Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  If ill-accounted, then accounted ill;

  We’ll trust the heavens with something.

  ‘Dear Lord Howe,

  You’ll find a story on another leaf

  That’s Marian Erle’s,–what noble friend of yours

  She trusted once, through what flagitious means

  To what disastrous ends;–the story’s true.

  I found her wandering on the Paris quays,

  A babe upon her breast,–unnatural

  Unseasonable outcast on such snows

  Unthawed to this time. I will tax in this

  Your friendship, friend,–if that convicted She

  Be not his wife yet, to denounce the facts

  To himself,–but, otherwise, to let them pass

  On tip-toe like escaping murderers,

  And tell my cousin, merely–Marian lives,

  Is found, and finds her home with such a friend,

  Myself, Aurora. Which good news, ‘She’s found,’

  Will help to make him merry in his love:

  I sent it, tell him, for my marriage gift,

  As good as orange-water for the nerves,

  Or perfumed gloves for headaches,–though aware

  That he, except of love, is scarcely sick;

  I mean the new love this time, . . since last year.

  Such quick forgetting on the part of men!

  Is any shrewder trick upon the cards

  To enrich them? pray instruct me how it’s done.

  First, clubs,–and while you look at clubs, it’s spades;

  That’s prodigy. The lightning strikes a man,

  And when we think to find him dead and charred . .

  Why, there he is on a sudden, playing pipes

  Beneath the splintered elm-tree! Crime and shame

  And all their hoggery trample your smooth world,

  Nor leave more foot-marks than Apollo’s kine,

  Whose hoofs were muffled by the thieving god

  In tamarisk-leaves and myrtle. I’m so sad,

  So weary and sad to-night, I’m somewhat sour,–

  Forgive me. To be blue and shrew at once,

  Exceeds all toleration except yours;

  But yours, I know, is infinite. Farewell.

  To-morrow we take train for Italy.

  Speak gently of me to your gracious wife,

  As one, however far, shall yet be near

  In loving wishes to your house.’

  I sign.

  And now I’ll loose my heart upon a page,

  This–

  ‘Lady Waldemar, I’m very glad

  I never liked you; which you knew so well,

  You spared me, in your turn, to like me much.

  Your liking surely had done worse for me

  Than has your loathing, though the last appears

  Sufficiently unscrupulous to hurt,

  And not afraid of judgment. Now, there’s space

  Between our faces,–I stand off, as if

  I judged a stranger’s portrait and pronounced

  Indifferently the type was good or bad:

  What matter to me that the lines are false,

  I ask you? Did I ever ink my lips

  By drawing your name through them as a friend’s.

  Or touch your hands as lovers do? thank God

  I never did: and, since you’re proved so vile,

  Ay, vile, I say,–we’ll show it presently,–

  I’m not obliged to nurse my friend in you,

  Or wash out my own blots, in counting yours,

  Or even excuse myself to honest souls

  Who seek to touch my lip or clasp my palm,–

  ‘Alas, but Lady Waldemar came first!’

  ‘Tis true, by this time, you may near me so

  That you’re my cousin’s wife. You’ve gambled

  As Lucifer, and won the morning-star

  In that case,–and the noble house of Leigh

  Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:

  I cannot speak and burn you up between

  Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,–nor speak

  And pierce your breast through Romney’s, I who live

  His friend and cousin!–so, you are safe. You two

  Must grow together like the tares and wheat

  Till God’s great fire.–But make the best of time.

  ‘And hide this letter! let it speak no more

  Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,

  And set her own love digging her own grave

  Within her green hope’s pretty garden-ground;

  Ay, sent her forth with some of your sort

  To a wicked house in France,–from which she fled

  With curses in her eyes and ears and throat,

  Her whole soul choked with curses,–mad, in short,

  And madly scouring up and down for weeks

  The foreign hedgeless country, lone and lost,–

  So innocent, male-fiends might slink within

  Remote hell-corners, seeing her so defiled!

  ‘But you,–you are a woman and more bold.

  To do you justice, you’d not shrink to face . .

  We’ll say, the unfledged life in the other room,

  Which, treading down God’s corn, you trod in sight

  Of all the dogs, in reach of all the guns,–

  Ay, Marian’s babe, her poor unfathered child,

  Her yearling babe!–you’d face him when he wakes

  And opens up his wonderful blue eyes:

  You’d meet them and not wink perhaps, nor fear

  God’s triumph in them and supreme revenge,

  So, righting His creation’s balance-scale

  (You pulled as low as Tophet) to the top

  Of most celestial innocence! For me

  Who am not as bold, I own those infant eyes

  Have set me praying.

  ‘While they look at heaven,

  No need of protestation in my words

  Against the place you’ve made them! let them look!

  They’ll do your business with the heavens, be sure:

  I spare you common curses.

  ‘Ponder this.

