‘She’s well,’ I answered.
She was there in sight
An hour back, but the night had drawn her home;
Where still I heard her in an upper room,
Her low voice singing to the child in bed,
Who restless with the summer-heat and play
And slumber snatched at noon, was long sometimes
At falling off, and took a score of songs
And mother-hushes, ere she saw him sound.
‘She’s well,’ I answered.
‘Here?’ he asked.
‘Yes, here.’
He stopped and sighed. ‘That shall be presently,
But now this must be. I have words to say,
And would be alone to say them, I with you,
And no third troubling.’
‘Speak then,’ I returned,
‘She will not vex you.’
At which, suddenly
He turned his face upon me with its smile,
As if to crush me. ‘I have read your book,
Aurora.’
‘You have read it,’ I replied,
‘And I have writ it,–we have done with it.
And now the rest?’
‘The rest is like the first,’
He answered,–’for the book is in my heart,
Lives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me:
My daily bread tastes of it,–and my wine
Which has no smack of it, I pour it out;
It seems unnatural drinking.’
Bitterly
I took the word up; ‘Never waste your wine.
The book lived in me ere it lived in you;
I know it closer than another does,
And that it’s foolish, feeble, and afraid,
And all unworthy so much compliment.
Beseech you, keep your wine,–and, when you drink,
Still wish some happier fortune to your friend,
Than even to have written a far better book.’
He answered gently, ‘That is consequent:
The poet looks beyond the book he has made,
Or else he had not made it. If a man
Could make a man, he’d henceforth be a god
In feeling what a little thing is man:
It is not my case. And this special book,
I did not make it, to make light of it:
It stands above my knowledge, draws me up;
‘Tis high to me. It may be that the book
Is not so high, but I so low, instead;
Still high to me. I mean no compliment:
I will not say there are not, young or old,
Male writers, ay, or female,–let it pass,
Who’ll write us richer and completer books.
A man may love a woman perfectly,
And yet by no means ignorantly maintain
A thousand women have not larger eyes:
Enough that she alone has looked at him
With eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.
And so, this book, Aurora,–so, your book.’
‘Alas,’ I answered, ‘is it so, indeed?’
And then was silent.
‘Is it so, indeed,’
He echoed, ‘that alas is all your word?’
I said,–’I’m thinking of a far-off June,
When you and I, upon my birthday once,
Discoursed of life and art, with both untried.
I’m thinking, Romney, how ‘twas morning then,
And now ‘tis night.’
‘And now,’ he said, ‘‘tis night.’
‘I’m thinking,’ I resumed, ‘‘tis somewhat sad
That if I had known, that morning in the dew,
My cousin Romney would have said such words
On such a night, at close of many years,
In speaking of a future book of mine,
It would have pleased me better as a hope,
Than as an actual grace it can at all.
That’s sad, I’m thinking.’
‘Ay,’ he said, ‘‘tis night.’
‘And there,’ I added lightly, ‘are the stars!
And here, we’ll talk of stars, and not of books.’
‘You have the stars,’ he murmured,–’it is well.
Be like them! shine, Aurora, on my dark,
Though high and cold and only like star,
And for this short night only,–you, who keep
The same Aurora of the bright June-day
That withered up the flowers before my face,
And turned my from the garden evermore
Because I was not worthy. Oh, deserved,
Deserved! That I, who verily had not learnt
God’s lesson half, attaining as a dunce
To obliterate good words with fractious thumbs
And cheat myself of the context,–I should push
Aside, with male ferocious impudence,
The world’s Aurora who had conned her part
On the other side the leaf! ignore her so,
Because she was a woman and a queen,
And had no beard to bristle through her song,–
My teacher, who has taught me with a book,
My Miriam, whose sweet mouth, when nearly drowned
I still heard singing on the shore! Deserved,
That here I should look up unto the stars
And miss the glory’ . .
‘Can I understand?’
I broke in. ‘You speak wildly, Romney Leigh,
Or I hear wildly. In that morning-time
We recollect, the roses were too red,
The trees too green, reproach too natural
If one should see not what the other saw:
And now, it’s night, remember; we have shades
In place of colours; we are now grown cold,
And old, my cousin Romney. Pardon me,–
I’m very happy that you like my book,
And very sorry that I quoted back
A ten years’ birthday; ‘twas so mad a thing
In any woman, I scarce marvel much
You took it for a venturous piece of spite,
Provoking such excuses, as indeed
I cannot call you slack in.’
