Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  We think, here, you have written a good book,

  And you, a woman! It was in you–yes,

  I felt ‘twas in you: yet I doubted half

  If that od-force of German Reichenbach

  Which still from female finger-tips burns blue,

  Could strike out, as our masculine white heats,

  To quicken a man. Forgive me. All my heart

  Is quick with yours, since, just a fortnight since,

  I read your book and loved it.

  ‘Will you love

  My wife, too? Here’s my secret, I might keep

  A month more from you! but I yield it up

  Because I know you’ll write the sooner for’t,–

  Most women (of your height even) counting love

  Life’s only serious business. Who’s my wife

  That shall be in a month? you ask? nor guess?

  Remember what a pair of topaz eyes

  You once detected, turned against the wall,

  That morning, in my London painting-room;

  The face half-sketched, and slurred; the eyes alone!

  But you . . you caught them up with yours, and said

  ‘Kate Ward’s eyes, surely.’–Now, I own the truth,

  I had thrown them there to keep them safe from Jove;

  They would so naughtily find out their way

  To both the heads of both my Danaës,

  Where just it made me mad to look at them.

  Such eyes! I could not paint or think of eyes

  But those,–and so I flung them into paint

  And turned them to the wall’s care. Ay, but now

  I’ve let them out, my Kate’s! I’ve painted her,

  (I’ll change my style, and leave mythologies)

  The whole sweet face; it looks upon my soul

  Like a face on water, to beget itself,

  A half-length portrait, in a hanging cloak

  Like one you wore once; ‘tis a little frayed;

  I pressed, too, for the nude harmonious arm–

  But she . . she’d have her way, and have her cloak;

  She said she could be like you only so,

  And would not miss the fortune. Ah, my friend,

  You’ll write and say she shall not miss your love

  Through meeting mine? in faith, she would not change:

  She has your books by heart, more than my words,

  And quotes you up against me till I’m pushed

  Where, three months since, her eyes were! nay, in fact,

  Nought satisfied her but to make me paint

  Your last book folded in her dimpled hands,

  Instead of my brown palette, as I wished,

  (And, grant me, the presentment had been newer)

  She’d grant me nothing: I’ve compounded for

  The naming of the wedding-day next month,

  And gladly too. ‘Tis pretty, to remark

  How women can love women of your sort,

  And tie their hearts with love-knots to your feet,

  Grow insolent about you against men,

  And put us down by putting up the lip,

  As if a man,–there are such, let us own.

  Who write not ill,–remains a man, poor wretch,

  While you–! Write far worse than Aurora Leigh,

  And there’ll be women who believe of you

  (Besides my Kate) that if you walked on sand

  You would not leave a foot-print.

  ‘Are you put

  To wonder by my marriage, like poor Leigh?

  ‘Kate Ward!’ he said. ‘Kate Ward!’ he said anew.

  ‘I thought . . .’ he said, and stopped,–’I did not think . . .’

  And then he dropped to silence.

  ‘Ah, he’s changed

  I had not seen him, you’re aware, for long,

  But went of course. I have not touched on this

  Through all this letter,–conscious of your heart,

  And writing lightlier for the heavy fact,

  As clocks are voluble with lead.

  ‘How weak

  To say I’m sorry. Dear Leigh, dearest Leigh!

  In those old days of Shropshire,–pardon me,–

  When he and you fought many a field of gold

  On what you should do, or you should not do,

  Make bread of verses, (it just came to that)

  I thought you’d one day draw a silken peace

  Through a gold ring. I thought so. Foolishly,

  The event proved,–for you went more opposite

  To each other, month by month, and year by year,

  Until this happened. God knows best, we say,

  But hoarsely. When the fever took him first,

  Just after I had writ to you in France,

  They tell me Lady Waldemar mixed drinks

  And counted grains, like any salaried nurse,

  Excepting that she wept too. Then Lord Howe,

  You’re right about Lord Howe! Lord Howe’s a trump;

  And yet, with such in his hand, a man like Leigh

  May lose, as he does. There’s an end to all,–

  Yes, even this letter, through the second sheet

  May find you doubtful. Write a word for Kate:

  Even now she reads my letters like a wife,

  And if she sees her name, I’ll see her smile,

  And share the luck. So, bless you, friend of two!

  I will not ask you what your feeling is

  At Florence with my pictures. I can hear

  Your heart a-flutter over the snow-hills;

  And, just to pace the Pitti with you once,

  I’d give a half-hour of to-morrow’s walk

  With Kate . . I think so. Vincent Carrington.’

