Part 2

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, sate 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, harkening 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 sate 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 hills 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 are sprouting down toward hell, Against God’s separating 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 baptised 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 lines 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, And proved he need not rest so early:—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 sate 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, apocryphal, new 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 grey, 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 sate 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 Ælian 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 the 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 worldlings 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 St. 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 stedfast 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 prophets, and can tell true seers From conjurors? 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 the catacombs, ... 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 Your scaling ladders of high 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 We feel it quicken in the dark sometimes; Then, mark, be reverent, be obedient,— For those 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 grey 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 Build pyramids, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine, And dust the flaunty carpets of the world For kings to walk on, or our senators, 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 If not 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 concords; 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, the 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 has 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 Heré’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.