Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Like an untamed hawk upon a strong man’s fist,

  That beats its wings and tries to get away,

  And cannot choose be satisfied so soon

  To hop through court-yards with its right foot tied,

  The vintage plains and pastoral hills in sight!

  We stopped beside a house too high and slim

  To stand there by itself, but waiting till

  Five others, two on this side, three on that,

  Should grow up from the sullen second floor

  They pause at now, to build it to a row.

  The upper windows partly were unglazed

  Meantime,–a meagre, unripe house: a line

  Of rigid poplars elbowed it behind,

  And just in front, beyond the lime and bricks

  That wronged the grass between it and the road,

  A great acacia, with its slender trunk

  And overpoise of multitudinous leaves,

  (In which a hundred fields might spill their dew

  And intense verdure, yet find room enough)

  Stood reconciling all the place with green.

  I follwoed up the stair upon her step.

  She hurried upward, shot across a face,

  A woman’s on the landing,–’How now, now!

  Is no one to have holidays but you?

  You said an hour, and stay three hours, I think,

  And Julie waiting for your betters here!

  Why if he had waked, he might have waked for me.’

  –Just murmuring an excusing word she passed

  And shut the rest out with the chamber-door,

  Myself shut in beside her.

  ‘Twas a room

  Scarce large than a grave, and near as bare;

  Two stools, a pallet-bed; I saw the room;

  A mouse could find no sort of shelter in’t,

  Much less a greater secret; curtainless,–

  The window fixed you with its torturing eye,

  Defying you to take a step apart.

  If peradventure you would hide a thing.

  I saw the whole room, I and Marian there

  Alone.

  Alone? She threw her bonnet off,

  Then sighing as ‘twere sighing the last time,

  Approached the bed, and drew a shawl away:

  You could not peel a fruit you fear to bruise

  More calmly and more carefully than so,–

  Nor would you find within, a rosier flushed

  Pomegranate–

  There he lay, upon his back,

  The yearling creature, warm and moist with life

  To the bottom of his dimples,–to the ends

  Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;

  For since he had been covered over-much

  To keep him from the light glare, both his cheeks

  Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose

  The shepherd’s heart blood ebbed away into,

  The faster for his love. And love was here

  As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth,

  Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;

  The little naked feet drawn up the way

  Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft

  And tender,–to the little holdfast hands,

  Which, closing on a finger into sleep,

  Had kept the mould of’t.

  While we stood there dumb,–

  For oh, that it should take such innocence

  To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb;

  The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,

  And staring out at us with all their blue,

  As half perplexed between the angelhood

  He had been away to visit in his sleep,

  And our most mortal presence,–gradually

  He saw his mother’s face, accepting it

  In change for heaven itself, with such a smile

  As might have well been learnt there,–never moved,

  But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy,

  So happy (half with her and half with heaven)

  He could not have the trouble to be stirred,

  But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said:

  As red and still indeed as any rose,

  That blows in all the silence of its leaves,

  Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.

  She leaned above him (drinking him as wine)

  In that extremity of love, ‘twill pass

  For agony or rapture, seeing that love

  Includes the whole of nature, rounding it

  To love . . no more,–since more can never be

  Than just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self,

  And drowning in the transport of the sight,

  Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes,

  One gaze, she stood! then, slowly as he smiled,

  She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware,

  And drawing from his countenance to hers

  A fainter red, as if she watched a flame

  And stood in it a-glow. ‘How beautiful!’

  Said she.

  I answered, trying to be cold.

  (Must sin have compensations, was my thought,

  As if it were a holy thing like grief?

  And is a woman to be fooled aside

  From putting vice down, with that woman’s toy,

  A baby?)––’Ay! the child is well enough,’

  I answered. ‘If his mother’s palms are clean,

  They need be glad, of course, in clasping such:

  But if not,–I would rather lay my hand,

  Were I she,–on God’s brazen altar-bars

  Red-hot with burning sacrificial lambs,

  Than touch the sacred curls of such a child.’

  She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks,

  As one who would not be afraid of fire;

  And then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,–

  ‘My lamb, my lamb! although, through such as thou,

  The most unclean got courage and approach

  To God, once,–now they cannot, even with men,

  Find grace enough for pity and gentle words.’

  ‘My Marian,’ I made answer, grave and sad,

  ‘The priest who stole a lamb to offer him,

  Was still a thief. And if a woman steals

  (Through God’s own barrier-hedges of true love,

  Which fence out licence in securing love)

  A child like this, that smiles so in her face,

  She is no mother, but a kidnapper,

  And he’s a dismal orphan . . not a son;

  Whom all her kisses cannot feed so full

  He will not miss herafter a pure home

  To live in, a pure heart to lean against,

  A pure good mother’s name and memory

  To hope by when the world grows thick and bad,

  And he feels out for virtue.’

