Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  No shriek of soul in anguish could pierce through

  To fetch some help. They say there’s help in heaven

  For all such cries. But if one cries from hell. .

  What then?–the heavens are deaf upon that side.

  A woman . . hear me,–let me make it plain,–

  A woman . . not a monster . . both her breasts

  Made right to suckle babes . . she took me off,

  A woman also, young and ignorant,

  And heavy with my grief, my two poor eyes

  Near washed away with weeping, till the trees,

  The blessed unaccustomed trees and fields,

  Ran either side the train like stranger dogs

  Unworthy of any notice,–took me off,

  So dull, so blind, and only half alive,

  Not seeing by what road, nor by what ship,

  Nor toward what place, nor to what end of all.–

  Men carry a corpse thus,–past the doorway, past

  The garden-gate, the children’s playground, up

  The green lane,–then they leave it in the pit,

  To sleep and find corruption, cheek to cheek

  With him who stinks since Friday.

  ‘But suppose;

  To go down with one’s soul into the grave,–

  To go down half dead, half alive, I say,

  And wake up with corruption, . . cheek to cheek

  With him who stinks since Friday! There it is,

  And that’s the horror of’t, Miss Leigh.

  ‘You feel?

  You understand?–no, do not look at me,

  But understand. The blank, blind, weary way,

  Which led . . where’er it led . . away at least;

  The shifted ship . . to Sydney or to France . .

  Still bound, wherever else, to another land;

  The swooning sickness on the dismal sea,

  The foreign shore, the shameful house, the night,

  The feeble blood, the heavy-headed grief, . .

  No need to bring their damnable drugged cup,

  And yet they brought it! Hell’s so prodigal

  Of devil’s gifts . . hunts liberally in packs,

  Will kill no poor small creature of the wilds

  But fifty red wide throats must smoke at it,

  As HIS at me . . when waking up at last . .

  I told you that I waked up in the grave.

  ‘Enough so!–it is plain enough so. True,

  We wretches cannot tell out all our wrong,

  Without offence to decent happy folk.

  I know that we must scrupulously hint

  With half-words, delicate reserves, the thing

  Which no one scrupled we should feel in full.

  Let pass the rest, then; only leave my oath

  Upon this sleeping child,–man’s violence,

  Not man’s seduction, made me what I am,

  As lost as . . I told him I should be lost.

  When mothers fail us, can we help ourselves?

  That’s fatal!–And you call it being lost,

  That down came next day’s noon and caught me there,

  Half gibbering and half raving on the floor,

  And wondering what had happened up in heaven,

  That suns should dare to shine when God Himself

  Was certainly abolished.

  ‘I was mad,–

  How many weeks, I know not,–many weeks.

  I think they let me go, when I was mad,

  They feared my eyes and loosed me, as boys might

  A mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down

  I went, by road and village, over tracts

  Of open foreign country, large and strange,

  Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines

  Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton hand

  Through sunlight and through moonlight evermore

  Pushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,

  And resolute to get me, slow and sure;

  While every roadside Christ upon his cross

  Hung reddening through his gory wounds at me,

  And shook his nails in anger, and came down

  To follow a mile after, wading up

  The low vines and green wheat, crying ‘Take the girl!

  She’s none of mine from henceforth.’ Then, I knew,

  (But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest)

  The charitable peasants gave me bread

  And leave to sleep in straw: and twice they tied,

  At parting, Mary’s image round my neck–

  How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone;

  A woman has been strangled with less weight:

  I threw it in a ditch to keep it clean

  And ease my breath a little, when none looked;

  I did not need such safeguards:–brutal men

  Stopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seen

  My face,–I must have had an awful look.

  And so I lived: the weeks passed on,–I lived.

  ‘Twas living my old tramp-life o’er again,

  But, this time, in a dream, and hunted round

  By some prodigious Dream-fear at my back,

  Which ended, yet: my brain cleared presently,

  And there I sate, one evening, by the road,

  I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone,

  Facing a sunset low upon the flats,

  As if it were the finish of all time,–

  The great red stone upon my sepulchre,

  Which angels were too weak to roll away.

  AURORA LEIGH. SEVENTH BOOK.

  ‘THE woman’s motive? shall we daub ourselves

  With finding roots for nettles? ‘tis soft clay

  And easily explored. She had the means,

  The moneys, by the lady’s liberal grace,

  In trust for that Australian scheme and me,

  Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,

  And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,

  She served me (after all it was not strange,;

  ‘Twas only what my mother would have done)

  A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.

  ‘Well, after. There are nettles everywhere,

  But smooth green grasses are more common still;

  The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;

  A miller’s wife at Clichy took me in

  And spent her pity on me,–made me calm

  And merely very reasonably sad.

