Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Of Remus in the trenches. Listen now —

  Rossi died silent near where Caesar died.

  HE did not say “My Brutus, is it thou?”

  But Italy unquestioned testified

  “I killed him! I am Brutus. — I avow.”

  At which the whole world’s laugh of scorn replied

  “A poor maimed copy of Brutus!”

  Too much like,

  Indeed, to be so unlike! too unskilled

  At Philippi and the honest battle-pike,

  To be so skilful where a man is killed

  Near Pompey’s statue, and the daggers strike

  At unawares i’ the throat. Was thus fulfilled

  An omen once of Michel Angelo? —

  When Marcus Brutus he conceived complete,

  And strove to hurl him out by blow on blow

  Upon the marble, at Art’s thunderheat,

  Till haply (some pre-shadow rising slow

  Of what his Italy would fancy meet

  To be called BRUTUS) straight his plastic hand

  Fell back before his prophet-soul, and left

  A fragment, a maimed Brutus, — but more grand

  Than this, so named at Rome, was!

  Let thy weft

  Present one woof and warp, Mazzini! Stand

  With no man hankering for a dagger’s heft,

  No, not for Italy! — nor stand apart,

  No, not for the Republic! — from those pure

  Brave men who hold the level of thy heart

  In patriot truth, as lover and as doer,

  Albeit they will not follow where thou art

  As extreme theorist. Trust and distrust fewer;

  And so bind strong and keep unstained the cause

  Which (God’s sign granted) war-trumps newly blown

  Shall yet annunciate to the world’s applause.

  But now, the world is busy; it has grown

  A Fair-going world. Imperial England draws

  The flowing ends of the earth from Fez, Canton,

  Delhi and Stockholm, Athens and Madrid,

  The Russias and the vast Americas,

  As if a queen drew in her robes amid

  Her golden cincture, — isles, peninsulas,

  Capes, continents, far inland countries hid

  By jasper-sands and hills of chrysopras,

  All trailing in their splendours through the door

  Of the gorgeous Crystal Palace. Every nation,

  To every other nation strange of yore,

  Gives face to face the civic salutation,

  And holds up in a proud right hand before

  That congress the best work which she can fashion

  By her best means. “These corals, will you please

  To match against your oaks? They grow as fast

  Within my wilderness of purple seas.” —

  “This diamond stared upon me as I passed

  (As a live god’s eye from a marble frieze)

  Along a dark of diamonds. Is it classed?” —

  “I wove these stuffs so subtly that the gold

  Swims to the surface of the silk like cream

  And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold!” —

  “These delicatest muslins rather seem

  Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be bold,

  Though such veiled Chakhi’s face in Hafiz’ dream.” —

  “These carpets — you walk slow on them like kings,

  Inaudible like spirits, while your foot

  Dips deep in velvet roses and such things.” —

  “Even Apollonius might commend this flute:[13]

  The music, winding through the stops, upsprings

  To make the player very rich: compute!”

  “Here’s goblet-glass, to take in with your wine

  The very sun its grapes were ripened under:

  Drink light and juice together, and each fine.” —

  “This model of a steamship moves your wonder?

  You should behold it crushing down the brine

  Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder.” —

  “Here’s sculpture! Ah, we live too! why not throw

  Our life into our marbles? Art has place

  For other artists after Angelo.” —

  “I tried to paint out here a natural face;

  For nature includes Raffael, as we know,

  Not Raffael nature. Will it help my case?” —

  “Methinks you will not match this steel of ours!” —

  “Nor you this porcelain! One might dream the clay

  Retained in it the larvae of the flowers,

  They bud so, round the cup, the old Spring-way.” —

  “Nor you these carven woods, where birds in bowers

  With twisting snakes and climbing cupids, play.”

  O Magi of the east and of the west,

  Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent! —

  What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?

  Your hands have worked well: is your courage spent

  In handwork only? Have you nothing best,

  Which generous souls may perfect and present,

  And He shall thank the givers for? no light

  Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor

  Who sit in darkness when it is not night?

  No cure for wicked children? Christ, — no cure!

  No help for women sobbing out of sight

  Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure

  Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou four

  No remedy, my England, for such woes?

  No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,

  No entrance for the exiled? no repose,

  Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,

  And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?

  No mercy for the slave, America?

  No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?

  Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.

  No pity, O world, no tender utterance

  Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way

  For poor Italia, baffled by mischance?

  O gracious nations, give some ear to me!

  You all go to your Fair, and I am one

  Who at the roadside of humanity

  Beseech your alms, — God’s justice to be done.

  So, prosper!

  In the name of Italy,

  Meantime, her patriot Dead have benison.

  They only have done well; and, what they did

  Being perfect, it shall triumph. Let them slumber:

  No king of Egypt in a pyramid

  Is safer from oblivion, though he number

  Full seventy cerements for a coverlid.

  These Dead be seeds of life, and shall encumber

  The sad heart of the land until it loose

  The clammy clods and let out the Spring-growth

  In beatific green through every bruise.

  The tyrant should take heed to what he doth,

  Since every victim-carrion turns to use,

  And drives a chariot, like a god made wroth,

  Against each piled injustice. Ay, the least,

  Dead for Italia, not in vain has died;

  Though many vainly, ere life’s struggle ceased,

  To mad dissimilar ends have swerved aside;

  Each grave her nationality has pieced

  By its own majestic breadth, and fortified

  And pinned it deeper to the soil. Forlorn

  Of thanks be, therefore, no one of these graves!

