Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  As plain as men do: speak out, man to man;

  No compliments, beseech you.’

  ‘Friend to friend,

  Let that be. We are sad to-night, I saw,

  (–Good night, Sir Blaise! Ah, Smith–he has slipped away)

  I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh,

  To keep a crowd of lion-hunters off,

  With faces toward your jungle. There were three;

  A spacious lady, five feet ten and fat,

  Who has the devil in her (and there’s room)

  For walking to and fro upon the earth,

  From Chippewa to China; she requires

  Your autograph upon a tinted leaf

  ‘Twixt Queen Pomare’s and Emperor Soulouque’s;

  Pray give it; she has energies, though fat:

  For me, I’d rather see a rick on fire

  Than such a woman angry. Then a youth

  Fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs,

  Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe,

  And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts,

  Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,–

  All which I saved you, and absorb next week

  Both manuscript and man,–because a lord

  Is still more potent that a poetess,

  With any extreme republican. Ah, ah,

  You smile at last, then.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Leave the smile,

  I’ll lose the thanks for’t,–ay, and throw you in

  My transatlantic girl, with golden eyes,

  That draw you to her splendid whiteness, as

  The pistil of a water-lily draws,

  Adust with gold. Those girls across the sea

  Are tyrannously pretty,–and I swore

  (She seemed to me an innocent, frank girl)

  To bring her to you for a woman’s kiss,

  Not now, but on some other day or week:

  –We’ll call it perjury; I give her up.’

  ‘No, bring her.’

  ‘Now,’ said he, ‘you make it hard

  To touch such goodness with a grimy palm.

  I thought to tease you well, and fret you cross,

  And steel myself, when rightly vexed with you,

  For telling you a thing to tease you more.’

  ‘Of Romney?’

  ‘No, no; nothing worse,’ he cried,

  ‘Of Romney Leigh, than what is buzzed about,–

  That he is taken in an eye-trap too,

  Like many half as wise. The thing I mean

  Refers to you, not him.’

  ‘Refers to me,’

  He echoed,–’Me! You sound it like a stone

  Dropped down a dry well very listlessly,

  By one who never thinks about the toad

  Alive at the bottom. Presently perhaps

  You’ll sound your ‘me’ more proudly–till I shrink.

  Lord Howe’s the toad, then, in this question?’

  ‘Brief,

  We’ll take it graver. Give me sofa-room,

  And quiet hearing. You know Eglinton,

  John Eglinton, of Eglinton in Kent?’

  ‘Is he the toad?–he’s rather like the snail;

  Known chiefly for the house upon his back:

  Divide the man and house–you kill the man;

  That’s Eglinton of Eglinton, Lord Howe.’

  He answered grave. ‘A reputable man,

  An excellent landlord of the olden stamp,

  If somewhat slack in new philanthropies;

  Who keeps his birthdays with a tenants’ dance,

  Is hard upon them when they miss the church

  Or keep their children back from catechism,

  But not ungentle when the aged poor

  Pick sticks at hedge-sides; nay, I’ve heard him say

  ‘The old dame has a twinge because she stoops:

  ‘That’s punishment enough for felony.’’

  ‘O tender-hearted landlord! May I take

  My long lease with him, when the time arrives

  For gathering winter-faggots?’

  ‘He likes art,

  Buys books and pictures . . of a certain kind;

  Neglects no patient duty; a good son’ . . .

  ‘To a most obedient mother. Born to wear

  His father’s shoes, he wears her husband’s too:

  Indeed, I’ve heard its touching. Dear Lord Howe,

  You shall not praise me so against your heart,

  When I’m at worst for praise and faggots.’

  ‘Be

  Less bitter with me, for . . in short,’ he said,

  ‘I have a letter, which he urged me so

  To bring you . . I could scarcely choose but yield

  Insisting that a new love passing through

  The hand of an old friendship, caught from it

  Some reconciling perfume.’

  ‘Love, you say?

  My lord, I cannot love. I only find

  The rhymes for love,–and that’s not love, my lord.

  Take back your letter.’

  ‘Pause: you’ll read it first?’

  ‘I will not read it: it is stereotyped;

  The same he wrote to,–anybody’s name,–

  Anne Blythe, the a ctress, when she had died so true,

  A duchess fainted in an open box:

  Pauline, the dancer, after the great pas,

  In which her little feet winked overhead

  Like other fire-flies, and amazed the pit:

  Or Baldinacci, when her F in alt

  Had touched the silver tops of heaven itself

  With such a pungent soul-dart, even the Queen

  Laid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms,

  And sighed for joy: or else (I thank your friend)

  Aurora Leigh,–when some indifferent rhymes,

  Like those the boys sang round the holy ox

  On Memphis-road, have chanced, perhaps, to set

  Our Apis-public lowing. Oh, he wants,

  Instead of any worthy wife at home,

  A star upon his stage of Eglinton!

