Book I I am like,They tell me, my dear father. Broader browsHowbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowthOf 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 GodAmong his mountains : I was just thirteen,Still growing like the plants from unseen rootsIn tongue-tied Springs, -- and suddenly awokeTo full life and life 's needs and agonies,With an intense, strong, struggling heart besideA 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 nextI recollect as, after fevers, menThread 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, spurr'd i' the flankWith flame, that it should eat and end itselfLike some tormented scorpion. Then at lastI do remember clearly, how there cameA stranger with authority, not right,(I thought not) who commanded, caught me upFrom old Assunta's neck ; how, with a shriek,She let me go, -- while I, with ears too fullOf my father's silence, to shriek back a word,In all a child's astonishment at griefStared 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 skirtsWhich supplicants catch at. Then the bitter seaInexorably pushed between us both,And sweeping up the ship with my despairThrew us out as a pasture to the stars.Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep ;Ten nights and days, without the common faceOf any day or night ; the moon and sunCut off from the green reconciling earth,To starve into a blind ferocityAnd glare unnatural ; the very sky(Dropping its bell-net down upon the seaAs if no human heart should 'scape alive,)Bedraggled with the desolating salt,Until it seemed no more that holy heavenTo which my father went. All new and strangeThe universe turned stranger, for a child.Then, land ! -- then, England ! oh, the frosty cliffsLooked cold upon me. Could I find a homeAmong those mean red houses through the fog ?And when I heard my father's language firstFrom alien lips which had no kiss for mineI wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept,And some one near me said the child was madThrough much sea-sickness. The train swept us on.Was this my father's England ? the great isle ?The ground seemed cut up from the fellowshipOf 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 offFrom God's celestial crystals ; all things blurredAnd dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his matesAbsorb the light here ? -- not a hill or stoneWith heart to strike a radiant colour upOr active outline on the indifferent air.I think I see my father's sister standUpon the hall-step of her country-houseTo give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tightAs if for taming accidental thoughtsFrom possible pulses ; brown hair pricked with greyBy frigid use of life, (she was not oldAlthough my father's elder by a year)A nose drawn sharply yet in delicate lines ;A close mild mouth, a little soured aboutThe ends, through speaking unrequited lovesOr peradventure niggardly half-truths ;Eyes of no colour, -- once they might have smiled,But never, never have forgot themselvesIn smiling ; cheeks, in which was yet a roseOf 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 country squires,The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimesFrom the empyrean to assure their soulsAgainst chance-vulgarisms, and, in the abyssThe apothecary, looked on once a yearTo prove their soundness of humility.The poor-club exercised her Christian giftsOf knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,Because we are of one flesh after allAnd need one flannel (with a proper senseOf difference in the quality) -- and stillThe book-club, guarded from your modern trickOf shaking dangerous questions from the crease,Preserved her intellectual. She had livedA sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,Accounting that to leap from perch to perchWas act and joy enough for any bird.Dear heaven, how silly are the things that liveIn 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 woolTo draw the new light closer, catch and clingLess blindly. In my ears, my father's wordHummed 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 intoThe room she sate in. There, with some strange spasmOf pain and passion, she wrung loose my handsImperiously, and held me at arm's length,And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyesSearched through my face, -- ay, stabbed it through and through,Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to findA wicked murderer in my innocent face,If not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath,She struggled for her ordinary calmAnd 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 tooAs long as I deserved it.' Very kind.....
Book IITo speak my poems in mysterious tuneWith man and nature ? -- with the lava-lymphThat trickles from successive galaxiesStill drop by drop adown the finger of GodIn still new worlds ? -- with summer-days in this ?That scarce dare breathe they are so beautiful ?--With spring's delicious trouble in the ground,Tormented by the quickened blood of roots,And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheavesIn token of the harvest-time of flowers ?--With winters and with autumns, -- and beyond,With the human heart's large seasons, when it hopesAnd fears, joys, grieves, and loves ? -- with all that strainOf sexual passion, which devours the fleshIn a sacrament of souls ? with mother's breastsWhich, round the new-made creatures hanging there,Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres ? --With multitudinous life, and finallyWith the great escapings of ecstatic souls,Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,Their radiant faces upward, burn awayThis dark of the body, issuing on a world,Beyond our mortal ? -- can I speak my verseSo plainly in tune to these things and the rest,That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,As having the same warrant over themTo hold and move them if they will or no,Alike imperious as the primal rhythmOf that theurgic nature ? I must fail,Who fail at the beginning to hold and moveOne man, -- and he my cousin, and he my friend,And he born tender, made intelligent,Inclined to ponder the precipitous sidesOf 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 offWith kindness, with a tolerant gentleness, --Too light a book for a grave man's reading ! Go,Aurora Leigh : be humble. There it is,We women are too apt to look to One,Which proves a certain impotence in art.We strain our natures at doing something great,Far less because it 's something great to do,Than haply that we, so, commend ourselvesAs being not small, and more appreciableTo some one friend. We must have mediatorsBetwixt our highest conscience and the judge ;Some sweet saint's blood must quicken in our palmsOr all the life in heaven seems slow and cold :Good only being perceived as the end of good,And God alone pleased, -- that's too poor, we think,And not enough for us by any means.Ay, Romney, I remember, told me onceWe miss the abstract when we comprehend.We miss it most when we aspire, -- and fail.Yet, so, I will not. -- This vile woman's wayOf trailing garments, shall not trip me up :I 'll have no traffic with the personal thoughtIn art's pure temple. Must I work in vain,Without the approbation of a man ?It cannot be ; it shall not. Fame itself,That approbation of the general race,Presents a poor end, (though the arrow speed,Shot straight with vigorous finger to the white,)And the highest fame was never reached exceptBy what was aimed above it. Art for art,And good for God 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 in their tragic phrase,`Let no one be called happy till his death.'To which I add, -- Let no one till his deathBe called unhappy. Measure not the workUntil the day 's out and the labour done,Then bring your gauges. If the day's work 's scant,Why, call it scant ; affect no compromise ;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.