  If haply you’re the wife of Romney Leigh,

  (For which inheritance beyond your birth

  You sold that poisonous porridge called your soul)

  I charge you, be his faithful and true wife!

  Keep warm his hearth and clean his board, and, when

  He speaks, be quick with your obedience;

  Still grind your paltry wants and low desires

  To dust beneath his heel; though, even thus,

  The ground must hurt him,–it was writ of old,

  ‘Ye shall not yoke together ox and ass,’

  The nobler and ignobler. Ay, but you

  Shall do your part as well as such ill things

  Can do aught good. You shall not vex him,–mark,

  You shall not vex him, . .jar him when he’s sad,

  Or cross him when he’s eager. Understand

  To trick him with apparent sympathies,

  Nor let him see thee in the face too near

  And unlearn thy sweet seeming. Pay the price

  Of lies, by being constrained to lie on still;

  ‘Tis easy for they sort: a million more

  Will scarcely damn thee deeper.

  ‘Doing which,

  You are very safe from Marian and myself;

  We’ll breathe as softly as the infant here,

  And stir no dangerous embers. Fail a point,

  And show our Romney wounded, ill-content,

  Tormented in his home, . . we open a mouth,

  And such a noise will follow, the last trump’s

  Will scarcely seem more dreadful, even to you;

  You’ll have no pipers after: Romney will

  (I know him) push you forth as none of his,

  All other men declaring it well done;

  While women, ev
en the worst, your like, will draw

  Their skirts back, not to brush you in the street;

  And so I warn you. I’m . . . Aurora Leigh.’

  The letter written, I felt satisfied.

  The ashes, smouldering in me, were thrown out

  By handfuls from me: I had writ my heart

  And wept my tears, and now was cool and calm;

  And, going straightway to the neighbouring room,

  I lifted up the curtains of the bed

  Where Marian Erle, the babe upon her arm,

  Both faces leaned together like a pair

  Of folded innocences, self-complete,

  Each smiling from the other, smiled and slept.

  There seemed no sin, no shame, no wrath, no grief.

  I felt, she too had spoken words that night,

  But softer certainly, and said to God,–

  Who laughs in heaven perhaps, that such as I

  Should make ado for such as she.–’Defiled’

  I wrote? ‘defiled’ I thought her? Stoop,

  Stoop lower, Aurora! get the angels’ leave

  To creep in somewhere, humbly, on your knees,

  Within this round of sequestration white

  In which they have wrapt earth’s foundlings, heaven’s elect!

  The next day, we took train to Italy

  And fled on southward in the roar of steam.

  The marriage-bells of Romney must be loud,

  To sound so clear through all! I was not well;

  And truly, though the truth is like a jest,

  I could not choose but fancy, half the way,

  I stood alone i’ the belfry, fifty bells

  Of naked iron, mad with merriment,

  (As one who laughs and cannot stop himself)

  All clanking at me, in me, over me,

  Until I shrieked a shriek I could not hear,

  And swooned with noise,–but still, along my swoon,

  Was ‘ware the baffled changes backward rang,

  Prepared, at each emerging sense, to beat

  And crash it out with clangour. I was weak;

  I struggled for the posture of my soul

  In upright consciousness of place and time,

  But evermore, ‘twixt waking and asleep,

  Slipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marian’s eyes

  A moment, (it is very good for strength

  To know that some one needs you to be strong)

  And so recovered what I called myself,

  For that time.

  I just knew it when we swept

  Above the old roofs of Dijon. Lyons dropped

  A spark into the night, half trodden out

  Unseen. But presently the winding Rhone

  Washed out the moonlight large along his banks,

  Which strained their yielding curves out clear and clean

  To hold it,–shadow of town and castle just blurred

  Upon the hurrying river. Such an air

  Blew thence upon the forehead,–half an air

  And half a water,–that I leaned and looked;

  Then, turning back on Marian, smiled to mark

  That she looked only on her child, who slept,

  His face towards the moon too.

  So we passed

  The liberal open country and the close,

  And shot through tunnels, like a lightning-wedge

  By great Thor-hammers driven through the rock,

  Which, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits,

  And lets it in at once: the train swept in

  Athrob with effort, trembling with resolve,

  The fierce denouncing whistle wailing on

  And dying off smothered in the shuddering dark,

  While we, self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressed

  As other Titans, underneath the pile

  And nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last,

  To catch the dawn afloat upon the land!

  –Hills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywhere,

  Not crampt in their foundations, pushing wide

  Rich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn

  (As if they entertained i’ the name of France)

  While, down their straining sides, streamed manifest

  A soil as red as Charlemagne’s knightly blood,

  To consecrate the verdure. Some one said,

  ‘Marseilles!’ And lo, the city of Marseilles,

  With all her ships behind her, and beyond,

  The scimitar of ever-shining sea,

  For right-hand use, bared blue against the sky!