  Not Hers, — who, at her husband’s side, in scorn,

  Outfaced the whistling shot and hissing waves,

  Until she felt her little babe unborn

  Recoil, within her, from the violent staves

  And bloodhounds of the world, — at which, her life

  Dropt inwards from her eyes and followed it

  Beyond the hunters. Gari
baldi’s wife

  And child died so. And now, the seaweeds fit

  Her body, like a proper shroud and coif,

  And murmurously the ebbing waters grit

  The little pebbles while she lies interred

  In the sea-sand. Perhaps, ere dying thus,

  She looked up in his face (which never stirred

  From its clenched anguish) as to make excuse

  For leaving him for his, if so she erred.

  He well remembers that she could not choose.

  A memorable grave! Another is

  At Genoa. There, a king may fitly lie,

  Who, bursting that heroic heart of his

  At lost Novara, that he could not die

  (Though thrice into the cannon’s eyes for this

  He plunged his shuddering steed, and felt the sky

  Reel back between the fire-shocks), stripped away

  The ancestral ermine ere the smoke had cleared,

  And, naked to the soul, that none might say

  His kingship covered what was base and bleared

  With treason, went out straight an exile, yea,

  An exiled patriot. Let him be revered.

  Yea, verily, Charles Albert has died well;

  And if he lived not all so, as one spoke,

  The sin pass softly with the passing-bell;

  For he was shriven, I think, in cannon-smoke,

  And, taking off his crown, made visible

  A hero’s forehead. Shaking Austria’s yoke

  He shattered his own hand and heart. “So best,”

  His last words were upon his lonely bed,

  I do not end like popes and dukes at least —

  “Thank God for it.” And now that he is dead,

  Admitting it is proved and manifest

  That he was worthy, with a discrowned head,

  To measure heights with patriots, let them stand

  Beside the man in his Oporto shroud,

  And each vouchsafe to take him by the hand,

  And kiss him on the cheek, and say aloud, —

  “Thou, too, hast suffered for our native land!

  My brother, thou art one of us! be proud.”

  Still, graves, when Italy is talked upon.

  Still, still, the patriot’s tomb, the stranger’s hate.

  Still Niobe! still fainting in the sun,

  By whose most dazzling arrows violate

  Her beauteous offspring perished! has she won

  Nothing but garlands for the graves, from Fate?

  Nothing but death-songs? — Yes, be it understood

  Life throbs in noble Piedmont! while the feet

  Of Rome’s clay image, dabbled soft in blood,

  Grow flat with dissolution and, as meet,

  Will soon be shovelled off like other mud,

  To leave the passage free in church and street.

  And I, who first took hope up in this song,

  Because a child was singing one ... behold,

  The hope and omen were not, haply, wrong!

  Poets are soothsayers still, like those of old

  Who studied flights of doves; and creatures young

  And tender, mighty meanings may unfold.

  The sun strikes, through the windows, up the floor;

  Stand out in it, my own young Florentine,

  Not two years old, and let me see thee more!

  It grows along thy amber curls, to shine

  Brighter than elsewhere. Now, look straight before,

  And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,

  And from my soul, which fronts the future so,

  With unabashed and unabated gaze,

  Teach me to hope for, what the angels know

  When they smile clear as thou dost. Down God’s ways

  With just alighted feet, between the snow

  And snowdrops, where a little lamb may graze,

  Thou hast no fear, my lamb, about the road,

  Albeit in our vain-glory we assume

  That, less than we have, thou hast learnt of God.

  Stand out, my blue-eyed prophet! — thou, to whom

  The earliest world-day light that ever flowed,

  Through Casa Guidi Windows chanced to come!

  Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair,

  And be God’s witness that the elemental

  New springs of life are gushing everywhere

  To cleanse the watercourses, and prevent all

  Concrete obstructions which infest the air!

  That earth’s alive, and gentle or ungentle

  Motions within her, signify but growth! —

  The ground swells greenest o’er the labouring moles.

  Howe’er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth,

  Young children, lifted high on parent souls,

  Look round them with a smile upon the mouth,

  And take for music every bell that tolls;

  (WHO said we should be better if like these?)

  But we sit murmuring for the future though

  Posterity is smiling on our knees,

  Convicting us of folly. Let us go —

  We will trust God. The blank interstices

  Men take for ruins, He will build into

  With pillared marbles rare, or knit across

  With generous arches, till the fane’s complete.

  This world has no perdition, if some loss.

  Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet!

  The self-same cherub-faces which emboss

  The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat.

  Aurora Leigh

  First published in 1856, this epic poem is written in blank verse and is composed of nine books of first person narration. The poem makes use of Barrett Browning’s knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, while also using ideas from modern novels, such as Corinne ou l’Italie by Anne Louise Germaine de Staël and various novels by George Sand. The verse-novel offers a richly detailed representation of the early Victorian age. The social panorama extends from the slums of London, through the literary world, to the upper classes, offering a number of entertaining satiric portraits: an aunt with rigidly conventional notions of female education; Romney Leigh, the Christian socialist; Lord Howe, the amateur radical; Sir Blaise Delorme, the ostentatious Roman Catholic; and the unscrupulous society beauty Lady Waldemar.

  However, the dominant presence in the work is the eponymous narrator, who recounts her early years in Italy, her adolescence in the West Country, followed by the vocational choices, creative struggles and emotional entanglements of her first decade of adult life. Embodying Barrett Browning’s own strong beliefs, Aurora Leigh develops her ideas on art, love, God, the Woman Question and society.

  ‘Aurora Leigh’s Dismissal of Romney’ by Arthur Hughes

  CONTENTS

  AURORA LEIGH. FIRST BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. SECOND BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. THIRD BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. FOURTH BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. FIFTH BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. SIXTH BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. SEVENTH BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. EIGHTH BOOK.

  AURORA LEIGH. NINTH BOOK

  AURORA LEIGH. FIRST BOOK.

  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 the poor hair down, stroke it heavily,–

  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,