Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  And more’s perceived than can be interpreted,

  And Love strikes higher with his lambent flame

  Than Art can pile the faggots.

  Is it so?

  When Jove’s hand meets us with composing touch,

  And when, at last, we are hushed and satisfied,–

  Then, Io does not call it truth, but love?

  Well, well! my father was an Englishman:

  My mother’s blood in me is not so strong

  That I should bear this stress of Tuscan noon

  And keep my wits. The town, there, seems to seethe

  In this Medæan boil-pot of the sun,

  And all the patient hills are bubbling round

  As if a prick would leave them flat. Does heaven

  Keep far off, not to set us in a blaze?

  Not so,–let drag your fiery fringes, heaven,

  And burn us up to quiet! Ah, we know

  Too much here, not to know what’s best for peace;

  We have too much light here, not to want more fire

  To purify and end us. We talk, talk,

  Conclude upon divine philosophies,

  And get the thanks of men for hopeful books;

  Whereat we take our own life up, and . . pshaw!

  Unless we piece it with another’s life,

  (A yard of silk to carry out our lawn)

  As well suppose my little handkerchief

  Would cover Samminiato, church and all,

  If out I threw it past the cypresses,

  As, in this ragged, narrow life of mine,

  Contain my own conclusions.

  But at least

  We’ll shut up the persiani, and sit down,

  And when my head’s done aching, in the cool,

  Write just a word to Kate and Carrington.

  May joy be with them! she has chosen well,

  And he not ill.

  I should be glad, I think,

  Except for Romney. Had he married Kate,

  I surely, surely, should be very glad.

  This Florence sits upon me easily,

  With native air and tongue. My graves are calm,

  And do not too much hurt me. Marian’s good,

  Gentle and loving,–lets me hold the child,

  Or drags him up the hills to find me flowers

  And fill those vases, ere I’m quite awake,–

  The grandiose red tulips, which grow wild,

  Or else my purple lilies, Dante blew

  To a larger bubble with his prophet-breath;

  Or one of those tall flowering reeds which stand

  In Arno like a sheaf of sceptres, left

  By some remote dynasty of dead gods,

  To suck the stream for ages and get green,

  And blossom wheresoe’er a hand divine

  Had warmed the place with ichor. Such I’ve found

  At early morning, laid across my bed,

  And woke up pelted with a childish laugh

  Which even Marian’s low precipitous ‘hush’

  Had vainly interposed to put away,–

  While I, with shut eyes, smile and motion for

  The dewy kiss that’s very sure to come

  From mouth and cheeks, the whole child’s face at once

  Dissolved on mine,–as if a nosegay burst

  Its string with the weight of roses overblown,

  And dropt upon me. Surely I should be glad.

  The little creature almost loves me now,

  And calls my name . . ‘Alola,’ stripping off

  The r s like thorns, to make it smooth enough

  To take between his dainty, milk-fed lips,

  God love him! I should certainly be glad,

  Except, God help me, that I’m sorrowful,

  Because of Romney.

  Romney, Romney! Well,

  This grows absurd!–too like a tune that runs

  I’ the head, and forces all things in the world,

  Wind, rain, the creaking gnat or stuttering fly,

  To sing itself and vex you;–yet perhaps

  A paltry tune you never fairly liked,

  Some ‘I’d be a butterfly,’ or ‘C’est l’amour:’

  We’re made so,–not such tyrants to ourselves,

  We are not slaves to nature. Some of us

  Are turned, too, overmuch like some poor verse

  With a trick of ritournelle: the same thing goes

  And comes back ever.

  Vincent Carrington

  Is ‘sorry,’ and I’m sorry; but he’s strong

  To mount from sorrow to his heaven of love,

  And when he says at moments, ‘Poor, poor Leigh,

  Who’ll never call his own, so true a heart,

  So fair a face even,’–he must quickly lose

  The pain of pity in the blush he has made

  By his very pitying eyes. The snow, for him,

  Has fallen in May, and finds the whole earth warm,

  And melts at the first touch of the green grass.

  But Romney,–he has chosen, after all.

  I think he had as excellent a sun

  To see by, as most others, and perhaps

  Has scarce seen really worse than some of us,

  When all’s said. Let him pass. I’m not too much

  A woman, not to be a man for once,

  And bury all my Dead like Alaric,

  Depositing the treasures of my soul

  In this drained water-course, and, letting flow

  The river of life again, with commerce-ships

  And pleasure-barges, full of silks and songs.

  Blow winds, and help us.

  Ah, we mock ourselves

  With talking of the winds! perhaps as much

  With other resolutions. How it weighs,

  This hot, sick air! and how I covet here

  The Dead’s provision on the river’s couch,

  With silver curtains drawn on tinkling rings!

  Or else their rest in quiet crypts,–laid by

  From heat and noise!–from those cicale, say,

  And this more vexing heart-beat.

