cloudy seasons!     But the sun was high     When first I felt my pulses set themselves     For concord; when the rhythmic turbulence     Of blood and brain swept outward upon words,     As wind upon the alders, blanching them     By turning up their under-natures till     They trembled in dilation. O delight     And triumph of the poet, who would say     A man's mere "yes," a woman's common "no,"     A little human hope of that or this,     And says the word so that it burns you through     With a special revelation, shakes the heart     Of all the men and women in the world,     As if one came back from the dead and spoke,     With eyes too happy, a familiar thing     Become divine i' the utterance! while for him     The poet, speaker, he expands with joy;     The palpitating angel in his flesh     Thrills inly with consenting fellowship     To those innumerous spirits who sun themselves     Outside of time.     O life, O poetry,     Which means life in life! cognisant of life     Beyond this blood-beat, passionate for truth     Beyond these senses! poetry, my life,     My eagle, with both grappling feet still hot     From Zeus's thunder, who hast ravished me     Away from all the shepherds, sheep, and dogs,     And set me in the Olympian roar and round     Of luminous faces for a cup-bearer,     To keep the mouths of all the godheads moist     For everlasting laughters, I myself     Half drunk across the beaker with their eyes!     How those gods look!     Enough so, Ganymede,     We shall not bear above a round or two.     We drop the golden cup at Her's foot     And swoon back to the earth, and find ourselves     Face-down among the pine-cones, cold with dew,     While the dogs bark, and many a shepherd scoffs,     "What's come now to the youth?" Such ups and downs     Have poets.     Am I such indeed? The name     Is royal, and to sign it like a queen     Is what I dare not, though some royal blood     Would seem to tingle in me now and then,     With sense of power and ache, with imposthumes     And manias usual to the race. Howbeit     I dare not: 'tis too easy to go mad     And ape a Bourbon in a crown of straws;     The thing's too common.     Many fervent souls     Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel     If steel had offered, in a restless heat     Of doing something. Many tender souls     Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread,     As children cowslips: the more pains they take,     The work more withers. Young men, ay, and maids,     Too often sow their wild oats in tame verse,     Before they sit down under their own vine     And live for use. Alas, near all the birds     Will sing at dawn, and yet we do not take     The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.     In those days, though, I never analysed,     Not even myself. Analysis comes late.     You catch a sight of Nature, earliest,     In full front sun-face, and your eyelids wink     And drop before the wonder of't; you miss     The form, through seeing the light. I lived, those days,     And wrote because I lived unlicensed else;     My heart beat in my brain. Life's violent flood     Abolished bounds, and, which my neighbour's field,     Which mine, what mattered? it is thus in youth!     We play at leap-frog over the god Term;     The love within us and the love without     Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love,     We scarce distinguish: thus, with other power;     Being acted on and acting seem the same:     In that first onrush of life's chariot-wheels,     We know not if the forests move or we.     And so, like most young poets, in a flush     Of individual life I poured myself     Along the veins of others, and achieved     Mere lifeless imitations of live verse,     And made the living answer for the dead,     Profaning nature. "Touch not, do not taste,     Nor handle," we're too legal, who write young:     We beat the phorminx till we hurt our thumbs,     As if still ignorant of counterpoint;     We call the Muse, "O Muse, benignant Muse,"     As if we had seen her purple-braided head,     With the eyes in it, start between the boughs     As often as a stag's. What make-believe,     With so much earnest! what effete results     From virile efforts! what cold wire-drawn odes     From such white heats! bucolics, where the cows     Would scare the writer if they splashed the mud     In lashing off the flies, didactics, driven     Against the heels of what the master said;     And counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumps     A babe might blow between two straining cheeks     Of bubbled rose, to make his mother laugh;     And elegiac griefs, and songs of love,     Like cast-off nosegays picked up on the road,     The worse for being warm: all these things, writ     On happy mornings, with a morning heart,     That leaps for love, is active for resolve,     Weak for art only. Oft, the ancient forms     Will thrill, indeed, in carrying the young blood.     The wine-skins, now and then, a little warped,     Will crack even, as the new wine gurgles in.     Spare the old bottles! spill not the new wine.     By Keats's soul, the man who never stepped     In gradual progress like another man,     But, turning grandly on his central self,     Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years     And died, not young (the life of a long life     Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear     Upon the world's cold cheek to make it burn     For ever); by that strong excepted soul,     I count it strange and hard to understand     That nearly all young poets should write old,     That Pope was sexagenary at sixteen,     And beardless Byron academical,     And so with others. It may be perhaps     Such have not settled long and deep enough     In trance, to attain to clairvoyance, and still     The memory mixes with the vision, spoils,     And works it turbid.     Or perhaps, again,     In order to discover the Muse-Sphinx,     The melancholy desert must sweep round,     Behind you as before.     