  She found me a servant’s place in Paris where

  I tried to take the cast-off life again,

  And stood as quiet as a beaten ass

  Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up

  To let them charge him with another pack.

  ‘A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,

  Was easy with me, less for kindness than

  Because she led, herself, an easy time

  Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,

  Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.

  She felt so pretty and so pleased all day

  She could not take the trouble to be cross,

  But sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,

  Would tap me softly with her slender foot

  Still restless with the last night’s dancing in’t,

  And say ‘Fie, pale-face! are you English girls

  ‘All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?

  ‘And first-communion colours on your cheeks,

  ‘Worn past the time for’t? little fool, be gay!’

  At which she vanished, like a fairy, through

  A gap of silver laughter.

  ‘Came an hour

  When all went otherwise. She did not speak,

  But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes

  As if a viper with a pair of tongs,

  Too far for any touch, yet near enough

  To view the writhing creature,�
�then at last,

  ‘Stand still there, in the holy Virgin’s name,

  ‘Thou Marian; thou’rt no reputable girl,

  ‘Although sufficient dull for twenty saints!

  ‘I think thou mock’st me and my house,’ she said;

  ‘Confess thou’lt be a mother in a month,

  ‘Thou mask of saintship.’

  ‘Could I answer her?

  The light broke in so. It meant that then, that?

  I had not thought of that, in all my thoughts,

  Through all the cold, dumb aching of my brow,

  Through all the heaving of impatient life

  Which threw me on death at intervals, through all

  The upbreak of the fountains of my heart

  The rains had swelled too large: it could mean that?

  Did God make mothers out of victims, then,

  And set such pure amens to hideous deeds?

  Why not? He overblows an ugly grave

  With violets which blossom in the spring.

  And I could be a mother in a month!

  I hope it was not wicked to be glad.

  I lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed,

  To heaven, not her, until I tore my throat.

  ‘Confess, confess!’ what was there to confess,

  Except man’s cruelty, except my wrong?

  Except this anguish, or this ecstasy?

  This shame, or glory? The light woman there

  Was small to take it in: an acorn-cup

  Would take the sea in sooner.

  ‘‘Good,’ she cried;

  ‘Unmarried and a mother, and she laughs!

  ‘These unchaste girls are always impudent.

  ‘Get out, intriguer! leave my house, and trot:

  ‘I wonder you should look me in the face,

  ‘With such a filthy secret.’

  ‘Then I rolled

  My scanty bundle up, and went my way,

  Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot

  With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth

  Beyond those doors, ‘Twas natural, of course,

  She should not ask me where I meant to sleep;

  I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,

  Like others of my sort; the bed was laid

  For us. By any woman, womanly,

  Had thought of him who should be in a month,

  The sinless babe that should be in a month,

  And if by chance he might be warmer housed

  Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.’

  I broke on Marian there. ‘Yet she herself,

  A wife, I think, had scandals of her own,

  A lover, not her husband.’

  ‘Ay,’ she said

  ‘But gold and meal are measured otherwise;

  I learnt so much at school,’ said Marian Erle.

  ‘O crooked world,’ I cried, ‘ridiculous

  If not so lamentable! It’s the way

  With these light women of a thrifty vice,

  My Marian,–always hard upon the rent

  In any sister’s virtue! while they keep

  Their chastity so darned with perfidy,

  That, though a rag itself, it looks as well

  Across a street, in balcony or coach,

  As any stronger stuff might. For my part,

  I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews

  Than touch such women with my finger-end

  They top the poor street-walker by their lie,

  And look the better for being so much worse

  The devil’s most devilish when respectable.

  But you, dear, and your story.’

  ‘All the rest

  Is here,’ she said, and sighed upon the child.

  ‘I found a mistress-sempstress who was kind

  And let me sew in peace among her girls;

  And what was better than to draw the threads

  All day and half the night, for him, and him?

  And so I lived for him, and so he lives,

  And so I know, by this time, God lives too.’

  She smiled beyond the sun, and ended so,

  And all my soul rose up to take her part

  Against the world’s successes, virtues, fames.

  ‘Come with me, sweetest sister,’ I returned,

  ‘And sit within my house, and do me good

  From henceforth, thou and thine! ye are my own

  From henceforth. I am lonely in the world,

  And thou art lonely, and the child is half

  An orphan. Come, and, henceforth, thou and I

  Being still together, will not miss a friend,

  Nor he a father, since two mothers shall

  Make that up to him. I am journeying south,

  And, in my Tuscan home I’ll find a niche,

  And set thee there, my saint, the child and thee,

  And burn the lights of love before thy face,

  And ever at thy sweet look cross myself

  From mixing with the world’s prosperities;

  That so, in gravity and holy calm,

  We too may live on toward the truer life.’

