Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  And then sat down and thought . . ‘She shall not think

  Her thoughts of me,’–and drew my desk and wrote.

  ‘Dear Lady Waldemar, I could not speak

  With people around me, nor can sleep to-night

  And not speak, after the great news I heard

  Of you and of my cousin. My you be

  Most happy; and the good he meant the world,

  Replenish his own life. Say what I say,

  And let my word be sweeter for your mouth,

  As you are you . . I only Aurora Leigh.’

  That’s quiet, guarded! Though she hold it up

  Against the light, she’ll not see through it more

  Than lies there to be seen. So much for pride;

  And now for peace, a little! Let me stop

  All writing back . . ‘Sweet thanks, my sweetest friend,

  ‘You’ve made more joyful my great joy itself.’

  –No, that’s too simple! she would twist it thus,

  ‘My joy would still be as sweet as thyme in drawers,

  However shut up in the dark and dry;

  But violets, aired and dewed by love like yours,

  Out-smell all thyme! we keep that in our clothes,

  But drop the other down our bosoms, till

  they smell like’ . . ah, I see her writing back

  Just so. She’ll make a nosegay of her words,

  And tie it with blue ribbons at the end

  To suit a poet;–pshaw!

  And then we’ll have

  The call to church; the broken, sad, bad dream

  Dreamed out at last; the marriage-vow complete

  With the marriage-breakfast; praying in white gloves,

  Drawn off in haste for drinking pagan toasts

  In somewhat stronger wine than any sipped

  By gods, since Bacchus had his way with grapes.

  A postscript stops all that, and rescues me.

  ‘You need not write. I have been overworked,

  And think of leaving London, England, even,

  And hastening to get nearer to the sun,

  Where men sleep better. So, adieu,’–I fold

  And seal,–and now I’m out of all the coil;

  I breathe now; I spring upward like a branch,

  A ten-years school-boy with a crooked stick

  May pull down to his level, in search of nuts,

  But cannot hold a moment. How we twang

  Back on the blue sky, and assert our height,

  While he stares after! Now, the wonder seems

  That I could wrong myself by such a doubt.

  We poets always have uneasy hearts;

  Because our hearts, large-rounded as the globe,

  Can turn but one side to the sun at once.

  We are used to dip our artist-hands in gall

  And potash, trying potentialities

  Of alternated colour, till at last

  We get confused, and wonder for our skin

  How nature tinged it first. Well–here’s the true

  Good flesh-colour; I recognise my hand,–

  Which Romney Leigh may clasp as just a friend’s,

  And keep his clean.

  And now, my Italy.

  Alas, if we could ride with naked souls

  And make no noise and pay no price at all,

  I would have seen thee sooner, Italy,–

  For still I have heard thee crying through my life,

  Thou piercing silence of ecstatic graves,

  Men call that name!

  But even a witch, to-day,

  Must melt down golden pieces in the nard

  Wherewith to anoint her broomstick ere she rides;

  And poets evermore are scant of gold,

  And, if they find a piece behind the door,

  It turns by sunset to a withered leaf.

  The Devil himself scarce trusts his patented

  Gold-making art to any who make rhymes,

  But culls his Faustus from philosophers

  And not from poets. ‘Leave my Job,’ said God;

  And so, the Devil leaves him without pence,

  And poverty proves, plainly, special grace.

  In these new, just, administrative times,

  Men clamour for an order of merit. Why?

  Here’s black bread on the table, and no wine!

  At least I am a poet in being poor;

  Thank God. I wonder if the manuscript

  Of my long poem, it ‘twere sold outright,

  Would fetch enough to buy me shoes, to go

  A-foot, (thrown in, the necessary patch

  For the other side the Alps)? it cannot be:

  I fear that I must sell this residue

  Of my father’s books; although the Elzevirs

  Have fly-leaves over-written by his hand,

  In faded notes as thick and fine and brown

  as cobwebs on a tawny monument

  Of the old Greeks–conferenda hoec cum his–

  Corruptè citat–lege potiùs,

  And so on, in the scholar’s regal way

  Of giving judgment on the parts of speech,

  As if he sate on all twelve thrones up-piled,

  Arraigning Israel. Ay, but books and notes

  Must go together. And this Proclus too,

  In quaintly dear contracted Grecian types,

  Fantastically crumpled, like his thoughts

  Which would not seem too plain; you go round twice

  For one step forward, then you take it back

  Because you’re somewhat giddy! there’s the rule

  For Proclus. Ah, I stained this middle leaf

  With pressing in’t my Florentine iris-bell,

  Long stalk and all; my father chided me

  For that stain of blue blood,–I recollect

  The peevish turn his voice took,–’Silly girls,

  Who plant their flowers in our philosophy

  To make it fine, and only spoil the book!

  No more of it, Aurora.’ Yes–no more!