‘Understand,’
He answered sadly, ‘something, if but so.
This night is softer than an English day,
And men may well come hither when they’re sick,
To draw in easier breath from larger air.
‘Tis thus with me; I’ve come to you,–to you,
My Italy of women, just to breathe
My soul out once before you, ere I go,
As humble as God makes me at the last,
(I thank Him) quite out of the way of men,
And yours, Aurora,–like a punished child,
His cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness,
To silence in a corner. I am come
To speak, beloved’ . .
‘Wisely, cousin Leigh,
And worthily of us both!’
‘Yes, worthily;
For this time I must speak out and confess
That I, so truculent in assumption once,
So absolute in dogma, proud in aim,
And fierce in expectation,–I, who felt
The whole world tugging at my skirts for help,
As if no other man than I, could pull,
Nor woman, but I led her by the hand,
Nor cloth hold, but I had it in my coat,–
Do know myself to-night for what I was
On that June-day, Aurora. Poor bright day,
Which meant the best . . a woman and a rose, . .
And which I smote upon the cheek with words,
Until it turned and rent me! Young you were,
That birthday, poet, but you talked the right:
While I, . . I built up follies like a wall
To intercept the sunshine and your face.
Your
face! that’s worse.’
‘Speak wisely, cousin Leigh.’
‘Yes, wisely, dear Aurora, though too late:
But then, not wisely. I was heavy then,
And stupid, and distracted with the cries
Of tortured prisoners in the polished brass
Of that Phalarian bull, society,–
Which seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,
But, if you listen, moans and cries instead
Despairingly, like victims tossed and gored
And trampled by their hoofs. I heard the cries
Too close: I could not hear the angels lift
A fold of rustling air, nor what they said
To help my pity. I beheld the world
As one great famishing carnivorous mouth,–
A huge, deserted, callow, black, bird Thing,
With piteous open beak that hurt my heart,
Till down upon the filthy ground I dropped,
And tore the violets up to get the worms.
Worms, worms, was all my cry: an open mouth,
A gross want, bread to fill it to the lips,
No more! That poor men narrowed their demands
To such an end, was virtue, I supposed,
Adjudicating that to see it so
Was reason. Oh, I did not push the case
Up higher, and ponder how it answers, when
The rich take up the same cry for themselves,
Professing equally,–’an open mouth
A gross want, food to fill us, and no more!’
Why that’s so far from virtue, only vice
Finds reason for it! That makes libertines:
That slurs our cruel streets from end to end
With eighty thousand women in one smile,
Who only smile at night beneath the gas:
The body’s satisfaction and no more,
Being used for argument against the soul’s,
Her too! the want, here too, implying the right.
–How dark I stood that morning in the sun,
My best Aurora, though I saw your eyes,–
When first you told me . . oh, I recollect
The words . . and how you lifted your white hand,
And how your white dress and your burnished curls
Went greatening round you in the still blue air,
As if an inspiration from within
Had blown them all out when you spoke the same,
Even these,–’You will not compass your poor ends
‘Of barley-feeding and material ease,
‘Without the poet’s individualism
‘To work your universal. It takes a soul,
‘To move a body,–it takes a high-souled man,
‘To move the masses . . even to a cleaner stye:
‘It takes the ideal, to blow an inch inside
‘The dust of the actual: and your Fouriers failed
‘Because not poets enough to understand
‘That life develops from within.’ I say
Your words,–I could say other words of yours
For none of all your words has been more lost
Than sweet verbena, which, being brushed against,
Will hold you three hours after by the smell,
In spite of long walks on the windy hills.
But these words dealt in sharper perfume,–these
Were ever on me, stinging through my dreams,
And saying themselves for ever o’er my acts
Like some unhappy verdict. That I failed,
Is certain. Stye or no stye, to contrive
The swine’s propulsion toward the precipice,
Proved easy and plain. I subtly organised
And ordered, built the cards up higher and higher,
Till, some one breathing, all fell flat again!
In setting right society’s wide wrong,
Mere life’s so fatal! So I failed indeed
Once, twice, and oftener,–hearing through the rents
Of obstinate purpose, still those words of yours,
‘You will not compass your poor ends, not you! ‘
But harder than you said them; every time
Still farther from your voice, until they came
To overcrow me with triumphant scorn
Which vexed me to resistance. Set down this
For condemnation,–I was guilty here:
I stood upon my deed and fought my doubt,
As men will,–for I doubted,–till at last
My deed gave way beneath me suddenly,
And left me what I am. The curtain dropped,
My part quite ended, all the footlights quenched.
