Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  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 Himmeleh,

  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

  From nature, landscapes, (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 demonstrating

  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 tumble 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 wondered 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,<
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  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 stopt 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

  Ddispensed 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, (burley oaks

  Projecting from the lines to show themselves)

  Thro’ 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

  Toa 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, 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

  So 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 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 rending. 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.