  Ah, blame of love, that’s sweeter than all praise

  Of those who love not! ‘tis so lost to me,

  I cannot, in such beggared life, afford

  To lose my Proclus. Not for Florence, even.

  The kissing Judas, Wolff, shall go instead,

  Who builds us such a royal book as this

  To honour a chief-poet, folio-built,

  And writes above, ‘The house of Nobody:’

  Who floats in cream, as rich as any sucked

  From Juno’s breasts, the broad Homeric lines,

  And, while with their spondaic prodigious mouths

  They lap the lucent margins as babe-gods,

  Proclaims them bastards. Wolff’s an atheist;

  And if the Iliad fell out, as he says,

  By mere fortuitous concourse of old songs,

  We’ll guess as much, too, for the universe.

  That Wolff, those Platos: sweep the upper shelves

  As clean as this, and so I am almost rich,

  Which means, not forced to think of being poor

  In sight of ends. To-morrow: no delay.

  I’ll wait in Paris till good Carrington

  Dispose of such, and, having chaffered for

  My book’s price with the publisher, direct

  All proceeds to me. Just a line to ask

  His help.

  And now I come, my Italy,

  My own hills! are you ‘ware of me, my hills,

  How I burn toward you? do you feel to-night

  The urgency and yearning of my soul,

  As sleeping mothers feel the sucking babe

  And smile?–Nay, not so much as when, in heat,

  Vain lightnings catch at your inviolate tops,

  And tremble while ye are stedfast. Still, ye go

  Your own determined, calm, indifferent way

  Toward sunrise, shade by shade, and light by light;

  Of a
ll the grand progression nought left out;

  As if God verily made you for yourselves,

  And would not interrupt your life with ours.

  AURORA LEIGH. SIXTH BOOK.

  THE English have a scornful insular way

  Of calling the French light. The levity

  Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;

  For say a foolish thing but oft enough,

  (And here’s the secret of a hundred creeds,–

  Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,

  By re-iteration chiefly) the same thing

  Shall pass at least for absolutely wise,

  And not with fools exclusively. And so,

  We say the French are light, as if we said

  The cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk:

  Say rather, cats are milked, and milch cows mew,

  For what is lightness but inconsequence,

  Vague fluctuation ‘twixt effect and cause,

  Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light,

  That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eye

  Winks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itself

  To a wafer on the white speck on a wall

  A hundred paces off? Even so direct,

  So sternly undivertible of aim,

  Is this French people.

  All idealists

  Too absolute and earnest, with them all

  The idea of a knife cuts real flesh;

  And still, devouring the safe interval

  Which Nature placed between the thought and act,

  They threaten conflagration to the world

  And rush with most unscrupulous logic on

  Impossible practice. Set your orators

  To blow upon them with loud windy mouths

  Through watchword phrases, jest or sentiment,

  Which drive our burley brutal English mobs

  Like so much chaff, whichever way they blow,–

  This light French people will not thus be driven.

  They turn indeed; but then they turn upon

  Some central pivot of their thought and choice,

  And veer out by the force of holding fast.

  –That’s hard to understand, for Englishmen

  Unused to abstract questions, and untrained

  To trace the involutions, valve by valve,

  In each orbed bulb-root of a general truth,

  And mark what subtly fine integument

  Divides opposed compartments. Freedom’s self

  Comes concrete to us, to be understood,

  Fixed in a feudal form incarnately

  To suit our ways of thought and reverence,

  The special form, with us, being still the thing.

  With us, I say, though I’m of Italy

  My mother’s birth and grave, by father’s grave

  And memory; let it be,–a poet’s heart

  Can swell to a pair of nationalities,

  However ill-lodged in a woman’s breast.

  And so I am strong to love this noble France,

  This poet of the nations, who dream on

  And wails on (while the household goes to wreck)

  For ever, after some ideal good,–

  Some equal poise of sex, some unvowed love

  Inviolate, some spontaneous brotherhood,

  Some wealth, that leaves none poor and finds none tired,

  Some freedom of the many, that respects

  The wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams!

  Sublime, to dream so; natural, to wake:

  And sad, to use such lofty scaffoldings,

  Erected for the building of a church,

  To build instead, a brothel . . or a prison–

  May God save France!

  However she have sighed

  Her great soul up into a great man’s face,

  To flush his temples out so gloriously

  That few dare carp at Cæsar for being bald,

  What then?–this Cæsar represents, not reigns,

  And is not despot, though twice absolute;

  This Head has all the people for a heart;

  This purple’s lined with the democracy,–

  Now let him see to it! for a rent within

  Must leave irreparable rags without.