  Advise him that he is not overshrewd

  In being so little modest: a dropped star

  Makes bitter waters, says a Book I’ve read,–

  And there’s his unread letter,’

  ‘My dear friend,’

  Lord Howe began . .

  In haste I tore the phrase.

  ‘You mean your friend of Eglinton, or me?’

  ‘I mean you, you,’ he answered with some fire.

  ‘A happy life means prudent compromise;

  The tare runs through the farmer’s garnered sheaves;

  But though the gleaner’s apron holds pure wheat,

  We count her poorer. Tare with wheat, we cry,

  And good with drawbacks. You, you love your art,

  And, certain of vocation, set your soul

  On utterance. Only, . . in this world we have made,

  (They say God made it first, but, if He did,

  ‘Twas so long since, . . and, since, we have spoiled it so,

  He scarce would know it, if He looked this way,

  From hells we preach of, with the flames blown out,)

  In this bad, twisted, topsy-turvy world,

  Where all the heaviest wrongs get uppermost,–

  In this uneven, unfostering England here,

  Where ledger-strokes and sword-strokes count indeed,

  But soul-strokes merely tell upon the flesh

  They strike from,–it is hard to stand for art,

  Unless some golden tripod from the sea

  Be fished up, by Apollo’s divine chance,

  To throne such feet as yours, my prophetess,

  At Delphi. Think,–the god comes down as fierce

  As twenty bloodhounds! shakes you, strangles you,

  Until the oracular shriek shall ooze in froth!

&nb
sp; At best it’s not all ease,–at worst too hard:

  A place to stand on is a ‘vantage gained,

  And here’s your tripod. To be plain, dear friend,

  You’re poor, except in what you richly give;

  You labour for your own bread painfully,

  Or ere you pour our wine. For art’s sake, pause.’

  I answered slow,–as some wayfaring man,

  Who feels himself at night too far from home,

  Makes stedfast face against the bitter wind.

  ‘Is art so less a thing than virtue is,

  That artists first must cater for their ease

  Or ever they make issue past themselves

  To generous use? alas, and is it so,

  That we, who would be somewhat clean, must sweep

  Our ways as well as walk them, and no friend

  Confirm us nobly,–’Leave results to God,

  But you be clean?’ What! ‘prudent compromise

  Makes acceptable life,’ you say instead,

  You, you, Lord Howe?–in things indifferent, well.

  For instance, compromise the wheaten bread

  For rye, the meat for lentils, silk for serge,

  And sleep on down, if needs, for sleep on straw;

  But there, end compromise. I will not bate

  One artist-dream, on straw or down, my lord,

  Nor pinch my liberal soul, though I be poor,

  Nor cease to love high, though I live thus low.

  So speaking, with less anger in my voice

  Than sorrow, I rose quickly to depart;

  While he, thrown back upon the noble shame

  Of such high-stumbling natures, murmured words,

  The right words after wrong ones. Ah, the man

  Is worthy, but so given to entertain

  Impossible plans of superhuman life,–

  He sets his virtues on so raised a shelf,

  To keep them at the grand millennial height,

  He has to mount a stool to get at them;

  And meantime, lives on quite the common way,

  With everybody’s morals.

  As we passed,

  Lord Howe insisting that his friendly arm

  Should oar me across the sparkling brawling stream

  Which swept from room to room, we fell at once

  On Lady Waldemar. ‘Miss Leigh,’ she said,

  And gave me such a smile, so cold and bright,

  As if she tried it in a ‘tiring glass

  And liked it; ‘all to-night I’ve strained at you,

  As babes at baubles held up out of reach

  By spiteful nurses, (‘Never snatch,’ they say,)

  And there you sate, most perfectly shut in

  By good Sir Blaize and clever Mister Smith,

  And then our dear Lord Howe! at last, indeed,

  I almost snatched. I have a world to speak

  About your cousin’s place in Shropshire, where

  I’ve been to see his work . . our work,–you heard

  I went? . . and of a letter yesterday,

  In which, if I should read a page or two,

  You might feel interest, though you’re locked of course

  In literary toil.–You’ll like to hear

  Your last book lies at the phalanstery,

  As judged innocuous for the elder girls

  And younger women who still care for books.

  We all must read, you see, before we live:

  But slowly the ineffable light comes up,

  And, as it deepens, drowns the written word,–

  So said your cousin, while we stood and felt

  A sunset from his favorite beech-tree seat:

  He might have been a poet if he would,

  But then he saw the higher thing at once,

  And climbed to it. It think he looks well now,

  Has quite got over that unfortunate . .

  Ah, ah . . I know it moved you. Tender-heart!

  You took a liking to the wretched girl.

  Perhaps you thought the marriage suitable,

  Who knows? a poet hankers for romance,

  And so on. As for Romney Leigh, ‘tis sure

  He never loved her,–never. By the way,

  You have not heard of her . . ? quite out of sight.

  And out of saving? lost in every sense?’

