Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And, in between us, rushed the torrent-world

  To blanch our faces like divided rocks,

  And bar for ever mutual sight and touch

  Except through swirl of spray and all that roar.

  AURORA LEIGH. THIRD BOOK.

  ‘TO-DAY thou girdest up thy loins thyself,

  And goest where thou wouldest: presently

  Others shall gird thee,’ said the Lord, ‘to go

  Where thou would’st not.’ He spoke to Peter thus,

  To signify the death which he should die

  When crucified head downwards.

  If He spoke

  To Peter then, He speaks to us the same;

  The word suits many different martyrdoms,

  And signifies a multiform of death,

  Although we scarcely die apostles, we,

  And have mislaid the keys of heaven and earth.

  For tis not in mere death that men die most;

  And, after our first girding of the loins

  In youth’s fine linen and fair broidery,

  To run up hill and meet the rising sun,

  We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,

  While others gird us with the violent bands

  Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,

  Reversing our straight nature, lifting up

  Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,

  Head downward on the cross-sticks of the world.

  Yet He can pluck us from the shameful cross.

  God, set our feet low and our forehead high,

  And show us how a man was made to walk!

  Leave the lamp, Susan, and go up to bed.

  The room does very well; I have to write

  Beyond the stroke of midnight. Get away;

  Your steps, for ever buzzing in the room,

  Tease me like gnats. Ah, letters! throw them down

  At once, as I must have them, to be sure,

  Whether I bid you never bring me such

  At such an hour, or bid you. No excuse.

  You choose to bring them, as I choose perhaps

  To throw them in the fire. Now, get to bed,

  And dream, if possible, I am not cross.

  Why what a pettish, petty thing I grow,–

  A mere, mere woman,–a mere flaccid nerve,-

  A kerchief left out all night in the rain,

  Turned soft so,–overtasked and overstrained

  And overlived in this close London life!

  And yet I should be stronger.

  Never burn

  Your letters, poor Aurora! for they stare

  With red seals from the table, saying each,

  ‘Here’s something that you know not.’ Out alas,

  ‘Tis scarcely that the world’s more good and wise

  Or even straighter and more consequent

  Since yesterday at this time–yet, again,

  If but one angel spoke from Ararat,

  I should be very sorry not to hear:

  So open all the letters! let me read.

  Blanche Ord, the writer in the ‘Lady’s Fan,’

  Requests my judgment on . . that, afterwards.

  Kate Ward desires the model of my cloak,

  And signs, ‘Elisha to you.’ Pringle Sharpe

  Presents his work on ‘Social Conduct,’ . . craves

  A little money for his pressing debts . .

  From me, who scarce have money for my needs,–

  Art’s fiery chariot which we journey in

  Being apt to singe our singing-robes to holes,

  Although you ask me for my cloak, Kate Ward!

  Here’s Rudgely knows it,–editor and scribe–

  He’s ‘forced to marry where his heart is not,

  Because the purse lacks where he lost his heart.’

  Ah,–lost it because no one picked it up!

  That’s really loss! (and passable impudence.)

  My critic Hammond flatters prettily,

  And wants another volume like the last.

  My critic Belfair wants another book

  Entirely different, which will sell, (and live?)

  A striking book, yet not a startling book,

  The public blames originalities.

  (You must not pump spring-water unawares

  Upon a gracious public, full of nerves–)

  Good things, not subtle, new yet orthodox,

  As easy reading as the dog-eared page

  That’s fingered by said public, fifty years,

  Since first taught spelling by its grandmother,

  And yet a revelation in some sort:

  That’s hard, my critic, Belfair! So–what next?

  My critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts;

  ‘Call a man, John, a woman, Joan,’ says he,

  ‘And do not prate so of humanities:’

  Whereat I call my critic, simply Stokes.

  My critic Jobson recommends more mirth,

  Because a cheerful genius suits the times,

  And all true poets laugh unquenchably

  Like Shakspeare and the gods. That’s very hard,

  The gods may laugh, and Shakspeare; Dante smiled

  With such a needy heart on two pale lips,

  We cry, ‘Weep rather, Dante.’ Poems are

  Men, if true poems: and who dares exclaim

  At any man’s door, ‘Here, ‘tis probable

  The thunder fell last week, and killed a wife,

  And scared a sickly husband–what of that?

  Get up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands,

  Because a cheerful genius suits the times–’?

  None says so to the man,–and why indeed

  Should any to the poem ? A ninth seal;

  The apocalypse is drawing to a close.

  Ha,–this from Vincent Carrington,–’Dear friend,

  I want good counsel. Will you lend me wings

  To raise me to the subject, in a sketch

  I’ll bring to-morrow–may I? at eleven?

  A poet’s only born to turn to use;

  So save you! for the world . . and Carrington.’