  So it is:

  We covet for the soul, the body’s part,

  To die and rot. Even so, Aurora, ends

  Our aspiration, who bespoke our place

  So far in the east. The occidental flats

  Had fed us fatter, therefore? we have climbed

  Where herbage ends? we want the beast’s part now

  And tire of the angel’s?–Men define a man,

  The creature who stands front-ward to the stars,

  The creature who looks inward to himself,

  The tool-wright, laughing creature. ‘Tis enough:

  We’ll say instead, the inconsequent creature, man,–

  For that’s his specialty. What creature else

  Conceives the circle, and then walks the square?

  Loves things proved bad, and leaves a thing proved good?

  You think the bee makes honey half a year,

  To loathe the comb in winter, and desire

  The little ant’s food rather? But a man–

  Note men!–they are but women after all,

  As women are but Auroras!–there are men

  Born tender, apt to pale at a trodden worm,

  Who paint for pastime, in their favourite dream,

  Spruce auto-vestments flowered with crocus-flames:

  There are, too, who believe in hell, and lie:

  There are, who waste their souls in working out

  Life’s problem on these sands betwixt two tides,

  And end,– ‘Now give us the beast’s part, in death.’

  Alas, long-suffering and most patient God,

  Thou need’st be surelier God to bear with us

  Than even to have made us! thou, aspire, aspire

  From henceforth for me! thou who hast, thyself,

  Endured this fleshhood, knowing how, as a soaked

  An
d sucking vesture, it would drag us down

  And choke us in the melancholy Deep,

  Sustain me, that, with thee, I walk these waves,

  Resisting!–breathe me upward, thou for me

  Aspiring, who art the way, the truth, the life,–

  That no truth henceforth seem indifferent,

  No way to truth laborious, and no life,

  Not even this life I live, intolerable!

  The days went by. I took up the old days

  With all their Tuscan pleasures, worn and spoiled,–

  Like some lost book we dropt in the long grass

  On such a happy summer-afternoon

  When last we read it with a loving friend,

  And find in autumn, when the friend is gone,

  The grass cut short, the weather changed, too late,

  And stare at, as at something wonderful

  For sorrow,–thinking how two hands, before,

  Had held up what is left to only one,

  And how we smiled when such a vehement nail

  Impressed the tiny dint here, which presents

  This verse in fire for ever! Tenderly

  And mournfully I lived. I knew the birds

  And insects,–which look fathered by the flowers

  And emulous of their hues: I recognised

  The moths, with that great overpoise of wings

  Which makes a mystery of them how at all

  They can stop flying: butterflies, that bear

  Upon their blue wings such red embers round,

  They seem to scorch the blue air into holes

  Each flight they take: and fire-flies, that suspire

  In short soft lapses of transported flame

  Across the tingling Dark, while overhead

  The constant and inviolable stars

  Outburn those lights-of-love: melodious owls,

  (If music had but one note and was sad,

  ‘Twould sound just so) and all the silent swirl

  Of bats, that seem to follow in the air

  Some grand circumference of a shadowy dome

  To which we are blind: and then, the nightingale

  Which pluck our heart across a garden-wall,

  (When walking in the town) and carry it

  So high into the bowery almond-trees,

  We tremble and are afraid, and feel as if

  The golden flood of moonlight unaware

  Dissolved the pillars of the steady earth

  And made it less substantial. An I knew

  The harmless opal snakes, and large-mouthed frogs,

  (Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams)

  And lizards, the green lightnings of the wall,

  Which, if you sit down still, nor sigh too loud,

  Will flatter you and take you for a stone,

  And flash familiarly about your feet

  With such prodigious eyes in such small heads!–

  I knew them though they had somewhat dwindled from

  My childish imagery,–and kept in mind

  How last I sat among them equally,

  In fellowship and mateship, as a child

  Will bear him still toward insect, beast, and bird,

  Before the Adam in him has foregone

  All privilege of Eden,–making friends

  And talk, with such a bird or such a goat,

  And buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cage

  To let out the caged cricket on a tree,

  Saying, ‘Oh, my dear grillino, were you cramped

  And are you happy with the ilex-leaves?

  And do you love me who have let you go?

  Say yes in singing, and I’ll understand.’

  But now the creatures all seemed farther off,

  No longer mine, nor like me; only there,

  A gulph between us. I could yearn indeed,

  Like other rich men, for a drop of dew

  To cool this heat,–a drop of the early dew,

  The irrecoverable child-innocence

  (Before the heart took fire and withered life)

  When childhood might pair equally with birds;

  But now . . the birds were grown too proud for us!

  Alas, the very sun forbids the dew.

  And I, I had come back to an empty nest,

  Which every bird’s too wise for. How I heard

  My father’s step on that deserted ground,

  His voice along that silence, as he told

  The names of bird and insect, tree and flower,

  And all the presentations of the stars

  Across Valdarno, interposing still

  ‘My child,’ ‘my child.’ When fathers say ‘my child,’

  ‘Tis easier to conceive the universe,

  And life’s transitions down the steps of law.