  The noon was hot; the air scorched like the sun,

  And was shut out. The closed persiani threw

  Their long-scored shadows on my villa-floor,

  And interlined the golden atmosphere

  Straight, still,–across the pictures on the wall

  The statuette on the console, (of young Love

  And Psyche made one marble by a kiss)

  The low couch where I leaned, the table near,

  The vase of lilies, Marian pulled last night,

  (Each green leaf and each white leaf ruled in black

  As if for writing some new text of fate)

  And the open letter, rested on my knee,–

  But there, the lines swerved, trembled, though I sate

  Untroubled . . plainly, . . reading it again

  And three times. Well, he’s married; that is clear.

  No wonder that he’s married, nor much more

  That Vincent’s therefore, ‘sorry.’ Why, of course,

  The lady nursed him when he was not well,

  Mixed drinks,–unless nepenthe was the drink,

  ‘Twas scarce worth telling. But a man in love

  Will see the whole sex in his mistress’ hood,

  The prettier for its lining of fair rose;

  Although he catches back, and says at last,

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Sorry. Lady Waldemar

  At prettiest, under the said hood, preserved

  From such a light as I could hold to her face

  To flare its ugly wrinkles out to shame,–

  Is scarce a wife for Romney, as friends judge,

  Aurora Leigh, or Vincent Carrington,–

  That’s plain. And if he’s ‘conscious of my heart’ . .

  Perhaps it’s natural, though the phrase is strong;

  (One’s apt to use strong phrases, being in love)

  And even that stuff of ‘fields of gold,’ ‘gold rings,’

  And what he ‘thought,’ poor Vincent! what he ‘thought,’

  May never mean enough to ruffle me.

  –Why, this room stifles. Better burn than choke;

  Best have air, air, although it comes with fire,

  Throw open blinds and windows to the
noon

  And take a blister on my brow instead

  Of this dead weight! best, perfectly be stunned

  By those insufferable cicale, sick

  And hoarse with rapture of the summer-heat,

  That sing like poets, till their hearts break, . . sing

  Till men say, ‘It’s too tedious.’

  Books succeed,

  And lives fail. Do I feel it so, at last?

  Kate loves a worn-out cloak for being like mine,

  While I live self-despised for being myself,

  And yearn toward some one else, who yearns away

  From what he is, in his turn. Strain a step

  For ever, yet gain no step? Are we such,

  We cannot, with our admirations even,

  Our tip-toe aspirations, touch a thing

  That’s higher than we? is all a dismal flat,

  And God alone above each,–as the sun

  O’er level lagunes, to make them shine and stink,–

  Laying stress upon us with immediate flame,

  While we respond with our miasmal fog,

  And call it mounting higher, because we grow

  More highly fatal?

  Tush, Aurora Leigh!

  You wear your sackcloth looped in Cæsar’s way.

  And brag your failings as mankind’s. Be still.

  There is what’s higher in this very world,

  Than you can live, or catch at. Stand aside,

  And look at others–instance little Kate!

  She’ll make a perfect wife for Carrington.

  She always has been looking round the earth

  For something good and green to alight upon

  And nestle into, with those soft-winged eyes

  Subsiding now beneath his manly hand

  ‘Twixt trembling lids of inexpressive joy:

  I will not scorn her, after all, too much,

  That so much she should love me. A wise man

  Can pluck a leaf, and find a lecture in’t;

  And I, too, . . God has made me,–I’ve a heart

  That’s capable of worship, love, and loss;

  We say the same of Shakspeare’s. I’ll be meek,

  And learn to reverence, even this poor myself.

  The book, too–pass it. ‘A good book,’ says he,

  ‘And you a woman,’ I had laughed at that,

  But long since. I’m a woman,–it is true;

  Alas, and woe to us, when we feel it most!

  Then, least care have we for the crowns and goals,

  And compliments on writing our good books.

  The book has some truth in it, I believe:

  And truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.

  I know we talk our Phædons to the end

  Through all the dismal faces that we make,

  O’er-wrinkled with dishonouring agony

  From any mortal drug. I have written truth,

  And I a woman; feebly, partially,

  Inaptly in presentation, Romney’ll add,

  Because a woman. For the truth itself,

  That’s neither man’s nor woman’s, but just God’s;

  None else has reason to be proud of truth:

  Himself will see it sifted, disenthralled,

  And kept upon the height and in the light,

  As far as, and no farther, than ‘tis truth;

  For,–now He has left off calling firmaments

  And strata, flowers and creatures, very good,–

  He says it still of truth, which is His own.