  She might have gone on talking half-an-hour,

  And I stood still, and cold, and pale, I think,

  As a garden-statue a child pelts with snow

  For pretty pastime. Every now and then

  I put in ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I scarce knew why;

  The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls,

  And so I answered. Till Lord Howe broke in;

  ‘What penance takes the wretch who interrupts

  The talk of charming women? I, at last,

  Must brave it. Pardon, Lady Waldemar!

  The lady on my arm is tired, unwell,

  And loyally I’ve promised she may say

  Nor harder word this evening, than . . goodnight;

  The rest her face speaks for her.’–Then we went.

  And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,

  Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties

  My hair . . now could I but unloose my soul!

  We are sepulchred alive in this close world,

  And want more room.

  The charming woman there–

  This reckoning up and writing down her talk

  Affects me singularly. How she talked

  To pain me! woman’s spite!–You wear steel-mail;

  A woman takes a housewife from her breast,

  And plucks the delicatest needle out

  As ‘twere a rose, and pricks you carefully

  ‘Neath nails, ‘neath eyelids, in your nostrils,–say,

  A beast would roar so tortured,–but a man,

  A human creature, must not, shall not flinch,

  No, not for shame.

  What vexes after all,

  Is just that such as she, with such as I,

  Knows how to vex. Sweet heaven, she takes me up

  As if she had fingered me and dog-eared me

  And spelled me by the fireside, half a life!

  She knows my turns, my feeble points,–What then?

  The knowledge of a thing implies the thing;

  Of course she found that in me, she saw that,

  Her pencil underscored this for a fault,

  And I, still ignorant. Shut the book up! close!

  And crush that beetle in the leaves.

  O heart,

  At last we shall grow hard too, like the rest,

  And call it self-defence because we are soft.

  And after all, now, . . why should I be pained,

  That Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouse

  This Lady Waldemar? And, say, she held

  Her newly-blossomed gladness in my face, . .

  ‘Twas natural surely, if not generous,

  Considering how, when winter held her fast,

  I helped the frost with mine, and pained her more

  Than she pains me. Pains me!–but wherefore pained?

  ‘Tis clear my cousin Romney wants a wife,–

  So, good!–The man’s need of the woman, here,

  Is greater than the woman’s of the man,

  And easier served; for where the man discerns

  A sex, (ah, ah, the man can generalise,

  Said he) we see but one, ideally

  And really: where we yearn to lose ourselves

  And melt like white pearls in another’s wine,

  He seeks to double himself by what he loves,

  And make his drink more costly by our pearls.

  At board, at bed, at work, and holiday,

  It is not good for a man to be alone,–

  And that’s his way of thinking, first and last;

  And thus my cousin Romney wants a wife.

  But
then my cousin sets his dignity

  On personal virtue. If he understands

  By love, like others, self-aggrandisement,

  It is that he may verily be great

  By doing rightly and kindly. Once he thought,

  For charitable ends set duly forth

  In heaven’s white judgement-book, to marry . . ah,

  We’ll call her name Aurora Leigh, although

  She’s changed since then!–and once, for social ends,

  Poor Marian Erle, my sister Marian Erle,

  My woodland sister, sweet Maid Marian,

  Whose memory moans on in me like the wind

  Through ill-shut casements, making me more sad

  Than ever I find reasons for. Alas,

  Poor pretty plaintive face, embodied ghost,

  He finds it easy, then, to clap thee off

  From pulling at his sleeve and book and pen,–

  He locks thee out at night into the cold,

  Away from butting with thy horny eyes

  Against his crystal dreams,–that, now, he’s strong

  To love anew? that Lady Waldemar

  Succeeds my Marian?

  After all, why not?

  He loved not Marian, more than once he loved

  Aurora. If he loves, at last, that Third,

  Albeit she prove as slippery as spilt oil

  On marble floors, I will not augur him

  Ill luck for that. Good love, howe’er ill-placed,

  Is better for a man’s soul in the end,

  Than if he loved ill what deserves love well.

  A pagan, kissing, for a step of Pan,

  The wild-goat’s hoof-print on the loamy down,

  Exceeds our modern thinker who turns back

  The strata . . granite, limestone, coal, and clay,

  Concluding coldly with, ‘Here’s law! Where’s God?’

  And then at worse,–if Romney loves her not,–

  At worst,–if he’s incapable of love,

  Which may be–then indeed, for such a man

  Incapable of love, she’s good enough;

  For she, at worst too, is a woman still

  And loves him as the sort of woman can.

  My loose long hair began to burn and creep,

  Alive to the very ends, about my knees:

  I swept it backward as the wind sweeps flame,

  With the passion of my hands. Ah, Romney laughed

  One day . . (how full the memories came up!)

  ‘–Your Florence fire-flies live on in your hair,’

  He said, ‘it gleams so.’ Well, I wrung them out,

  My fire-flies; made a knot as hard as life,

  Of those loose, soft, impracticable curls,