  ‘(Writ after.) Have you heard of Romney Leigh,

  Beyond what’s said of him in newspapers,

  His phalansteries there, his speeches here,

  His pamphlets, pleas, and statements, everywhere ?

  He dropped me long ago; but no one drops

  A golden apple–though, indeed, one day,

  You hinted that, but jested. Well, at least,

  You know Lord Howe, who sees him . . whom he sees,

  And you see, and I hate to see,–for Howe

  Stands high upon the brink of theories,

  Observes the swimmers, and cries ‘Very fine,’

  But keeps dry linen equally,–unlike

  That gallant breaster, Romney. Strange it is,

  Such sudden madness, seizing a young man,

  To make earth over again,–while I’m content

  To make the pictures. Let me bring the sketch.

  A tiptoe Danae, overbold and hot:

  Both arms a-flame to meet her wishing Jove

  Halfway, and burn him faster down; the face

  And breasts upturned and straining, the loose locks

  All glowing with the anticipated gold.

  Or here’s another on the self-same theme.

  She lies here–flat upon her prison-floor,

  The long hair swathed about her to the heel,

  Like wet sea-weed. You dimly see her through

  The glittering haze of that prodigious rain,

  Half blotted out of nature by a love

  As heavy as fate. I’ll bring you either sketch.

  I think, myself, the second indicates

  More passion. ‘

  Surely. Self is put away,

  And calm with abdication. She is Jove,

  And no more Danae–greater thus. Perhaps

  The painter symbolises unawares


  Two states of the recipient artist-soul;

  One, forward, personal, wanting reverence,

  Because aspiring only. We’ll be calm,

  And know that, when indeed our Joves come down.

  We all turn stiller than we have ever been.

  Kind Vincent Carrington. I’ll let him come.

  He talks of Florence,–and may say a word

  Of something as it chanced seven years ago,–

  A hedgehog in the path, or a lame bird,

  In those green country walks, in that good time,

  When certainly I was so miserable . .

  I seem to have missed a blessing ever since.

  The music soars within the little lark,

  And the lark soars. It is not thus with men.

  We do not make our places with our strains,–

  Content, while they rise, to remain behind,

  Alone on earth instead of so in heaven.

  No matter–I bear on my broken tale.

  When Romney Leigh and I had parted thus,

  I took a chamber up three flights of stairs

  Not far from being as steep as some larks climb,

  And, in a certain house in Kensington,

  Three years I lived and worked. Get leave to work

  In this world,–’tis the best you get at all;

  For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts

  Than men in benediction. God says, ‘Sweat

  For foreheads;’ men say ‘crowns;’ and so we are crowned,

  Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel

  Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work; get work;

  Be sure ‘tis better than what you work to get.

  So, happy and unafraid of solitude,

  I worked the short days out,–and watched the sun

  On lurid morns or monstrous afternoons,

  Like some Druidic idol’s fiery brass,

  With fixed unflickering outline of dead heat,

  In which the blood of wretches pent inside

  Seemed oozing forth to incarnadine the air,–

  Push out through fog with his dilated disk,

  And startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots

  With splashes of fierce colour. Or I saw

  Fog only, the great tawny weltering fog,

  Involve the passive city, strangle it

  Alive, and draw it off into the void,

  Spires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a sponge

  Had wiped out London,–or as noon and night

  Had clapped together and utterly struck out

  The intermediate time, undoing themselves

  In the act. Your city poets see such things,

  Not despicable. Mountains of the south,

  When, drunk and mad with elemental wines,

  They rend the seamless mist and stand up bare,

  Make fewer singers, haply. No one sings,

  Descending Sinai; on Parnassus mount,

  You take a mule to climb, and not a muse,

  Except in fable and figure: forests chant

  Their anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb.

  But sit in London, at the day’s decline,

  And view the city perish in the mist

  Like Pharaoh’s armaments in the deep Red Sea,–

  The chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host,

  Sucked down and choked to silence–then, surprised

  By a sudden sense of vision and of tune,

  You feel as conquerors though you did not fight,

  And you and Israel’s other singing girls,

  Ay, Miriam with them, sing the song you choose.

  I worked with patience which means almost power

  I did some excellent things indifferently,

  Some bad things excellently. Both were praised,

  The latter loudest. And by such a time

  That I myself had set them down as sins

  Scarce worth the price of sackcloth, week by week,

  Arrived some letter through the sedulous post,

  Like these I’ve read, and yet dissimilar,

  With pretty maiden seals,–initials twined

  Of lilies, or a heart marked Emily,

  (Convicting Emily of being all heart);

  Or rarer tokens from young bachelors,

  Who wrote from college (with the same goosequill,

  Suppose, they had been just plucked of) and a snatch

  From Horace, ‘Collegisse juvat,’ set

  Upon the first page. Many a letter signed

  Or unsigned, showing the writers at eighteen

  Had lived too long, though every muse should help

  The daylight, holding candles,–compliments,

  To smile or sigh at. Such could pass with me

  No more than coins from Moscow circulate

  At Paris. Would ten rubles buy a tag

  Of ribbon on the boulevard, worth a sou?