My own soul hissing at me through the dark,
I, ready for confession,–I was wrong,
I’ve sorely failed; I’ve slipped the ends of life,
I yield; you have conquered.’
‘Stay,’ I answered him;
‘I’ve something for your hearing, also. I
Have failed too.’
‘You!’ he said, ‘you’re very great:
The sadness of your greatness fits you well:
As if the plume upon a hero’s casque
Should nod a shadow upon his victor face.’
I took him up austerely,–’You have read
My book but not my heart; for recollect,
‘Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at.
I’ve surely failed, I know; if failure means
To look back sadly on work gladly done,–
To wander on my mountains of Delight,
So called, (I can remember a friend’s words
As well as you, sir,) weary and in want
Of even a sheep-path, thinking bitterly . .
Well, well! no matter. I but say so much,
To keep you, Romney Leigh, from saying more,
And let you feel I am not so high indeed,
That I can bear to have you at my foot,–
Or safe, that I can help you. That June-day,
Too deeply sunk in craterous sunsets now
For you or me to dig it up alive;
To pluck it out all bleeding with spent flame
At the roots, before those moralising stars
We have got instead,–that poor lost day, you said
Some words as truthful as the thing of mine
You care to keep in memory: and I hold
If I, that day, and, being the girl I was,
Had shown a gentler spirit, less arrogance,
It had not hurt me. Ah, you’ll not mistake
The point here. I but only think, you see,
More justly, that’s more humbly, of myself,
Than when I tried a crown on and supposed . . .
Nay, laugh, sir,–I’ll laugh with you!–pray you, laugh.
I’ve had so many birthdays since that day,
I’ve learnt to prize mirth’s opportunities,
Which come too seldom. Was it you who said
I was not changed? the same Aurora? Ah,
We could laugh there, too! Why, Ulysses’ dog
Knew him, and wagged his tail and died: but if
I had owned a dog, I too, before my Troy,
And if you brought him here, . . I warrant you
He’d look into my face, bark lustily,
And live on stoutly, as the creatures will
Whose spirits are not troubled by long loves.
A dog would never know me, I’m so changed;
Much less a friend . . except that you’re misled
By the colour of the hair, the trick of the voice,
Like that of Aurora Leigh’s.’
‘Sweet trick of voice
I would be a dog for this, to know it at last,
And die upon the falls of it. O love,
O best Aurora! are you then so sad,
You scarcely had been sadder as my wife?’
‘Your wife, sir! I must certainly be changed,
If I, Aurora, can have said a thing
So light, it catches at the knightly spurs
Of a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh,
And trips him from his honourable sense
Of what befits’ . .
‘You wholly misconceive,’
He answered.
I returned,–’I’m glad of it:
But keep from misconception, too, yourself:
I am not humbled to so low a point,
Nor so far saddened. If I am sad at all,
Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head,
Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth,
Though ne’er so merry: I’m perforce more wise,
And that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest,
Look here, sir: I was right upon the whole,
That birthday morning. ‘Tis impossible
To get at men excepting through their souls,
However open their carnivorous jaws;
And poets get directlier at the soul,
Than any of you oeconomists:–for which,
You must not overlook the poet’s work
When scheming for the world’s necessities.
The soul’s the way. Not even Christ himself
Can save man else than as He hold man’s soul;
And therefore did He come into our flesh,
As some wise hunter creeping on his knees
With a torch, into the blackness of some cave,
To face and quell the beast there,–take the soul,
And so possess the whole man, body and soul.
I said, so far, right, yes; not farther, though:
We both were wrong that June-day,–both as wrong
As an east wind had been. I who talked of art,
And you who grieved for all men’s griefs . . . what then?
We surely made too small a part for God
In these things. What we are, imports us more
Than what we eat; and life you’ve granted me,
Develops from within. But innermost
Of the inmost, most interior of the interne,
God claims his own, Divine humanity
Renewing nature,–or the piercingest verse,
Prest in by subtlest poet, still must keep
As much upon the outside of a man,
As the very bowl, in which he dips his beard.
–And then, . . the rest. I cannot surely speak.
Perhaps I doubt more than you doubted then,
If I, the poet’s veritable charge,
Have borne upon my forehead. If I have,
It might feel somewhat liker to a crown,
The foolish green one even.–Ah, I think,
And chiefly when the sun shines, that I’ve failed.
Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 107