  I rode once to the little mountain-house

  As fast as if to find my father there,

  But, when in sight of’t, within fifty yards,

  I dropped my horse’s bridle on his neck

  And paused upon his flank. The house’s front

  Was cased with lingots of ripe Indian corn

  In tesselated order, and device

  Of golden patterns: not a stone of wall

  Uncovered,–not an inch of room to grow

  A vine-leaf. The old porch had disappeared;

  And, in the open doorway, sate a girl

  At plaiting straws,-her black hair strained away

  To a scarlet kerchief caught beneath her chin

  In Tuscan fashion,–her full ebon eyes,

  Which looked too heavy to be lifted so,

  Still dropt and lifted toward the mulberry-tree

  On which the lads were busy with their staves

  In shout and laughter, stripping all the boughs

  As bare as winter, of those summer leaves

  My father had not changed for all the silk

  In which the ugly silkworms hide themselves.

  Enough. My horse recoiled before my heart–

  I turned the rein abruptly. Back we went

  As fast, to Florence.

  That was trial enough

  Of graves. I would not visit, if I could,

  My father’s or my mother’s any more,

  To see if stone-cutter or lichen beat

  So early in the race, or throw my flowers,

  Which could not out-smell heaven or sweeten earth.

  They live too far above, that I should look

  So far below to find them: let me think

  That rather they are visiting my grave,

  This life here, (undeveloped yet to life)

  And that they drop upon me, now and then,

  For token or for solace, some small weed

  Least odorous of the growths of paradise,

  To spare such pungent scents as kill with joy.

  My old Assunta, too was dead, was dead–

  O land of all men’s past! for me alone,

  It would not mix its tenses. I was past,

  It seemed, like others,–only not in heaven.

  And, many a Tuscan eve, I wandered down

  The cypress alley, like a restless ghost

  That tries its feeble ineffectual breath

  Upon its own charred funeral-brands put out

  Too soon,–where, black and stiff, stood up the trees

  Against the broad vermilion of the skies.

  Such skies!–all clouds abolished in a sweep

  Of God’s skirt, with a dazzle to ghosts and men,

  As down I went, saluting on the bridge

  The hem of such, before ‘twas caught away

  Beyond the peaks of Lucca. Underneath,

  The river, just escaping from the weight

  Of that intolerable glory, ran

  In acquiescent shadow murmurously:

  And up, beside it, streamed the festa-folk

  With fellow-murmurs from their feet and fans,

  (With issimo and ino and sweet po
ise

  Of vowels in their pleasant scandalous talk)

  Returning from the grand-duke’s dairy-farm

  Before the trees grew dangerous at eight,

  (For, ‘trust no tree by moonlight,’ Tuscans say)

  To eat their ice at Doni’s tenderly,–

  Each lovely lady close to a cavalier

  Who holds her dear fan while she feeds her smile

  On meditative spoonfuls of vanille,

  He breathing hot protesting vows of love,

  Enough to thaw her cream, and scorch his beard.

  ‘Twas little matter. I could pass them by

  Indifferently, not fearing to be known.

  No danger of being wrecked upon a friend,

  And forced to take an iceberg for an isle!

  The very English, here, must wait to learn

  To hang the cobweb of their gossip out

  And catch a fly. I’m happy. It’s sublime,

  This perfect solitude of foreign lands!

  To be, as if you had not been till then,

  And were then, simply that you chose to be:

  To spring up, not be brought forth from the ground,

  Like grasshoppers at Athens, and skip thrice

  Before a woman makes a pounce on you

  And plants you in her hair!–possess yourself,

  A new world all alive with creatures new,

  New sun, new moon, new flowers, new people–ah,

  And be possessed by none of them! No right

  In one, to call your name, enquire your where,

  Or what you think of Mister Some-one’s book,

  Or Mister Other’s marriage, or decease,

  Or how’s the headache which you had last week,

  Or why you look so pale still, since it’s gone?

  –Such most surprising riddance of one’s life

  Comes next one’s death; it’s disembodiment

  Without the pang. I marvel, people choose

  To stand stock-still like fakirs, till the moss

  Grows on them, and they cry out, self-admired,

  ‘How verdant and how virtuous!’ Well, I’m glad;

  Or should be, if grown foreign to myself

  As surely as to others.

  Musing so,

  I walked the narrow unrecognising streets,

  Where many a palace-front peers gloomily

  Through stony vizors iron-barred, (prepared

  Alike, should foe or lover pass that way,

  For guest or victim) and came wandering out

  Upon the churches with mild open doors

  And plaintive wail of vespers, where a few,

  Those chiefly women, sprinkled round in blots

  Upon the dusk pavement, knelt and prayed

  Toward the altar’s silver glory. Oft a ray

  (I liked to sit and watch) would tremble out,

  Just touch some face more lifted, more in need,