Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  But what then, Romney? Though we fail indeed,

  You . . I . . a score of such weak workers, . . He

  Fails never. If He cannot work by us,

  He will work over us. Does he want a man,

  Much less a woman, think you? Every time

  The star winks there, so many souls are born,

  Who shall work too. Let our own be calm:

  We should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,

  Impatient that we’re nothing.’

  ‘Could we sit

  Just so for ever, sweetest friend,’ he said,

  ‘My failure would seem better than success.

  And yet, indeed, your book has dealt with me

  More gently, cousin, than you ever will!

  The book brought down entire the bright June-day,

  And set me wandering in the garden-walks,

  And let me watch the garland in a place,

  You blushed so . . nay, forgive me; do not stir:

  I only thank the book for what it taught,

  And what, permitted. Poet, doubt yourself;

  But never doubt that you’re a poet to me

  From henceforth. Ah, you’ve written poems, sweet,

  Which moved me in secret as the sap is moved

  In still March branches, signless as a stone:

  But this last book o’ercame me like soft rain

  Which falls at midnight, when the tightened bark

  Breaks out into unhesitating buds,

  And sudden protestations of the spring.

  In all your other books I saw but you:

  A man may see the moon so, in a pond,

  And not the nearer therefore to the moon,

  Nor use the sight . . except to drown himself

  And so I forced my heart back from the sigh

  For what had I, I thought, to do with her,–

  Aurora . . Romney? But, in this last book,

  You showed me something separate from yourself,

  Beyond you; and I bore to take it in,

  And let it draw me. You have shown me truths,

  O June-day friend, that help me now at night,

  When June is over! truths not yours, indeed,

  But set within my reach by means of you:

  Presented by your voice and verse the way

  To take them clearest. Verily I was wrong;

  And verily, many thinkers of this age,

  Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,

  Are wrong in just my sense, who understood

  Our natural world too insularly, as if

  No spiritual counterpart completed it

  Consummating its meaning, rounding all

  To justice and perfection, line by line,

  Form by form, nothing single, nor alone,–

  The great below clenched by the great above;

  Shade here authenticating substance there;

  The body proving spirit, as the effect

  The cause: we, meantime, being too grossly apt

  To hold the natural, as dogs a bone,

  (Though reason and nature beat us in the face),

  So obstinately, that we’ll break our teeth

  Or ever we let go. For everywhere

  We’re too materialistic,–eating clay,

  (Like men of the west) instead of Adam’s corn

  And Noah’s wine; clay by handfuls, clay by lumps,

  Until we’re filled up to the throat with clay,

  And grow the grimy colour of the ground

  On which we are feeding. Ay, materialist

  The age’s name is. God himself, with some,

  Is apprehended as the bare result

  Of what his hand materially has made,

  Expressed in such an algebraic sign,

  Called God;–that is, to put it otherwise,

  They add up nature to a naught of God

  And cross the quotient. There are many, even,

  Whose names are written in the Christian church

  To no dishonour,–diet still on mud,

  And splash the altars with it. You might think

  The clay, Christ laid upon their eyelids when,

  Still blind, he called them to the use of sight,

  Remained there to retard its exercise

  With clogging incrustations. Close to heaven,

  They see, for mysteries, through the open doors,

  Vague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware;

  And fain would enter, when their time shall come,

  With quite a different body than St. Paul

  Has promised,–husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn,

  Or where’s the resurrection?’

  ‘Thus it is,’

  I sighed. And he resumed with mournful face.

  ‘Beginning so, and filling up with clay

  The wards of this great key, the natural world,

  And fumbling vainly therefore at the lock

  Of the spiritual,–we feel ourselves shut in

  With all the wild-beast roar of struggling life,

  The terrors and compunctions of our souls,

  As saints with lions,–we who are not saints,

  And have no heavenly lordship in our stare

  To awe them backward! Ay, we are forced so pent

  To judge the whole too partially, . . confound

  Conclusions. Is there any common phrase

  Significant, when the adverb’s heard alone,

  The verb being absent, and the pronoun out?

  But we distracted in the roar of life,

  Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch,

  And bruit against Him that his thought is void,

  His meaning hopeless;–cry, that everywhere

  The government is slipping from his hand,

  Unless some other Christ . . say Romney Leigh . .

  Come up, and toil and moil, and change the world,

  For which the First has proved inadequate,

  However we talk bigly of His work

  And piously of His person. We blaspheme

  At last, to finish that doxology,

  Despairing on the earth for which He died.’

  ‘So now,’ I asked, ‘you have more hope of men?’

