Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Take thanks for justice. I would rather dance

  At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped

  Their gingerbread for joy,–than shift the types

  For tolerable verse, intolerable

  To men who act and suffer. Better far,

  Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means,

  Than a sublime art frivolously.’

  ‘You,

  Choose nobler work than either, O moist eyes,

  And hurrying lips, and heaving heart! We are young

  Aurora, you and I. The world . . look round . .

  The world, we’re come to late, is swollen hard

  With perished generations and their sins:

  The civiliser’s spade grinds horribly

  On dead men’s bones, and cannot turn up soil

  That’s otherwise than fetid. All success

  Proves partial failure; all advance implies

  What’s left behind; all triumph, something crushed

  At the chariot-wheels; all government, some wrong:

  And rich men make the poor, who curse the rich,

  Who agonise together, rich and poor,

  Under and over, in the social spasm

  And crisis of the ages. Here’s an age,

  That makes its own vocation! here, we have stepped

  Across the bounds of time! here’s nought to see,

  But just the rich man and just Lazarus,

  And both in torments; with a mediate gulph,

  Though not a hint of Abraham’s bosom. Who,

  Being man and human, can stand calmly by

  And view these things, and never tease his soul

  For some great cure? No physic for this grief,

  In all the earth and heavens too?’

  ‘You believe

  In God, for your part?–ay? That He who makes,

  Can make good things from ill things, best from worst,

  As men plant tulips upon dunghills when

  They wish them finest?’

  ‘True. A death-heat is

  The same as life-heat, to be accurate;

  And in all nature is no death at all,

  As men account of death, as long as God

  Stands witnessing for life perpetually,’

  By being just God. That’s abstract truth, I know,

  Philosophy, or sympathy with God:

  But I, I sympathise with man, not God,

  I think I was a man for chiefly this;

  And when I stand beside a dying bed,

  It’s death to me. Observe,–it had not much

  Consoled the race of mastodons to know

  Before they went to fossil, that anon

  Their place should quicken with the elephant

  They were not elephants but mastodons:

  And I, a man, as men are now, and not

  As men may be hereafter, feel with men

  In the agonising present.’

  ‘Is it so,’

  I said, ‘my cousin? is the world so bad,

  While I hear nothing of it through the trees?

  The world was always evil,–but so bad?’

  ‘So bad, Aurora. Dear, my soul is grey

  With poring over the long sum of ill;

  So much for vice, so much for discontent,

  So much for the necessities of power,

  So much for the connivances of fear,–

  Coherent in statistical despairs

  With such a total of distracted life, . .

  To see it down in figures on a page,

  Plain, silent, clear . . as God sees through the earth

  The sense of all the graves! . . . that’s terrible

  For one who is not God, and cannot right

  The wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed

  But vow away my years, my means, my aims,

  Among the helpers, if there’s any help

  In such a social strait? The common blood

  That swings along my veins, is strong enough

  To draw me to this duty.’

  Then I spoke.

  ‘I have not stood long on the strand of life,

  And these salt waters have had scarcely time

  To creep so high up as to wet my feet.

  I cannot judge these tides–I shall, perhaps.

  A woman’s always younger than a man

  At equal years, because she is disallowed

  Maturing by the outdoor sun and air,

  And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.

  Ah well, I know you men judge otherwise!

  You think a woman ripens as a peach,–

  In the cheeks, chiefly. Pass it to me now;

  I’m young in age, and younger still, I think,

  As a woman. But a child may say amen

  To a bishop’s prayer and see the way it goes;

  And I, incapable to loose the knot

  Of social questions, can approve, applaud

  August compassion, christian thoughts that shoot

  Beyond the vulgar white of personal aims.

  Accept my reverence.’

  There he glowed on me

  With all his face and eyes. ‘No other help?’

  Said he–’no more than so?’

  ‘What help?’ I asked.

  ‘You’d scorn my help,–as Nature’s self, you say,

  Has scorned to put her music in my mouth,

  Because a woman’s. Do you now turn round

  And ask for what a woman cannot give?’

  ‘For what she only can, I turn and ask,’

  He answered, catching up my hands in his,

  And dropping on me from his high-eaved brow

  The full weight of his soul,–’I ask for love,

  And that, she can; for life in fellowship

  Through bitter duties–that, I know she can;

  For wifehood . . will she?’

  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘may God

  Be witness ‘twixt us two!’ and with the word,

  Meseemed I floated into a sudden light

  Above his stature,–’am I proved too weak

  To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear

  Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think,

  Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought?

  Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can,

  Yet competent to love, like HIM?’

  I paused:

  Perhaps I darkened, as the lighthouse will

  That turns upon the sea. ‘It’s always so!

  Anything does for a wife.’

  ‘Aurora, dear,

  And dearly honoured’ . . he pressed in at once

  With eager utterance,–’you translate me ill.

  I do not contradict my thought of you

  Which is most reverent, with another thought

  Found less so. If your sex is weak for art,

  (And I who said so, did but honour you

  By using truth in courtship) it is strong

  For life and duty. Place your fecund heart

  In mine, and let us blossom for the world

  That wants love’s colour in the grey of time.

  With all my talk I can but set you where

  You look down coldly on the arena-heaps

  Of headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct!

  The Judgment-Angel scarce would find his way

  Through such a heap of generalised distress,

  To the individual man with lips and eyes–

  Much less Aurora. Ah, my sweet, come down,

  And, hand in hand, we’ll go where yours shall touch

  These victims, one by one! till one by one,

  The formless, nameless trunk of every man

  Shall seem to wear a head, with hair you know,

  And every woman catch your mother’s face

  To melt you into passion.’

  ‘I am a girl,’

  I answered slowly; ‘you do well to name

  My mother’s face. Th
ough far too early, alas,

  God’s hand did interpose ‘twixt it and me,

  I know so much of love, as used to shine

  In that face and another. Just so much;

  No more indeed at all. I have not seen

  So much love since, I pray you pardon me,

  As answers even to make a marriage with,

  In this cold land of England. What you love,

  Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:

  You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,–

  A wife to help your ends . . in her no end!

  Your cause is noble, your ends excellent,

  But I, being most unworthy of these and that,

  Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.’

  ‘Farewell, Aurora, you reject me thus?’

  He said.

  ‘Why, sir, you are married long ago.

  You have a wife already whom you love,

  Your social theory. Bless you both, I say.

  For my part, I am scarcely meek enough

  To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse.

  Do I look a Hagar, think you?’

  ‘So, you jest!’

  ‘Nay so, I speak in earnest,’ I replied.

  ‘You treat of marriage too much like, at least,

  A chief apostle; you would bear with you

  A wife . . a sister . . shall we speak it out?

  A sister of charity.’

  ‘Then, must it be

  Indeed farewell? And was I so far wrong

  In hope and in illusion, when I took

  The woman to be nobler than the man,

  Yourself the noblest woman,–in the use

  And comprehension of what love is,–love,

  That generates the likeness of itself

  Through all heroic duties? so far wrong

  In saying bluntly, venturing truth on love,

  ‘Come, human creature, love and work with me,’–

  Instead of, ‘Lady, thou art wondrous fair,

  ‘And, where the Graces walk before, the Muse

  ‘Will follow at the lighting of the eyes,

  ‘And where the Muse walks, lovers need to creep

  ‘Turn round and love me, or I die of love.’’

  With quiet indignation I broke in.

  ‘You misconceive the question like a man,

  Who sees a woman as the complement

  Of his sex merely. You forget too much

  That every creature, female as the male,

  Stands single in responsible act and thought

  As also in birth and death. Whoever says

  To a loyal woman, ‘Love and work with me,’

  Will get fair answers, if the work and love

  Being good themselves, are good for her–the best

  She was born for. Women of a softer mood,

  Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life,

  Will sometimes only hear the first word, love,

  And catch up with it any kind of work,

  Indifferent, so that dear love go with it:

  I do not blame such women, though, for love,

  They pick much oakum; earth’s fanatics make

  Too frequently heaven’s saints. But me, your work

  Is not the best for,–nor your love the best,

  Nor able to commend the kind of work

  For love’s sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,

  To be over-bold in speaking of myself,–

  I, too, have my vocation,–work to do,

  The heavens and earth have set me, since I changed

  My father’s face for theirs,–and though your world

  Were twice as wretched as you represent

  Most serious work, most necessary work,

  As any of the economists’. Reform,

  Make trade a Christian possibility,

  And individual right no general wrong;

  Wipe out earth’s furrows of the Thine and Mine,

  And leave one green, for men to play at bowls;

  With innings for them all! . . what then, indeed,

  If mortals were not greater by the head

  Than any of their prosperities? what then,

  Unless the artist keep up open roads

  Betwixt the seen and unseen,–bursting through

  The best of your conventions with his best

  The unspeakable, imaginable best

  God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond

  Both speech and imagination? A starved man

  Exceeds a fat beast: we’ll not barter, sir,

  The beautiful for barley.–And, even so,

  I hold you will not compass your poor ends

  Of barley-feeding and material ease,

  Without a poet’s individualism

  To work your universal. It takes a soul,

  To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,

  To move the masses . . even to a cleaner stye:

  It takes the ideal, to blow a hair’s breadth off

  The dust of the actual.–ah, your Fouriers failed,

  Because not poets enough to understand

  That life develops from within.–For me,

  Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,

  Of work like this! . . perhaps a woman’s soul

  Aspires, and not creates! yet we aspire,

  And yet I’ll try out your perhapses, sir;

  And if I fail . . why, burn me up my straw

  Like other false works–I’ll not ask for grace,

  Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I

  Who love my art, would never wish it lower

  To suit my stature. I may love my art,

  You’ll grant that even a woman may love art,

  Seeing that to waste true love on anything,

  Is womanly, past question.’

  I retain

  The very last word which I said, that day,

  As you the creaking of the door, years past,

  Which let upon you such disabling news

  You ever after have been graver. He,

  His eyes, the motions in his silent mouth,

  Were fiery points on which my words were caught,

  Transfixed for ever in my memory

  For his sake, not their own. And yet I know

  I did not love him . . nor he me . . that’s sure . .

  And what I said, is unrepented of,

  As truth is always. Yet . . a princely man!–

  If hard to me, heroic for himself!

  He bears down on me through the slanting years,

  The stronger for the distance. If he had loved,

  Ay, loved me, with that retributive face, . .

  I might have been a common woman now,

  And happier, less known and less left alone;

  Perhaps a better woman after all,–

  With chubby children hanging on my neck

  To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vines

  That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it.

  The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.

  And I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright,

  Still worthy of having spoken out the truth,

  By being content I spoke it, though it set

  Him there, me here.–O woman’s vile remorse,

  To hanker after a mere name, a show,

  A supposition, a potential love!

  Does every man who names love in our lives,

  Become a power for that? is love’s true thing

  So much best to us, that what personates love

  Is next best? A potential love, forsooth!

  We are not so vile. No, no–he cleaves, I think,

  This man, this image, . . chiefly for the wrong

  And shock he gave my life, in finding me

  Precisely where the devil of my youth

  Had set me, on those mountain-peaks of hope

  All glittering with the dawn-dew, all erect

  And famished for the morning,–sayin
g, while

  I looked for empire and much tribute, ‘Come,

  I have some worthy work for thee below.

  Come, sweep my barns, and keep my hospitals,–

  And I will pay thee with a current coin

  Which men give women.’

  As we spoke, the grass

  Was trod in haste beside us, and my aunt,

  With smile distorted by the sun,–face, voice,

  As much at issue with the summer-day

  As if you brought a candle out of doors,–

  Broke in with, ‘Romney, here!–My child, entreat

  Your cousin to the house, and have your talk,

  If girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come.’

  He answered for me calmly, with pale lips

  That seemed to motion for a smile in vain.

  ‘The talk is ended, madam, where we stand.

  Your brother’s daughter has dismissed me here;

  And all my answer can be better said

  Beneath the trees, than wrong by such a word

  Your house’s hospitalities. Farewell.’

  With that he vanished. I could hear his heel

  Ring bluntly in the lane, as down he leapt

  The short way, from us.–Then, a measured speech

  Withdrew me. ‘What means this, Aurora Leigh?

  My brother’s daughter has dismissed my guests?’

  The lion in me felt the keeper’s voice,

  Through all its quivering dewlaps: I was quelled

  Before her,–meekened to the child she knew:

  I prayed her pardon, said, ‘I had little thought

  To give dismissal to a guest of hers,

  In letting go a friend of mine, who came

  To take me into service as a wife,–

  No more than that, indeed.’

  ‘No more, no more?

  Pray heaven,’ she answered, ‘that I was not mad.

  I could not mean to tell her to her face

  That Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife,

  And I refused him?’

  ‘Did he ask?’ I said;

  ‘I think he rather stooped to take me up

  For certain uses which he found to do

  For something called a wife. He never asked.’

  ‘What stuff!’ she answered; ‘are they queens, these girls?

  They must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks,

  Spread out upon the ground, before they’ll step

  One footstep for the noblest lover born.’

  ‘But I am born,’ I said with firmness, ‘I,

  To walk another way than his, dear aunt.’

  ‘You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months

  Will walk as well as you,’ she cried in haste,

  ‘Without a steadying finger. Why, you child,

  God help you, you are groping in the dark,