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Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Page 99

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


  Contains, himself, both flowers and firmaments

  And surging seas and aspectable stars,

  And all that we would push him out of sight

  In order to see nearer. Let us pray

  God’s grace to keep God’s image in repute;

  That so, the poet and philanthropist

  (Even I and Romney) may stand side by side,

  Because we both stand face to face with men

  Contemplating the people in the rough,–

  Yet each so follow a vocation,–his

  And mine.

  I walked on, musing with myself

  On life and art, and whether, after all,

  A larger metaphysics might not help

  Our physics, a completer poetry

  Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants,

  More fully than the special outside plans,

  Phalansteries, material institutes

  The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries

  Preferred by modern thinkers, as they thought

  The bread of man indeed made all his life,

  And washing seven times in the ‘People’s Baths’

  Were sovereign for a people’s leprosy,–

  Still leaving out the essential prophet’s word

  That comes in power. On which, we thunder down,

  We prophets, poets,–Virtue’s in the word!

  The maker burnt the darkness up with His,

  To inaugurate the use of vocal life;

  And, plant a poet’s word even, deep enough

  In any man’s breast, looking presently

  For offshoots, you have done more for the man,

  Than if you dressed him in a broad-cloth coat

  And warmed his Sunday potage at your fire.

  Yet Romney leaves me . . .

  God! what face is that?

  O Romney, O Marian!

  Walking on the quays

  And pulling thoughts to pieces leisurely,

  As if I caught at grasses in a field,

  And bit them slow between my absent lips,

  And shred them with my hands . .

  What face is that?

  What a face, what a look, what a likeness! Full on mine

  The sudden blow of it came down, till all

  My blood swam, my eyes dazzled. Then I sprang–

  If was as if a meditative man

  Were dreaming out a summer afternoon

  And watching gnats a-prick upon a pond,

  When something floats up suddenly, out there,

  Turns over . . a dead face, known once alive–

  So old, so new! It would be dreadful now

  To lose the sight and keep the doubt of this.

  He plunges–ha! he has lost it in the splash.

  I plunged–I tore the crowd up, either side,

  And rushed on,–forward, forward . . after her.

  Her? whom?

  A woman sauntered slow, in front,

  Munching an apple,–she left off amazed

  As if I had snatched it: that’s not she, at least.

  A man walked arm-linked with a lady veiled,

  Both heads dropped closer than the need of talk:

  They started; he forgot her with his face,

  And she, herself,–and clung to him as if

  My look were fatal. Such a stream of folk,

  All with cares and business of their own!

  I ran the whole quay down against their eyes;

  No Marian; nowhere Marian. Almost, now,

  I could call Marian, Marian, with the shriek

  Of desperate creatures calling for the Dead.

  Where is she, was she? was she anywhere?

  I stood still, breathless, gazing, straining out

  In every uncertain distance, till, at last,

  A gentleman abstracted as myself

  Came full against me, then resolved the clash

  In voluble excuses,–obviously

  Some learned member of the Institute

  Upon his way there, walking, for his health,

  While meditating on the last ‘Discourse;’

  Pinching the empty air ‘twixt finger and thumb,

  From which the snuff being ousted by that shock,

  Defiled his snow-white waistcoat, duly pricked

  At the button-hole with honourable red;

  ‘Madame, your pardon,’–there, he swerved from me

  A metre, as confounded as he had heard

  That Dumas would be chosen to fill up

  The next chair vacant, by his ‘men in us,’

  Since when was genius found respectable?

  It passes in its place, indeed,–which means

  The seventh floor back, or else the hospital;

  Revolving pistols are ingenious things,

  But prudent men (Academicians are)

  Scare keep them in the cupboard, next the prunes.

  And so, abandoned to a bitter mirth,

  I loitered to my inn. O world, O world,

  O jurists, rhymers, dreamers, what you please,

  We play a weary game of hide and seek!

  We shape a figure of our fantasy,

  Call nothing something, and run after it

  And lose it, lose ourselves too in the search,

  Till clash against us, comes a somebody

  Who also has lost something and is lost,

  Philosopher against philanthropist,

  Academician against poet, man

  Against woman, against the living, the dead,–

  Then home, with a bad headache and worse jest!

  To change the water for my heliotropes

  And yellow roses. Paris has such flowers,

  But England, also. ‘Twas a yellow rose,

  By that south window of the little house,

  My cousin Romney gathered with his hand

  On all my birthdays for me, save the last;

  And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,

  For roses to stay after.

  Now, my maps

  I must not linger here from Italy

  Till the last nightingale is tired of song,

  And the last fire-fly dies off in the maize.

  My soul’s in haste to leap into the sun

  And scorch and seethe itself to a finer mood,

  Which here, in this chill north, is apt to stand

  Too stiffly in former moulds.

  That face persists.