  She looked me in the face and answered not,

  Nor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks,

  But took the sleeping child and held it out

  To meet my kiss, as if requiting me

  And trusting me at once. And thus, at once,

  I carried him and her to where I lived;

  She’s there now, in the little room, asleep,

  I hear the soft child-breathing through the door;

  And all three of us, at to-morrow’s break,

  Pass onward, homeward, to our Italy.

  Oh, Romney Leigh, I have your debts to pay,

  And I’ll be just and pay them.

  But yourself!

  To pay your debts is scarcely difficult;

  To buy your life is nearly impossible,

  Being sold away to Lamia. My head aches;

  I cannot see my road along this dark;

  Nor can I creep and grope, as fits the dark,

  For these foot-catching robes of womanhood:

  A man might walk a little . . but I!–He loves

  The Lamia-woman,–and I, write to him

  What stops his marriage, and destroys his peace,–

  Or what, perhaps, shall simply trouble him,

  Until she only need to touch his sleeve

  With just a finger’s tremulous white flame,

  Saying, ‘Ah,–Aurora Leigh! a pretty tale,

  ‘A very pretty poet! I can guess

  ‘The motive’–then, to catch his eyes in hers,

  And vow she does not wonder,–and they two

  To break in laughter, as the sea along

  A melancholy coast, and float up higher,

  In such a laugh, their fatal weeds of love!

  Ay, fatal, ay. And who shall answer me,

  Fate has not hurried tides; and if to-night

  My letter would not be a night too late,–

  An arrow shot into a man that’s dead,

  To prove a vain intention? Would I show

  The new wife vile, to make the husband mad?

  No, Lamia! shut the shutters, bar the doors

  From every glimmer on they serpent-skin!

  I will not let thy hideous secret out

  To agonise the man I love–I mean

  The friend I love . . as friends love.

  It is strange,

  To-day while Marian told her story, like

  To absorb most listeners, how I listened chief

  To a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy’s,

  Nor God’s in wrath, . . but one that mixed with mine

  Long years ago, among the garden-trees,

  And said to me, to me too, ‘Be my wife,

  Aurora!’ It is strange, with what a swell

  Of yearning passion, as a snow of ghosts

  Might beat agains
t the impervious doors of heaven,

  I thought, ‘Now, if I had been a woman, such

  As God made women, to save men by love,–

  By just my love I might have saved this man,

  And made a nobler poem for the world

  Than all I have failed in.’ But I failed besides

  In this; and now he’s lost! through me alone!

  And, by my only fault, his empty house

  Sucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hell

  To keep his hearth cold, make his casements creak

  For ever to the tune of plague and sin–

  O Romney, O my Romney, O my friend!

  My cousin and friend! my helper, when I would,

  My love that might be! mine!

  Why, how one weeps

  When one’s too weary! Were a witness by,

  He’d say some folly . . that I loved the man,

  Who knows? . . and make me laugh again for scorn.

  At strongest, women are as weak in flesh,

  As men, at weakest, vilest, are in soul:

  So, hard for women to keep pace with men!

  As well give up at once, sit down at once.

  And weep as I do. Tears, tears! why, we weep?

  ‘Tis worth enquiry?–That we’ve shamed a life,

  Or lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps?

  By no means. Simply, that we’ve walked too far,

  Or talked too much, or felt the wind i’ the east,–

  And so we weep, as if both body and soul

  Broke up in water–this way.

  Poor mixed rags

  Forsooth we’re made of, like those other dolls

  That lean with pretty faces into fairs.

  It seems as if I had a man in me,

  Despising such a woman.

  Yet indeed.

  To see a wrong or suffering moves us all

  To undo it, though we should undo ourselves;

  Ay, all the more, that we undo ourselves;

  That’s womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved.

  A natural movement, therefore, on my part,

  To fill the chair up of my cousin’s wife,

  And save him from a devil’s company!

  We’re all so,–made so–’tis our woman’s trade

  To suffer torment for another’s ease.

  The world’s male chivalry has perished out,

  But women are knights-errant to the last;

  And, if Cervantes had been greater still,

  He had made his Don a Donna.

  So it clears,

  And so we rain our skies blue.

  Put away

  This weakness. If, as I have just now said,

  A man’s within me–let him act himself,

  Ignoring the poor conscious trouble of blood

  That’s called the woman merely. I will write

  Plain words to England,–if too late, too late,–