For me, I wrote     False poems, like the rest, and thought them true     Because myself was true in writing them.     I peradventure have writ true ones since     With less complacence.     But I could not hide     My quickening inner life from those at watch.     They saw a light at a window, now and then,     They had not set there: who had set it there?     My father's sister started when she caught     My soul agaze in my eyes. She could not say     I had no business with a sort of soul,     But plainly she objected, and demurred     That souls were dangerous things to carry straight     Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.     She said sometimes "Aurora, have you done     Your task this morning? have you read that book?     And are you ready for the crochet here?"     As if she said "I know there's something wrong;     I know I have not ground you down enough     To flatten and bake you to a wholesome crust     For household uses and proprieties,     Before the rain has got into my barn     And set the grains a-sprouting. What, you're green     With out-door impudence? you almost grow?"     To which I answered, "Would she hear my task,     And verify my abstract of the book?     Or should I sit down to the crochet work?     Was such her pleasure?" Then I sat and teased     The patient needle till it spilt the thread,     Which oozed off from it in meandering lace     From hour to hour. I was not, therefore, sad;     My soul was singing at a work apart     Behind the wall of sense, as safe from harm     As sings the lark when sucked up out of sight     In vortices of glory and blue air.     And so, through forced work and spontaneous work,     The inner life informed the outer life,     Reduced the irregular blood to a settled rhythm,     Made cool the forehead with fresh-sprinkling dreams,     And, rounding to the spheric soul the thin,     Pined body, struck a colour up the cheeks     Though somewhat faint. I clenched my brows across     My blue eyes greatening in the looking-glass,     And said "We'll live, Aurora! we'll be strong.     The dogs are on us but we will not die."     Whoever lives true life will love true love.     I learnt to love that England. Very oft,     Before the day was born, or otherwise     Through secret windings of the afternoons,     I threw my hunters off and plunged myself     Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag     Will take the waters, shivering with the fear     And passion of the course. And when at last     Escaped, so many a green slope built on slope     Betwixt me and the enemy's house behind,     I dared to rest, or wander, in a rest     Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,     And view the ground's most gentle dimplement     (As if God's finger touched but did not press     In making England), such an up and down     Of verdure, nothing too much up or down,     A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky     Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb;     Such nooks of valleys lined with orchises,     Fed full of noises by invisible streams;     And open pastures where you scarcely tell     White daisies from white dew, at intervals     The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out     Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,     I thought my father's land was worthy too     Of being my Shakespeare's.     Very oft alone,     Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leave     To walk the third with Romney and his friend     The rising painter, Vincent Carrington,     Whom men judge hardly as bee-bonneted,     Because he holds that, paint a body well,     You paint a soul by implication, like     The grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for if     He said "When I was last in Italy,"     It sounded as an instrument that's played     Too far off for the tune and yet it's fine     To listen.     Ofter we walked only two     If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me.     We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced.     We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched:     Say rather, scholars upon different tracks,     And thinkers disagreed: he, overfull     Of what is, and I, haply, overbold     For what might be.     But then the thrushes sang,     And shook my pulses and the elms' new leaves:     At which I turned, and held my finger up,     And bade him mark that, howsoe'er the world     Went ill, as he related, certainly     The thrushes still sang in it. At the word     His brow would soften, and he bore with me     In melancholy patience, not unkind,     While breaking into voluble ecstasy     I flattered all the beauteous country round,     As poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields,     The happy violets hiding from the roads     The primroses run down to, carrying gold;     The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out     Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths     'Twixt dripping ash-boughs, hedgerows all alive     With birds and gnats and large white butterflies     Which look as if the May-flower had caught life     And palpitated forth upon the wind;     Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,     Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills;     And cattle grazing in the watered vales,     And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,     And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,     Confused with smell of orchards. "See," I said,     "And see! is God not with us on the earth?     And shall we put Him down by aught we do?     Who says there's nothing for the poor and vile     Save poverty and wickedness? behold!"     And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped     And clapped my hands, and called all very fair.     In the beginning when God called all good,     Even then was evil near us, it is writ;     But we indeed who call things good and fair,     The evil is upon us while we speak;     Deliver us from evil, let us pray.