  I smiled that all this youth should love me,–sighed

  That such a love could scarcely raise them up

  To love what was more worthy than myself;

  Then sighed again, again, less generously,

  To think the very love they lavished so,

  Proved me inferior. The strong loved me not,

  And he . . my cousin Romney . . did not write.

  I felt the silent finger of his scorn

  Prick every bubble of my frivolous fame

  As my breath blew it, and resolve it back

  To the air it came from. Oh, I justified

  The measure he had taken of my height:

  The thing was plain–he was not wrong a line;

  I played at art, made thrusts with a toy-sword,

  Amused the lads and maidens.

  Came a sigh

  Deep, hoarse with resolution,–I would work

  To better ends, or play in earnest. ‘Heavens,

  I think I should be almost popular

  If this went on !’–I ripped my verses up,

  And found no blood upon the rapier’s point:

  The heart in them was just an embryo’s heart,

  Which never yet had beat, that it should die:

  Just gasps of make-believe galvanic life;

  Mere tones, inorganised to any tune.

  And yet I felt it in me where it burnt,

  Like those hot fire-seeds of creation held

  In Jove’s clenched palm before the worlds were sown;

  But I–I was not Juno even! my hand

  Was shut in weak convulsion, woman’s ill,

  And when I yearned to loose a finger–lo,

  The nerve revolted. ‘Tis the same even now:

  This hand may never, haply, open large,

  Before the spark is quenched, or the palm charred,

  To prove the power not else than by the pain.

  It burns, it burnt–my whole life burnt with it,

  And light, not sunlight and not torchlight, flashed

  My steps out through the slow and difficult road.

  I had grown distrustful of too forward Springs,

  The season’s books in drear significance

  Of morals, dropping round me. Lively books?

  The ash has livelier verdure than the yew;

  And yet the yew’s green longer, and alone

  Found worthy of the holy Christmas time.

  We’ll plant more yews if possible, albeit

  We plant the graveyards with them.

  Day and night

  I worked my rhythmic thought, and furrowed up

  Both watch and slumber with long lines of life

  Which did not suit their season. The rose fell

  From either cheek, my eyes globed luminous

  Through orbits of blue shadow, and my pulse

  Would shudder along the purple-veined wrist

  Like a shot bird. Youth’s stern, set face to face

  With youth’s ideal: and when people came

  And said, ‘You wor
k too much, you are looking ill,’

  I smiled for pity of them who pitied me,

  And thought I should be better soon perhaps

  For those ill looks. Observe–’ I,’ means in youth

  Just I . . the conscious and eternal soul

  With all its ends,–and not the outside life,

  The parcel-man, the doublet of the flesh,

  The so much liver, lung, integument,

  Which make the sum of ‘I’ hereafter, when

  World-talkers talk of doing well or ill.

  I prosper, if I gain a step, although

  A nail then pierced my foot: although my brain

  Embracing any truth, froze paralysed,

  I prosper. I but change my instrument;

  I break the spade off, digging deep for gold,

  And catch the mattock up.

  I worked on, on.

  Through all the bristling fence of nights and days

  Which hedges time in from the eternities,

  I struggled, . . never stopped to note the stakes

  Which hurt me in my course. The midnight oil

  Would stink sometimes; there came some vulgar needs:

  I had to live, that therefore I might work.

  And, being but poor, I was constrained, for life,

  To work with one hand for the booksellers,

  While working with the other for myself

  And art. You swim with feet as well as hands

  Or make small way. I apprehended this,–

  In England, no one lives by verse that lives;

  And, apprehending, I resolved by prose

  To make a space to sphere my living verse.

  I wrote for cyclopædias, magazines,

  And weekly papers, holding up my name

  To keep it from the mud. I learnt the use

  Of the editorial ‘we’ in a review,

  As courtly ladies the fine trick of trains,

  And swept it grandly through the open doors

  As if one could not pass through doors at all

  Save so encumbered. I wrote tales beside,

  Carved many an article on cherry-stones

  To suit light readers,–something in the lines

  Revealing, it was said, the mallet-hand,

  But that, I’ll never vouch for. What you do

  For bread, will taste of common grain, not grapes,

  Although you have a vineyard in Champagne,–

  Much less in Nephelococcygia,

  As mine was, peradventure.

  Having bread

  For just so many days, just breathing room

  For body and verse, I stood up straight and worked

  My veritable work. And as the soul

  Which grows within a child, makes the child grow,–