  That night we spent between the purple heaven

  And purple water: I think Marian slept;

  But I, as a dog a-watch for his master’s foot,

  Who cannot sleep or eat before he hears,

  I sate upon the deck and watched all night,

  And listened through the stars for Italy.

  Those marriage-bells I spoke of, sounded far,

  As some child’s go-cart in the street beneath

  To a dying man who will not pass the day,

  And knows it, holding by a hand he loves.

  I, too, sate quiet, satisfied with death,

  Sate silent: I could hear my own soul speak,

  And had my friend,–for Nature comes sometimes

  And says, ‘I am ambassador for God.’

  I felt the wind soft from the land of souls;

  The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,

  One straining past another along the shore,

  The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts

  Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas

  And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak

  They stood: I watched beyond that Tyrian belt

  Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship,

  Down all their sides the misty olive-woods

  Dissolving in the weak congenial moon,

  And still disclosing some brown convent-tower

  That seems as if it grew from some brown rock,–

  Or many a little lighted village, dropt

  Like a fallen star, upon so high a point,

  You wonder what can keep it in its place

  From sliding headlong with the waterfalls

  Which drop and powder all the myrtle-groves

  With spray of silver. Thus my Italy

  Was stealing on us. Genoa broke with day;

  The Doria’s long pale palace striking out,

  From green hills in advance of the white town,

  A marble finger dominant to ships,

  Seen glimmering through the uncertain grey of dawn.

  But then I did not think, ‘my Italy,’

  I thought, ‘my father!’ O my father’s house,

  Without his presence!–Places are too much

  Or else too little, for immortal man;

  Too little, when love’s May o’ergrows the ground,–

  Too much, when that luxuriant wealth of green

  Is rustling to our ankles in dead leaves.

  ‘Tis only good to be, or here or there,

  Because we had a dream on such a stone,

  Or this or that,–but, once being wholly waked,

  And come back to the stone without the dream,

  We trip upon’t,–alas! and hurt ourselves;

  Or else it falls on us and grinds us flat,

  The heaviest grave-stone on this buying earth.

  –But while I stood and mused, a quiet touch

  Fell light upon my arm, and, turning round,

  A pair of moistened eyes convicted mine.

  ‘What, Marian! is the babe astir so soon?’

  ‘He sleeps,’ she answered; ‘I have crept up thrice,

  And seen you sitting, standing, still at watch.

  I thought it did you good till now, but now’ . . .

  ‘But now,’ I said, ‘you leave the child alone.’

  ‘And your’re alone,’ she answered,
–and she looked

  As if I, too, were something. Sweet the help

  Of one we have helped! Thanks, Marian, for that help.

  I found a house, at Florence, on the hill

  Of Bellosguardo. ‘Tis a tower that keeps

  A post of double-observation o’er

  The valley of Arno (holding as a hand

  The outspread city) straight toward Fiesole

  And Mount Morello and the setting sun,–

  The Vallombrosan mountains to the right,

  Which sunrise fills as full as crystal cups

  Wine-filled, and red to the brim because it’s red.

  No sun could die, nor yet be born, unseen

  By dwellers at my villa: morn and eve

  Were magnified before us in the pure

  Illimitable space and pause of sky,

  Intense as angels’ garments blanched with God,

  Less blue than radiant. From the outer wall

  Of the garden, dropped the mystic floating grey

  Of olive-trees, (with interruptions green

  From maize and vine) until ‘twas caught and torn

  On that abrupt black line of cypresses

  Which signed the way to Florence. Beautiful

  The city lay along the ample vale,

  Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street;

  The river trailing like a silver cord

  Through all, and curling loosely, both before

  And after, over the whole stretch of land

  Sown whitely up and down its opposite slopes,

  With farms and villas.

  Many weeks had passed,

  No word was granted.–Last, a letter came

  From Vincent Carrington:–’My Dear Miss Leigh,

  You’ve been as silent as a poet should,

  When any other man is sure to speak.

  If sick, if vexed, if dumb, a silver-piece

  Will split a man’s tongue,–straight he speaks and says,

  ‘Received that cheque.’ But you! . . I send you funds

  To Paris, and you make no sign at all.

  Remember I’m responsible and wait

  A sign of you, Miss Leigh.

  ‘Meantime your book

  Is eloquent as if you were not dumb;

  And common critics, ordinarily deaf

  To such fine meanings, and, like deaf men, loth

  To seem deaf, answering chance-wise, yes or no,

  ‘It must be,’ or ‘it must not,’ (most pronounced

  When least convinced) pronounce for once aright:

  You’d think they really heard,–and so they do . .

  The burr of three or four who really hear

  And praise your book aright: Fame’s smallest trump

  Is a great ear-trumpet for the deaf as posts,

  No other being effective. Fear not, friend;