  It floats up, it turns over in my mind,

  As like to Marian, as one dead is like

  That same alive. In very deed a face

  And not a fancy, though it vanished so;

  The small fair face between the darks of hair,

  I used to liken, when I saw her first,

  To a point of moonlit water down a well:

  The low brow, the frank space between the eyes,

  Which always had the brown pathetic look

  Of a dumb creature who had been beaten once,

  And never since was easy with the world.

  Ah, ah–now I remember perfectly

  Those eyes to-day,–how overlarge they seemed

  As if some patient passionate despair

  (Like a coal dropt and forgot on tapestry,

  Which slowly burns a widening circle out)

  Had burnt them larger, larger. And those eyes,

  To-day, I do remember, saw me too,

  As I saw them, with conscious lids astrain

  In recognition. Now, a fantasy,

  A simple shade or image of the brain,

  Is merely passive, does not retro-act,

  Is seen, but sees not.

  ‘Twas a real face,

  Perhaps a real Marian.

  Which being so,

  I ought to write to Romney, ‘Marian’s here.

  Be comforted for Marian.’

  My pen fell,

  My hands struck sharp together, as hands do

  Which hold at nothing. Can I w
rite to him

  A half truth? can I keep my own soul blind

  To the other half, . . the worse? What are our souls,

  If still, to run on straight a sober pace

  Nor start at every pebble or dead leaf,

  They must wear blinkers, ignore facts, suppress

  Six-tenths of the road? Confront the truth, my soul!

  And oh, as truly as that was Marian’s face,

  The arms of the same Marian clasped a thing

  . . Not hid so well beneath the scanty shawl,

  I cannot name it now for what it was.

  A child. Small business has a cast-away

  Like Marian, with that crown of prosperous wives

  At which the gentlest she grows arrogant

  And says, ‘my child.’ Who’ll find an emerald ring

  On a beggar’s middle finger, and require

  More testimony to convict a thief?

  A child’s too costly for so mere a wretch;

  She filched it somewhere; and it means, with her,

  Instead of honour, blessing, . . merely shame.

  I cannot write to Romney, ‘Here she is,

  Here’s Marian found! I’ll set you on her track:

  I saw her here, in Paris, . . and her child.

  She put away your love two years ago,

  But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then;

  And, now that you’ve forgot her utterly

  As any lost year’s annual in whose place

  You’ve planted a thick flowering evergreen,

  I choose, being kind, to write and tell you this

  To make you wholly easy–she’s not dead,

  But only . . damned.’

  Stop there: I go too fast;

  I’m cruel like the rest,–in haste to take

  The first stir in the arras for a rat,

  And set my barking, biting thoughts upon’t.

  –A child! what then? Suppose a neighbour’s sick

  And asked her, ‘Marian, carry out my child

  In this spring air,’–I punish her for that?

  Or say, the child should hold her round the neck

  For good child-reasons, that he liked it so

  And would not leave her–she had winning ways–

  I brand her therefore, that she took the child?

  Not so.

  I will not write to Romney Leigh.

  For now he’s happy,–and she may indeed

  Be guilty,–and the knowledeg of her fault

  Would draggle his smooth time. But I, whose days

  Are not so fine they cannot bear the rain,

  And who, moreover, having seen her face,

  Must see it again, . . will see it, by my hopes

  Of one day seeing heaven too. The police

  Shall track her, hound her, ferret their own soil;

  We’ll dig this Paris to its catacombs

  But certainly we’ll find her, have her out,

  And save her, if she will or will not–child

  Or no child,–if a child, then one to save!

  The long weeks passed on without consequence.

  As easy find a footstep on the sand

  The morning after spring-tied, as the trace

  Of Marian’s feet between the incessant surfs

  Of this live flood. She may have moved this way,–

  But so the star-fish does, and crosses out

  The dent of her small shoe. The foiled police

  Renounced me; ‘Could they find a girl and child,

  No other signalment but girl and child?

  No data shown, but noticeable eyes

  And hair in masses, low upon the brow,

  As if it were an iron crown and pressed?

  Friends heighten, and suppose they specify:

  Why, girls with hair and eyes are everywhere

  In Paris; they had turned me up in vain

  No Marian Erle indeed, but certainly

  Mathildes, Justines, Victoires, . . or, if I sought

  The English, Betsis, Saras, by the score.

  They might as well go out into the fields

  To find a speckled bean, that’s somehow specked,

  And somewhere in the pod.’–They left me so.

  Shall I leave Marian? have I dreamed a dream?

  –I thank God I have found her! I must say

  ‘Thank, God,’ for finding her, although ‘tis true

  I find the world more sad and wicked for’t.

  But she–

  I’ll write about her, presently;

  My hand’s a-tremble as I had just caught up

  My heart to write with, in the place of it.

