Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

While thinking nothing of your personal gain.

  But I who saw the human nature broad,

  At both sides, comprehending, too, the soul’s,

  And all the high necessities of Art,

  Betrayed the thing I saw, and wronged my own life

  For which I pleaded. Passioned to exalt

  The artist’s instinct in me at the cost

  Of putting down the woman’s–I forgot

  No perfect artist is developed here

  From any imperfect woman. Flower from root,

  And spiritual from natural, grade by grade

  In all our life. A handful of the earth

  To make God’s image! the despised poor earth,

  The healthy odorous earth,–I missed, with it,

  The divine Breath that blows the nostrils out

  To ineffable inflatus: ay, the breath

  Which love is. Art is much, but love is more.

  O Art, my Art, thou’rt much, but Love is more!

  Art symbolises heaven, but Love is God

  And makes heaven. I, Aurora, fell from mine:

  I would not be a woman like the rest,

  A simple woman who believes in love,

  And owns the right of love because she loves,

  And, hearing she’s beloved, is satisfied

  With what contents God: I must analyse,

  Confront, and question; just as if a fly

  Refused to warm itself in any sun

  Till such was in leone: I must fret

  Forsooth, because the month was only May;

  Be faithless of the kind of proffered love,

  And captious, lest it miss my dignity,

  And scornful, that my lover sought a wife

  To use . . to use! O Romney, O my love,

  I am changed since then, changed wholly,–for indeed,

  If now you’d stoop so low to take my love,

  And use it roughly, without stint or spare,

  As men use common things with more behind,

  (And, in this, ever would be more behind)

  To any mean and ordinary end,–

  The joy would set me like a star, in heaven,

  So high up, I should shine because of height

  And not of virtue. Yet in one respect,

  Just one, beloved, I am in no wise changed:

  I love you, loved you . . loved you first and last,

  And love you on for ever. Now I know

  I loved you always, Romney. She who died

  Knew that, and said so; Lady Waldemar

  Knows that; . . and Marian: I had known the same

  Except that I was prouder than I knew,

  And not so honest. Ay, and as I live,

  I should have died so, crushing in my hand

  This rose of love, the wasp inside and all,–

  Ignoring ever to my soul and you

  Both rose and pain,–except for this great loss,

  This great despair,–to stand before your face

  And know I cannot win a look of yours.

  You think, perhaps, I am not changed from pride,

  And that I chiefly bear to say such words

  Because you cannot shame me with your eyes?

  O calm, grand eyes, extinguished in a storm,

  Blown out like lights o’er melancholy seas,

  Though shrieked for by the shipwrecked,–O my Dark,

  My Cloud,–to go before me every day

  While I go ever toward the wilderness,–

  I would that you could see me bare to the soul!–

  If this be pity, ‘tis so for myself,

  And not for Romney; he can stand alone;

  A man like him is never overcome:

  No woman like me, counts him pitiable

  While saints applaud him. He mistook the world:

  But I mistook my own heart,–and that slip

  Was fatal. Romney,–will you leave me here?

  So wrong, so proud, so weak, so unconsoled,

  So mere a woman!–and I love you so,–

  I love you, Romney.’

  Could I see his face,

  I wept so? Did I drop against his breast,

  Or did his arms constrain me ? Were my cheeks

  Hot, overflooded, with my tears, or his?

  And which of our two large explosive hearts

  So shook me? That, I know not. There were words

  That broke in utterance . . melted, in the fire;

  Embrace, that was convulsion, . . then a kiss . .

  As long and silent as the ecstatic night,–

  And deep, deep, shuddering breaths, which meant beyond

  Whatever could be told by word or kiss.

  But what he said . . I have written day by day,

  With somewhat even writing. Did I think

  That such a passionate rain would intercept

  And dash this last page ? What he said, indeed,

  I fain would write it down here like the rest

  To keep it in my eyes, as in my ears,

  The heart’s sweet scripture, to be read at night

  When weary, or at morning when afraid,

  And lean my heaviest oath on when I swear

  That when all’s done, all tried, all counted here,

  All great arts, and all good philosophies,–

  This love just puts its hand out in a dream

  And straight outreaches all things.

  What he said,

  I fain would write. But if an angel spoke

  In thunder, should we, haply, know much more

  Than that it thundered? If a cloud came down

  And wrapt us wholly, could we draw its shape,

  As if on the outside, and not overcome?