  A serious riddle: find such anywhere

  Except in France; and when it’s found in France,

  Be sure to read it rightly. So, I mused

  Up and down, up and down, the terraced streets,

  The glittering Boulevards, the white colonnades

  Of fair fantastic Paris who wears boughs

  Like plumes, as if a man made them,–tossing up

  Her fountains in the sunshine from the squares,

  As dice i’ the game of beauty, sure to win;

  Or as she blew the down-balls of her dreams,

  And only waited for their falling back,

  To breathe up more, and count her festive hours.

  The city swims in verdure, beautiful

  As Venice on the waters, the sea-swan.

  What bosky gardens, dropped in close-walled courts,

  As plums in ladies’ laps, who start and laugh:

  What miles of streets that run on after trees,

  Still carrying the necessary shops,

  Those open caskets, with the jewels seen!

  And trade is art, and art’s philosophy,

  In Paris. There’s a silk, for instance, there,

  As worth an artist’s study for the folds,

  As that bronze opposite! nay, the bronze has faults;

  Art’s here too artful,–conscious as a maid,

  Who leans to mark her shadow on the wall

  Until she lose a ‘vantage in her step.

  Yet Art walks forward, and knows where to walk:

  The artists also, are idealists,

  Too absolute for nature, logical

  To austerity in the application of

  The special theory; not a soul content

  To paint a crooked pollard and an ass,

  As the English will, because they find it so,

  And like it somehow.–Ah, the old Tuileries

  Is pulling its high cap down on its eyes,

  Confounded, conscience-stricken, and amazed

  By the apparition of a new fair face

  In those devouring mirrors. Through the grate,

  Within the gardens, what a heap of babes,

  Swept up like leaves beneath the chestnut-trees,

  From every street and alley of the town,

  By the ghosts perhaps that blow too bleak this way

  A-looking for their heads! Dear pretty babes,

  I’ll wish them luck to have their ball-play out

  Before the next change comes.–And further on,

  What statues, posed upon their columns fine,

  As if to stand a moment were a feat,

  Against that blue! What squares! what breathing-room

  For a nation that funs fast,–ay, runs against

  The dentist’s teeth at the corner, in pale rows,

  Which grin at progress in an epigram.

  I walked the day out, listening to the chink

  Of the first Napoleon’s dry bones, as they lay

  In his second grave beneath the golden dome

  That caps all Paris like a bubble. ‘Shall

  These dry bones live,’ thought Louis Philippe once,

  And lived to know. Herein is argument

  For kings and politicians, but still more

  For poets, who bear buckets to the well,

  Of ampler draught.

  These crowds are very good

  For meditation, (when we are very strong)

  Though love of beauty makes us timorous,

  And draws us backward from the coarse town-sights

  To count the daisies upon dappled fields,

  And hear the streams bleat on among the hills

  In innocent and indolent repose;

&
nbsp; While still with silken elegiac thoughts

  We wind out from us the distracting world,

  And die into the chrysalis of a man,

  And leave the best that may, to come of us

  In some brown moth. Be, rather, bold, and bear

  To look into the swarthiest face of things,

  For God’s sake who has made them.

  Seven days’ work;

  The last day shutting ‘twixt its dawn and eve,

  The whole work bettered, of the previous six!

  Since God collected and resumed in man

  The firmaments, the strata, and the lights,

  Fish, fowl, and beast, and insect,–all their trains

  Of various life caught back upon His arm,

  Reorganised, and constituted MAN,

  The microcosm, the adding up of works;

  Within whose fluttering nostrils, then at last,

  Consummating Himself, the Maker sighed,

  As some strong winner at the foot race sighs

  Touching the goal.

  Humanity is great;

  And, if I would not rather pore upon

  An ounce of common, ugly, human dust,

  An artisan’s palm, or a peasant’s brow,

  Unsmooth, ignoble, save to me and God,

  Than track old Nilus to his silver roots,

  And wait on all the changes of the moon

  Among the mountain-peaks of Thessaly,

  (Until her magic crystal round itself

  For many a witch to see in)–set it down

  As weakness,–strength by no means. How is this

  That men of science, osteologists

  And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect

  For nature,–count nought common or unclean,

  Spend raptures upon perfect specimens

  Of indurated veins, distorted joints,

  Or beautiful new cases of curved spine:

  While we, we are shocked at nature’s falling off,

  We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains,

  We will not, when she sneezes, look at her,

  Not even to say ‘God bless her’? That’s our wrong;

  For that, she will not trust us often with

  Her larger sense of beauty and desire,

  But tethers us to a lily or a rose

  And bids us diet on the dew inside,–

  Left ignorant that the hungry beggar-boy

  (Who stares unseen against our absent eyes,

  And wonders at the gods that we must be,

  To pass so careless for the oranges!)

  Bears yet a breastful of a fellow-world

  To this world, undisparaged, undespoiled,

  And (while we scorn him for a flower or two,

  As being, Heaven help us, less poetical)