  ‘Oh,’ she smiled

  With bitter patience, ‘the child takes his chance,–

  Not much worse off in being fatherless

  Than I was fathered. He will say, belike,

  His mother was the saddest creature born;

  He’ll say his mother lived so contrary

  To joy, that even the kindest, seeing her,

  Grew sometimes almost cruel: he’ll not say

  She flew contrarious in the face of God

  With bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child,–

  My flower of earth, my only flower on earth,

  My sweet, my beauty!’ . . Up she snatched the child,

  And breaking on him in a storm of tears,

  Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots,

  Until he took it for a game, and stretched

  His feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings,

  And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh:

  ‘Mine, mine,’ she said; ‘I have as sure a right

  As any gl
ad pround mother in the world,

  Who sets her darling down to cut his teeth

  Upon her church-ring. If she talks of law,

  I talk of law! I claim my mother-dues

  By law,–the law which now is paramount;

  The common law, by which the poor and weak

  Are trodden underfoot by vicious men,

  And loathed for ever after by the good.

  Let pass! I did not filch . . I found the child.’

  ‘You found him, Marian?’

  ‘Ay, I found him where

  I found my curse,–in the gutter with my shame!

  What have you, any of you, to say to that,

  Who all are happy, and sit safe and high,

  And never spoke before to arraign my right

  To grief itself? What, what, . . being beaten down

  By hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch,

  Half-dead, whole mangled . . when a girl, at last,

  Breathes, sees . . and finds, there, bedded in her flesh,

  Because of the overcoming shock perhaps,

  Some coin of price! . . and when a good man comes

  (That’s God! the best men are not quite as good)

  And says, ‘I dropped the coin there: take it, you,

  And keep it,–it shall pay you for the loss,–

  You all put up your finger–’See the thief!

  ‘Observe that precious thing she has come to filch!

  ‘How bad those girls are!’ Oh, my flower, my pet,

  I dare forget I have you in my arms,

  And fly off to be angry with the world,

  And fright you, hurt you with my tempers, till

  You double up your lip? Ah, that indeed

  Is bad: a naughty mother!’

  ‘You mistake,’

  I interrupted. ‘If I loved you not,

  I should not, Marian, certainly be here.’

  ‘Alas,’ she said, ‘you are so very good;

  And yet I wish, indeed, you had never come

  To make me sob until I vex the child.

  It is not wholesome for these pleasure-plats

  To be so early watered by our brine.

  And then, who knows? he may not like me now

  As well, perhaps, as ere he saw me fret,–

  One’s ugly fretting! he has eyes the same

  As angels, but he cannot see as deep,

  And so I’ve kept for ever in his sight

  A sort of smile to please him, as you place

  A green thing from the garden in a cup,

  To make believe it grows there. Look, my sweet,

  My cowslip-ball! we’ve done with that cross face,

  And here’s the face come back you used to like.

  And, ah! he laughs! he likes me. Ah, Miss Leigh,

  You’re great and pure; but were you purer still,–

  As if you had walked, we’ll say, no otherwhere

  Than up and down the new Jerusalem,

  And held your trailing lutestring up yourself

  From brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some

  Small speck as little as a needle prick,

  White stitched on white,–the child would keep to me,

  Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,

  And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,

  As we do, when God says it’s time to die

  And bids us go up higher. Leave us then;

  We two are happy. Does he push me off?

  He’s satisfied with me, as I with him.’

  ‘So soft to one, so hard to others! Nay.’

  I cried, more angry that she melted me,

  ‘We make henceforth a cushion of our faults

  To sit and practise easy virtues on?

  I thought a child was given to sanctify

  A woman,–set her in the sight of all

  The clear-eyed heavens, a chosen minister

  To do their business and lead spirits up

  The difficult blue heights. A woman lives,

  Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good

  Through being a mother? . . . then she’s none although

  She damps her baby’s cheeks by kissing them,

  As we kill roses.’

  ‘Kill! O Christ,’ she said,

  And turned her wild sad face from side to side

  With most despairing wonder in it–’What,

  What have you in your souls against me then,

  All of you? am I wicked, do you think?

  God knows me, trusts me with a child! but you,

  You think me really wicked?’