  And so he spake. His breath against my face

  Confused his words, yet made them more intense,–

  As when the sudden finger of the wind

  Will wipe a row of single city-lamps

  To a pure white line of flame, more luminous

  Because of obliteration; more intense

  The intimate presence carrying in itself

  Complete communication, as with souls

  Who, having put the body off, perceive

  Through simply being. Thus, ‘twas granted me

  To know he loved me to the depth and height

  Of such large natures, ever competent

  With grand horizons by the land or sea,

  To love’s grand sunrise. Small spheres hold small fires:

  But he loved largely, as a man can love

  Who, baffled in his love, dares live his life,

  Accept the ends which God loves, for his own,

  And life a constant aspect.

  From the day

  I had brought to England my poor searching face,

  (An orphan even of my father’s grave)

  He had loved me, watched me, watched his soul in mine,

  Which in me grew and heightened into love.

  For he, a boy still, had been told the tale

  Of how a fairy bride from Italy,

  With smells of oleanders in her hair,

  Was coming through the vines to touch his hand;

  Whereat the blood of boyhood on the palm

  Made sudden heats. And when at last I came,

  And lived before him, lived, and rarely smiled,

  He smiled and loved me for the thing I was,

  As every child will love the year’s first flower,

  (Not certainly the fairest of the year,

  But, in which, the complete year seems to blow)

  The poor sad snowdrop,–growing between drifts,

  Mysterious medium ‘twixt the plant and frost,

  So faint with winter while so quick with spring,

  So doubtful if to thaw itself away

  With that snow near it. Not that Romney Leigh

  Had loved me coldly. If I thought so once,

  It was as if I had held my hand in fire

  And s
hook for cold. But now I understood

  For ever, that the very fire and heat

  Of troubling passion in him, burned him clear,

  And shaped to dubious order, word and act.

  That, just because he loved me over all,

  All wealth, all lands, all social privilege,

  To which chance made him unexpected heir,–

  And, just because on all these lesser gifts,

  Constrained by conscience and the sense of wrong

  He had stamped with steady hand God’s arrow-mark

  Of dedication to the human need,

  He thought it should be so too, with his love;

  He, passionately loving, would bring down

  His love, his life, his best, (because the best,)

  His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high

  Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass

  The dust of golden lilies on her feet,

  That she should walk beside him on the rooks

  In all that clang and hewing out of men,

  And help the work of help which was his life,

  And prove he kept back nothing,–not his soul.

  And when I failed him,–for I failed him, I–

  And when it seemed he had missed my love,–he thought,

  ‘Aurora makes room for a working-noon;’

  And so, self-girded with torn strips of hope,

  Took up his life, as if it were for death,

  (Just capable of one heroic aim,)

  And threw it in the thickest of the world,–

  At which men laughed as if he had drowned a dog:

  Nor wonder,–since Aurora failed him first!

  The morning and the evening made his day.

  But oh, the night! oh, bitter-sweet! oh, sweet!

  O dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy

  Of darkness! O great mystery of love,–

  In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason’s self

  Enlarges rapture,–as a pebble dropt

  In some full wine-cup, over-brims the wine!

  While we two sate together, leaned that night

  So close, my very garments crept and thrilled

  With strange electric life; and both my cheeks

  Grew red, then pale, with touches from my hair

  In which his breath was; while the golden moon

  Was hung before our faces as the badge

  Of some sublime inherited despair,

  Since ever to be seen by only one,–

  A voice said, low and rapid as a sigh,

  Yet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,–

  ‘Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see!

  Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls,

  Which rul’st for evermore both day and night!

  I am happy.’

  I clung closer to his breast,

  As sword that, after battle, flings to sheathe;

  And, in that hurtle of united souls,

  The mystic motions which in common moods

  Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us,

  And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,

  And all the starry turbulence of worlds

  Swing round us in their audient circles, till

  If that same golden moon were overhead

  Or if beneath our feet, we did not know.

  And then calm, equal, smooth with weights of joy,

  His voice rose, as some chief musician’s song

  Amid the old Jewish temple’s Selah-pause,

  And bade me mark how we two met at last

  Upon this moon-bathed promontory of earth,

  To give up much on each side, then, take all.

  ‘Beloved,’ it sang, ‘ we must be here to work;

  And men who work, can only work for men,

  And, not to work in vain, must comprehend

  Humanity, and, so work humanly,

  And raise men’s bodies still by raising souls,

  As God did, first.’

  ‘But stand upon the earth,’

  I said, ‘to raise them,–(this is human too;

  There’s nothing high which has not first been low;

  My humbleness, said One, has made me great!)