  At least you’d take these letters to be writ

  At sea, in storm!–wait now . .

  A simple chance

  Did all. I could not sleep last night, and tired

  Of turning on my pillow and harder thoughts

  Went out at early morning, when the air

  Is delicate with some last starry touch,

  To wander through the Market-place of Flowers

  (The prettiest haunt in Paris), and make sure

  At worst, that there were roses in the world.

  So wandering, musing with the artist’s eye,

  That keeps the shade-side of the thing it loves,

  Half-absent, whole-observing, while the crowd

  Of young vivacioius and black-braided heads

  Dipped, quick as finches in a blossomed tree,

  Among the nosegays, cheapening this and that

  In such a cheerful twitter of rapid speech,–

  My heart leapt in me, startled by a voice

  That slowly, faintly, with long breaths that marked

  The interval between the wish and word,

  Inquired in stranger’s French, ‘Would that be much,

  That branch of flowering mountain-gorse?’–’So much?

  Too much for me, then!’ turning the face round

  So close upon me, that I felt the sigh

  It turned with.

  ‘Marian, Marian!’–face to face–

  ‘Marian! I find you. Shall I let you go?’

  I held her two slight wrists with both my hands;

  ‘Ah, Marian, Marian, can I let you go?’

  –She fluttered from me like a cyclamen,

  As white, which, taken in a sudden wind,

  Beats on against the palisade.–’Let pass,’

  She said at last. ‘I will not,’ I replied;

  ‘I lost my sister Marian many days,

  And sought her ever in my walks and prayers,

  And now I find her . . . do we thrown away

  The bread we worked and prayed for,–crumble it

  And drop it, . . to do even so by thee

  Whom still I’ve hungered after more than bread,

  My sister Marian?–can I hurt thee, dear?

  Then why distrust me? Never tremble so.

  Come with me rather, where we’ll talk and live,

  And none shall vex us. I’ve a home for you

  And me and no one else’ . . .

  She shook her head.

  ‘A home for you and me and no one else

  Ill-suits one of us: I prefer to such,

  A roof of grass on which a flower might spring,

  Less costly to me than the cheapest here;

  And yet I could not, at this hour, afford

  A like home, even. That you offer yours,

  I thank you. You are good as heaven itself–

  As good as one I knew before . . Farewell.’

  I loosed her hands. ‘In his name, no farewell!’

  (She stood as if I held her,) ‘for his sake,

  For his sake, Romney’s! by the good he meant,

  Ay, always! by the love he pressed for once,–

  And by the grief, reproach, abandonment,

  He took in change’ . .

  ‘He, Romney! who grieved him?

  Who h
ad the heart for’t? what reproach touch’d him?

  Be merciful,–speak quickly.’

  ‘Therefore come.

  I answered with authority,–’I think

  We dare to speak such things, and name such names,

  In the open squares of Paris!’

  Not a word

  She said, but, in a gentle humbled way,

  (As one who had forgot herself in grief)

  Turned round and followed closely where I went.

  As if I led her by a narrow plank

  Across devouring waters, step by step,–

  And so in silence we walked on a mile.

  And then she stopped: her face was white as wax.

  ‘We go much further?’

  ‘You are ill,’ I asked,

  ‘Or tired?’

  She looked the whiter for her smile.

  ‘There’s one at home,’ she said, ‘has need of me

  By this time,–and I must not let him wait.’

  ‘Not even,’ I asked, ‘to hear of Romney Leigh?’

  ‘Not even,’ she said, ‘to hear of Mister Leigh.’

  ‘In that case,’ I resumed, ‘I go with you,

  And we can talk the same thing there as here.

  None waits for me: I have my day to spend.’

  Her lips moved in a spasm without a sound,–

  But then she spoke. ‘It shall be as you please;

  And better so,–’tis shorter seen than told.

  And though you will not find me worth your pains,

  That even, may be worth some pains to know,

  For one as good as you are.’

  Then she led

  The way, and I, as by a narrow plank

  Across devouring waters, followed her,

  Stepping by her footsteps, breathing by her breath,

  And holding her with eyes that would not slip;

  And so, without a word, we walked a mile,

  And so, another mile, without a word.

  Until the peopled streets being all dismissed,

  House-rows and groups all scattered like a flock,

  The market-gardens thickened, and the long

  White walls beyond, like spiders’ outside threads,

  Stretched, feeling blindly toward the country-fields

  Through half-built habitations and half-dug

  Foundations,–intervals of trenchant chalk,

  That bite betwixt the grassy uneven turfs

  Where goats (vine tendrils trailing from their mouths)

  Stood perched on edges of the cellarage

  Which should be, staring as about to leap

  To find their coming Bacchus. All the place

  Seemed less a cultivation than a waste:

  Men work here, only,–scarce begin to live:

  All’s sad, the country struggling with the town,

 

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