Aurora Leigh (excerpts)

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    <strong>Aurora Leigh (excerpts)</strong>

    [Book 1]

    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 mothers smile breaks up the whole,

    And makes it better sometimes than itself.

    So, nine full years, <abbr>九九藏书</abbr>our days were hid with God

    Among his mountains : I was just thirteen,

    Still growing like the plants from unseen roots

    In toied Springs, -- and suddenly awoke

    To full life and life s needs and agonies,

    With an interong, struggli beside

    A stone-dead father. Life, struck sharp oh,

    Makes awful lightning. His last word was, `Love --

    `Love, my child, love, love ! -- (then he had doh 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

    I recollect as, after fevers, men

    Thread back the passage of delirium,

    Missing the turn still<mark>九九藏书</mark>, baffled by the door ;

    Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives ;

    A weary, wormy darkness, spurrd 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, nht,

    (I thought not) who anded, caught me up

    From old Assuntas neck ; how, with a shriek,

    She let me go, -- while I, with ears too full

    Of my fathers sileo shriek back a word,

    In all a childs 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 supplits catch at. Theter 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 on face

    Of any day ht ; the moon and sun

    Cut off from the green reg earth,

    To starve into a blind ferocity

    And glare unnatural ; the very sky

    (Dropping its bell- down upon the sea

    As if no huma 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 turranger, 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 fathers language first

    From alien lips which had no kiss for mine

    I wept aloud, then laughed, the, the,

    And some one near me said the child was mad

    Through much sea-siess. The trai us on.

    Was this my fathers 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 loositive,

    As almost you could touch them with a hand,

    And dared to do it they were so far off

    From Gods celestial crystals <kbd></kbd>; all things blurred

    And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mat<mark></mark>es

    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 fathers sister stand

    Upon the hall-step of her try-house

    To give me wele. She stood straight and calm,

    Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight

    As if for taming actal thoughts

    From possible pulses ; broricked with grey

    By frigid use of life, (she was not old

    Although my fathers elder by a year)

    A nose drawn sharply yet in delicate lines ;

    A ild mouth, a little soured about

    The ends, through speaking ued loves

    Or peradventure niggardly half-truths ;

    Eyes of no colour, -- ohey might have smiled,

    But never, never have fot 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, well 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 try squires,

    The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes

    From the empyrean to assure their souls

    Against ce-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 stogs, stitg petticoats,

    Because we are of one flesh after all

    And need one flannel (with a proper sense

    Of differen 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,

    Ating that to leap from perch to perch

    Was ad joy enough for any bird.

    Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live

    In thickets, a berries !

    I, alas,

    A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought te,

    And she was there to meet me. Very kind.

    Bring the  water, give out the fresh seed.

    She stood upoeps to wele,

    Calm, in black garb. I g about her neck, --

    Young babes, who catch at every shred of wool

    To draw the new light closer, catd g

    Less blindly. In my ears, my fathers 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 g to her. A moment, she seemed moved,

    Kissed me with cold lips, suffered me to g,

    And drew me feebly through the hall into

    The room she sate in.

    There, with some strange spasm

    Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands

    Imperiously, and held me at arms length,

    And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyes

    Searched through my face, -- ay, stabbed it through and through,

    Through brows and cheeks and , as if to find

    A wicked murderer in my i 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.

    [Book 5]

    AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope

    To speak my poems in mysterious tune

    With man and nature ? -- with the lava-lymph

    That trickles from successive galaxies

    Still drop by drop adown the finger of God

    In still new worlds ? -- with summer-days in this ?

    That scarce dare breathe they are so beautiful ?--

    With springs delicious trouble in the ground,

    Tormented by the quied blood of roots,

    And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves

    In token of the harvest-time of flowers ?--

    With winters and with autumns, -- and beyond,

    With the humas large seasons, when it hopes

    And fears, joys, grieves, and loves ? -- with all that <abbr>.99lib.</abbr>strain

    Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh

    In a sacrament of souls ? with mothers breasts

    Which, round the new-made creatures hanging there,

    Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres ? --

    With multitudinous life, and finally

    With the great esgs of ecstatic souls,

    Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,

    Their radiant faces upward, burn away

    This dark of the body, issuing on a world,

    Beyond our mortal ? --  I speak my verse

    Sp plainly in tuo these things and the rest,

    That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,

    As having the same warrant over them

    To hold and move them if they will or no,

    Alike imperious as the primal rhythm

    Of that theurgiature ? I must fail,

    Who fail at the beginning to hold and move

    One man, -- and he my cousin, and he my friend,

    And he born tender, made intelligent,

    Ined to pohe precipitous sides

    Of difficult questions ; yet, obtuse to me,

    Of me, incurious ! likes me very well,

    And wishes me a paradise of good,

    Good looks, good means, and good digestion, -- ay,

    But otherwise evades me, puts me off

    With kindness, with a toleraleness, --

    Too light a book frave mans reading ! Go,

    Aurora Leigh : be humble.

    There it is,

    We womeoo apt to look to One,

    Which proves a certain impoten art.

    We strain our natures at doing something great,

    Far less because it s something great to do,

    Than haply that we, so, end ourselves

    As being not small, and more appreciable

    To some one friend. We must have mediators

    Betwixt hest sd the judge ;

    Some sweet saints blood must qui in our palms

    Or all the life in heaven seems slow and cold :

    Good only being perceived as the end of good,

    And God alone pleased, -- thats too poor, we think,

    And not enough for us by any means.

    Ay, Romney, I remember, told me once

    We miss the abstract when we prehend.

    We miss it most when ire, -- and fail.

    Yet, so, I will not. -- This vile womans way

    Of trailing garments, shall not trip me up :

    I ll have no traffic with the personal thought

    In arts pure temple. Must I work in vain,

    Without the approbation of a man ?

    It ot be ; it shall not. Fame itself,

    That approbation of the general race,

    Presents a poor end, (though the arrow speed,

    Shot straight with vigorous fio the white,)

    And the highest fame was never reached except

    By what was aimed above it. Art for art,

    And good fod Himself, the essential Good !

    We ll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,

    Although our woman-hands should shake and fail ;

    And if we fail .. But must we ? --

    Shall I fail ?

    The Greeks said grandly iragic phrase,

    `Let no one be called happy till his death.

    To which I add, -- Let no oill his death

    Be called unhappy. Measure not the work

    Until the day s out and the labour done,

    Then bring yauges. If the days work s st,

    Why, call it st ; affepromise ;

    And, in that we have nobly striven at least,

    Deal with us nobly, women though we be.

    And honour us with truth if not with praise.

    <strong>Elizabeth Barrett Browning</strong>

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