  ‘I hope,’ he answered: ‘I am come to think

  That God will have his work done, as you said,

  And that we need not be disturbed too much

  For Romney Leigh or others having failed

  With this or that quack nostrum,–recipes

  For keeping summits by annulling depths,

  For learning wrestling with long lounging sleeves,

  And perfect heroism without a scratch.

  We fail,–what then? Aurora, if I smiled

  To see you, in your lovely morning-pride,

  Try on the poet’s wreath which suits the noon,–

  (Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stain

  Before they grow the ivy!) certainly

  I stood myself there worthier of contempt,

  Self-rated, in disastrous arrogance,

  As competent to sorrow for mankind

  And even their odds. A man may well despair,

  Who counts himself so needful to success.

  I failed. I throw the remedy back on God,

  And sit down here beside you, in good hope.’

  ‘And yet, take heed,’ I answered, ‘lest we lean

  Too dangerously on the other side,

  And so fail twice. Be sure, no earnest work

  Of any honest creature, howbeit weak,

  Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much,

  It is not gathered as a grain of sand

  To enlarge the sum of human action used

  For carrying out God’s end. No creature works

  So ill, observe, that therefore he’s cashiered.

  The honest earnest man must stand and work:

  The woman also; otherwise she drops

  At once below the dignity of
man,

  Accepting serfdom. Free men freely work:

  Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.’

  He cried, ‘True. After Adam, work was curse;

  The natural creature labours, sweats and frets.

  But, after Christ, work turns to privilege;

  And henceforth one with our humanity,

  The Six-day Worker, working still in us,

  Has called us freely to work on with Him

  In high companionship. So happiest!

  I count that Heaven itself is only work

  To a surer issue. Let us work, indeed,–

  But, no more, work as Adam . . nor as Leigh

  Erewhile, as if the only man on earth,

  Responsible for all the thistles blown

  And tigers couchant,–struggling in amaze

  Against disease and winter,–snarling on

  For ever, that the world’s not paradise.

  Oh cousin, let us be content, in work,

  To do the thing we can, and not presume

  To fret because it’s little. ‘Twill employ

  Seven men, they say, to make a perfect pin!

  Who makes the head, content to miss the point,–

  Who makes the point, agreed to leave the join:

  And if a man should cry, ‘I want a pin,

  ‘And I must make it straightway, head and point,’–

  His wisdom is not worth the pin he wants.

  Seven men to a pin,–and not a man too much!

  Seven generations, haply, to this world,

  To right it visibly, a finger’s breadth,

  And mend its rents a little. Oh, to storm

  And say,–’This world here is intolerable;

  ‘I will not eat this corn, nor drink this wine,

  ‘Nor love this woman, flinging her my soul

  ‘Without a bond for’t, as a lover should,

  ‘Nor use the generous leave of happiness

  ‘As not too good for using generously’–

  (Since virtue kindles at the touch of joy,

  Like a man’s cheek laid on a woman’s hand;

  And God, who knows it, looks for quick returns

  From joys)!–to stand and claim to have a life

  Beyond the bounds of the individual man,

  And raise all personal cloisters of the soul

  To build up public stores and magazines,

  As if God’s creatures otherwise were lost,

  The builder surely saved by any means!

  To think,–I have a pattern on my nail,

  And I will carve the world new after it,

  And solve so, these hard social questions,–nay,

  Impossible social questions,–since their roots

  Strike deep in Evil’s own existence here,

  Which God permits because the question’s hard

  To abolish evil nor attaint free-will.

  Ay, hard to God, but not to Romney Leigh!

  For Romney has a pattern on his nail,

  (Whatever may be lacking on the Mount)

  And not being overnice to separate

  What’s element from what’s convention, hastes

  By line on line, to draw you out a world,

  Without your help indeed, unless you take

  His yoke upon you and will learn of him,–

  So much he has to teach! so good a world!

  The same, the whole creation’s groaning for!

  No rich nor poor, no gain nor loss nor stint,

  No potage in it able to exclude

  A brother’s birthright, and no right of birth,

  The potage,–both secured to every man;

  And perfect virtue dealt out like the rest,

  Gratuitously, with the soup at six,

  To whoso does not seek it.’