  Truth, so far, in my book;–the truth which draws

  Through all things upwards; that a twofold world

  Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things

  And spiritual,–who separates those two

  In art, in morals, or the social drift,

  Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,

  Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,

  Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,

  Is wrong, in short, at all points. We divide

  This apple of life, and cut it through the pips,–

  The perfect round which fitted Venus’ hand

  Has perished utterly as if we ate

  Both halves. Without the spiritual, observe,

  The natural’s impossible;–no form,

  No motion! Without sensuous, spiritual

  Is inappreciable;–no beauty or power!

  And in this twofold sphere the twofold man

  (And still the artist is intensely a man)

  Holds firmly by the natural, to reach

  The spiritual beyond it,–fixes still

  The type with mortal vision, to pierce through,

  With eyes immortal, to the antetype

  Some call the ideal,–better called the real,

  And certain to be called so presently,

  When things shall have their names. Look long enough

  On any peasant’s face here, coarse and lined.

  You’ll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay,

  As perfect-featured as he yearns at Rome

  From marble pale with beauty; then persist,

  And, if your apprehension’s competent,

  You’ll find some fairer angel at his back,

  As much exceeding him, as he the boor,

  And pushing him with empyreal disdain

  For ever out of sight. Ay, Carrington

  Is glad of such a creed! an artist must,

  Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone

  With just his hand, and finds it suddenly

  A-piece with and conterminous to his soul.

  Why else do these things move him, leaf or stone?

  The bird’s not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot;

  Nor yet the horse, before a quarry, a-graze:

  But man, the two-fold creature, apprehends

  The two-fold manner, in and outwardly,

  And nothing in the world comes single to him.

  A mere itself,–cup, column, or candlestick,

  All patterns of what shall be in the Mount;

  The whole temporal show related royally,

  And build up to eterne significance

  Through the open arms of God. ‘There’s nothing great

  Nor small,’ has said a poet of our day,

  (Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve

  And not be thrown out by the matin’s bell)

  And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing’s small!

  No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,

  But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;

  No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;

  No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:

  And,–glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,–

  In such a little tremour of the blood

  The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul

  Doth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven,

  And every common bush afire with God:

  But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

  The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,

  And daub their natural faces unaware

  More and more, from the first similitude.

  Truth so far, in my book! a truth which draws

  From all things upwards. I, Aurora, still

  Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life

  As Jove did Io: and, until that Hand

  Shall overtake me wholly, and, on my head,

  Lay down its large, unfluctuating peace,

  The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down

  It must be. Art’s the witness of what Is

  Behind this show. If this world’s show were all,

  Then imitation would be all in Art;

  There, Jove’s hand gripes us!–For we stand here, we.

  If genuine artists, witnessing for God’s

  Complete, consummate, undivided work:

  –That not a natural flower ca
n grow on earth,

  Without a flower upon the spiritual side,

  Substantial, archetypal, all a-glow

  With blossoming causes,–not so far away,

  That we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared,

  May not catch something of the bloom and breath,–

  Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed

  Still apprehended, consciously or not,

  And still transferred to picture, music, verse,

  For thrilling audient and beholding souls

  By signs and touches which are known to souls,–

  How known, they know not,–why, they cannot find,

  So straight call out on genius, say, ‘A man

  Produced this,’–when much rather they should say,

  ‘‘Tis insight, and he saw this.’

  Thus is Art

  Self-magnified in magnifying a truth

  Which, fully recognized, would change the world

  And shift its morals. If a man could feel,

  Not one day, in the artist’s ecstasy,

  But every day, feast, fast, or working-day,

  The spiritual significance burn through

  The hieroglyphic of material shows,

  Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings,

  And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree,

  And even his very body as a man,–

  Which now he counts so vile, that all the towns

  Make offal of their daughters for its use

  On summer-nights, when God is sad in heaven

  To think what goes on in his recreant world

  He made quite other; while that moon he made

  To shine there, at the first love’s covenant,

  Shines still, convictive as a marriage-ring

  Before adulterous eyes.

  How sure it is,

  That, if we say a true word, instantly

  We feel ‘tis God’s, not ours, and pass it on

  As bread at sacrament, we taste and pass

  Nor handle for a moment, as indeed

  We dared to set up any claim to such!

  And I–my poem;–let my readers talk;

  I’m closer to it–I can speak as well:

  I’ll say, with Romney, that the book is weak,

  The range uneven, the points of sight obscure,

  The music interrupted.

  Let us go.

  The end of woman (or of man, I think)

  Is not a book. Alas, the best of books

  Is but a word in Art, which soon grows cramped,

  Stiff, dubious-statured with the weight of years,

  And drops an accent or digamma down

  Some cranny of unfathomable time,

  Beyond the critic’s reaching. Art itself,

  We’ve called the higher life, still must feel the soul

  Live past it. For more’s felt than is perceived,