  ‘Complaisant,’

  I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done,

  Because of certain profits,–which is wrong

  Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left

  The pure place and the noble heart, to take

  The hand of a seducer’ . .

  ‘Whom? whose hand?

  I took the hand of’ . .

  Springing up erect,

  And lifting up the child at full arm’s length,

  As if to bear him like an oriflamme

  Unconquerable to armies of reproach,–

  ‘By him,’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls,

  By those blue eyes no woman born could dare

  A perjury on, I make my mother’s oath,

  That if I left that Heart, to lighten it,

  The blood of mine was still, except for grief!

  No cleaner maid than I was, took a step

  To a sadder cup,–no matron-mother now

  Looks backwards to her early maidenhood

  Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily:

  And if I lie so, . . if, being fouled in will

  And paltered with in soul by devil’s lust,

  I dare to bid this angel take my part, . .

  Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven,

  Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak:

  He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’ ‘s your word?

  Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France?

  Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws,

  Seduce it into carrion? So with me.

  I was not ever as you say, seduced,

  But simply murdered.’

  There she paused, and sighed,

  With such a sigh as drops from agony

  To exhaustion,–sighing while she let the babe

  Slide down upon her bosom from her arms,

  And all her face’s light fell after him,

  Like a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank,

  And sate upon the bedside with the child.

  But I, convicted, broken utterly,

  With woman’s passion clung about her waist,

  And kissed her hair and eyes,–’I have been wrong,

  Sweet Marian’ . . (weeping in a tender rage)

  ‘Sweet holy Marian! And now, Marian, now,

  I’ll use your oath although my lips are hard,

  And by the child, my Marian, by the child,

  I’ll swear his mother shall be innocent

  Before my conscience, as in the open Book

  Of Him who reads for judgment. Innocent,

  My sister! let the night be ne’er so dark,

  The moon is surely somewhere in the sky:

  So surely is your whiteness to be found

  Through all dark facts. But pardon, pardon me,

  And smile a little, Marian,–for the child,

  If not for me, my sister.’

  The poor lip

  Just motioned for the smile and let it go.

  And then, with scarce a stirring of the mouth,

  As if a statue spoke that could not breathe,

  But spoke on calm between its marble lips,–

  ‘I’m glad, I’m very glad you clear me so.

  I should be sorry that you set me down

  With harlots, or with even a better n
ame

  Which misbecomes his mother. For the rest

  I am not on a level with your love,

  Nor ever was, you know,–but now am worse,

  Because that world of yours has dealt with me

  As when the hard sea bites and chews a stone

  And changes the first form of it. I’ve marked

  A shore of pebbles bitten to one shape

  From all the various life of madrepores;

  And so, that little stone, called Marian Erle,

  Picked up and dropped by you and another friend,

  Was ground and tortured by the incessant sea

  And bruised from what she was,–changed! death’s a change,

  And she, I said, was murdered; Marian’s dead.

  What can you do with people when they are dead,

  But, if you are pious, sing a hymn and go;

  Or, if you are tender, heave a sigh and go,

  But go by all means,–and permit the grass

  To keep its green feud up ‘twixt them and you?

  Then leave me,–let me rest. I’m dead, I say.

  And if, to save the child from death as well,

  The mother in me has survived the rest,

  Why, that’s God’s miracle you must not tax,–

  I’m not less dead for that: I’m nothing more

  But just a mother. Only for the child,

  I’m warm, and cold, and hungry, and afraid,

  And smell the flowers a little, and see the sun,

  And speak still, and am silent,–just for him!

  I pray you therefore to mistake me not

  And treat me haply, as I were alive;

  For though you ran a pin into my soul,

  I think it would not hurt nor trouble me.

  Here’s proof, dear lady,–in the market-place

  But now, you promised me to say a word

  About . . a friend, who once, long years ago,

  Took God’s place toward me, when He draws and loves

  And does not thunder, . . whom at last I left,

  As all of us leave God. You thought perhaps

  I seemed to care for hearing of that friend?

  Now, judge me! we have sate here half an hour

  And talked together of the child and me,

  And I not asked as much as ‘What’s the thing

  You had to tell me of the friend . . the friend?’

  He’s sad, I think you said,–he’s sick perhaps?

  It’s nought to Marian if he’s sad or sick.

  Another would have crawled beside your foot

  And prayed your words out. Why, a beast, a dog,

  A starved cat, if he had fed it once with milk,

  Would show less hardness. But I’m dead, you see,

  And that explains it.’

  Poor, poor thing, she spoke

  And shook her head, as white and calm as frost