  ‘Softly, sir,’

  I interrupted,–’I had a cousin once

  I held in reverence. If he strained too wide,

  It was not to take honour, but give help;

  The gesture was heroic. If his hand

  Accomplished nothing . . (well, it is not proved)

  That empty hand thrown impotently out

  Were sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven,

  Than many a hand that reaped a harvest in

  And keeps the scythe’s glow on it. Pray you, then,

  For my sake merely, use less bitterness

  In speaking of my cousin.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said,

  ‘Aurora! when the prophet beats the ass,

  The angel intercedes.’ He shook his head–

  ‘And yet to mean so well, and fail so foul,

  Expresses ne’er another beast than man;

  The antithesis is human. Harken, dear;

  There’s too much abstract willing, purposing,

  In this poor world. We talk by aggregates,

  And think by systems; and, being used to face

  Our evils in statistics, are inclined

  To cap them with unreal remedies

  Drawn out in haste on the other side the slate.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I answered, fain to throw up thought

  And make a game of’t; ‘Oh, we generalise

  Enough to please you. If we pray at all,

  We pray no longer for our daily bread,

  But next centenary’s harvests. If we give,

  Our cup of water is not tendered till

  We lay down pipes and found a Company

  With Branches. Ass or angel, ‘tis the same:

  A woman cannot do the thing she ought,

  Which means whatever perfect thing she can,

  In life, in art, in science, but she fears

  To let the perfect action take her part

  And rest there: she must prove what she can do

  Before she does it,–prate of woman’s rights,

  Of woman’s mission, woman’s function, till

  The men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,

  ‘A woman’s function plainly is . . to talk.

  Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!

  They cannot hear each other speak.’

  ‘And you,

  An artist, judge so?’

  ‘I, an artist,–yes,

  Because, precisely, I’m an artist, sir,

  And woman,–if another sate in sight,

  I’d whisper,–soft, my sister! not a word!

  By speaking we prove only we can speak:

  Which he, the man here, never doubted. What

  He doubts, is whether we can do the thing

  With decent grace, we’ve not yet done at all:

  Now, do it; bring your statue,–you have room!

  He’ll see it even by the starlight here;

  And if ‘tis e’er so little like the god

  Who looks out from the marble silently

  Along the track of his own shining dart

  Through the dusk of ages,–there’s no need to speak;

  The universe shall henceforth speak for you,

  And witness, ‘She who did this thing, was born

  To do it,–claims her license in her work.’

  –And so with more works. Whoso cures the plague,

  Though twice a woman, shall be called a leech:

  Who rights a land’s finances, is excused

  For touching coppers, though her hands be white,–

  But we, we talk!’

  ‘It is the age’s mood,’

  He said; ‘we boast, and do not. We put up

  Hostelry signs where’er we lodge a day,–

  Some red colossal cow, with mighty paps

  A Cyclops’ fingers could not strain to milk;

  Then bring out presently our saucer-full

  of curds. We want more quiet in our works,

  More knowledge of the bounds in which we work;

  More knowledge that each individual man

  Remains an Adam to the general race,

  Constrained
to see, like Adam, that he keep

  His personal state’s condition honestly,

  Or vain all thoughts of his to help the world,

  Which still must be developed from its one,

  If bettered in its many. We, indeed,

  Who think to lay it out new like a park,

  We take a work on us which is not man’s;

  For God alone sits far enough above,

  To speculate so largely. None of us

  (Not Romney Leigh) is mad enough to say,

  We’ll have a grove of oaks upon that slope

  And sink the need of acorns. Government,

  If veritable and lawful, is not given

  By imposition of the foreign hand,–

  Nor chosen from a pretty pattern-book

  Of some domestic idealogue, who sits

  And coldly chooses empire, where as well

  He might republic. Genuine government

  Is but the expression of a nation, good

  Or less good,–even as all society,

  Howe’er unequal, monstrous, crazed and cursed,

  Is but the expression of men’s single lives,

  The loud sum of the silent units. What,

  We’d change the aggregate and yet retain

  Each separate figure? Whom do we cheat by that?

  Now, not even Romney.’

  ‘Cousin, you are sad.

  Did all your social labour at Leigh Hall

  And elsewhere, come to nought then?’

  ‘It was nought,’

  He answered mildly. ‘There is room indeed,

  For statues still, in this large world of God’s,

  But not for vacuums,–so I am not sad:

  Not sadder than is good for what I am.

  My vain phalanstery dissolved itself;

  My men and women of disordered lives,

  I brought in orderly to dine and sleep,

  Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,

  With fierce contortions of the natural face;

  And cursed me for my tyrannous constraint

  In forcing crooked creatures to live straight;

  And set the country hounds upon my back

  To bite and tear me for my wicked deed

  Of trying to do good without the church

  Or even the squires, Aurora. Do you mind

  Your ancient neighbours? The great book-club teems

  With ‘sketches,’ ‘summaries,’ and ‘last tracts’ but twelve,

  On socialistic troublers of close bonds

  Betwixt the generous rich and grateful poor.

  The vicar preached from ‘Revelations,’ (till

  The doctor woke) and found me with ‘the frogs’

  On three successive Sundays; ay, and stopped

  To weep a little (for he’s getting old)

  That such perdition should o’ertake a man

  Of such fair acres,–in the parish, too!