  As God did, last.’

  ‘And work all silently,

  And simply,’ he returned, ‘as God does all;

  Distort our nature never, for our work,

  Nor count our right hands stronger for being hoofs.

  The man most man, with tenderest human hands,

  Works best for men,–as God in Nazareth.’

  He paused upon the word, and then resumed;

  ‘Fewer programmes; we who have no prescience.

  Fewer systems; we who are held and do not hold.

  Less mapping out of masses, to be saved,

  By nations or by sexes. Fourier’s void,

  And Comte is dwarfed,–and Cabet, puerile.

  Subsists no law of life outside of life;

  No perfect manners, without Christian souls:

  The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver,

  Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.’

  I echoed thoughtfully–’The man, most man,

  Works best for men: and, if most man indeed,

  He gets his manhood plainest from his soul:

  While, obviously, this stringent soul itself

  Obeys our old rules of development;

  The Spirit ever witnessing in ours,

  And Love, the soul of soul, within the soul,

  Evolving it sublimely. First, God’s love.’

  ‘And next,’ he smiled, ‘the love of wedded souls,

  Which still presents that mystery’s counterpart.

  Sweet shadow-rose, upon the water of life,

  Of such a mystic substance, Sharon gave

  A name to! human, vital, fructuous rose,

  Whose calyx holds the multitude of leaves.–

  Loves filial, loves fraternal, neighbour-loves,

  And civic, . . all fair petals, all good scents,

  All reddened, sweetened from one central Heart!’

  ‘Alas,’ I cried, ‘it was not long ago,

  You swore this very social rose smelt ill.’

  ‘Alas,’ he answered, ‘is it a rose at all?

  The filial’s thankless, the fraternal’s hard,

  The rest is lost. I do but stand and think,

  Across dim waters of a troubled life

  The Flower of Heaven so vainly overhangs,–

  What perfect counterpart would be in sight,

  If tanks were clearer. Let us clean the tubes,

  And wait for rains. O poet, O my love,

  Since I was too ambitious in my deed,

  And thought to distance all men in success,

  Till God came on me, marked the place, and said

  ‘III-doer, henceforth keep within this line,

  ‘Attempting less than others,’–and I stand

  And work among Christ’s little ones, content,–

  Come thou, my compensation, my dear sight,

  My morning-star, my morning! rise and shine,

  And touch my hills with radiance not their own

  Shine out for two, Aurora, and fulfil

  My falling-short that must be! work for two,

  As I, though thus restrained, for two, shall love!

  Gaze on, with inscient vision toward the sun,

  And, from his visceral heat, pluck out the roots

  Of light beyond him. Art’s a service,–mark:

  A silver key is given to thy clasp,

  And thou shalt stand unwearied, night and day,

  And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards,

  And open, so, that intermediate door

  Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form

  And form insensuous, that inferior men

  May learn to feel on still through thee to those,

  And bless thy ministration. The wo
rld waits

  For help. Beloved, let us love so well,

  Our work shall still be better for our love,

  And still our love be sweeter for our work,

  And both, commended, for the sake of each,

  By all true workers and true lovers, born.

  Now press the clarion on thy woman’s lip

  (Love’s holy kiss shall still keep consecrate)

  And breathe the fine keen breath along the brass,

  And blow all class-walls level as Jericho’s

  Past Jordan; crying from the top of souls,

  To souls, that they assemble on earth’s flats

  To get them to some purer eminence

  Than any hitherto beheld for clouds!

  What height we know not,–but the way we know,

  And how by mounting aye, we must attain,

  And so climb on. It is the hour for souls;

  That bodies, leavened by the will and love,

  Be lightened to redemption. The world’s old;

  But the old world waits the hour to be renewed:

  Toward which, new hearts in individual growth

  Must quicken, and increase to multitude

  In new dynasties of the race of men,–

  Developed whence, shall grow spontaneously

  New churches, new economies, new laws

  Admitting freedom, new societies

  Excluding falsehood. HE shall make all new.’

  My Romney!–Lifting up my hand in his,

  As wheeled by Seeing spirits toward the east,

  He turned instinctively,–where, faint and fair,

  Along the tingling desert of the sky,

  Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,

  Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass

  The first foundations of that new, near Day

  Which should be builded out of heaven, to God

  He stood a moment with erected brows,

  In silence, as a creature might, who gazed:

  Stood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyes

  Upon the thought of perfect noon. And when

  I saw his soul saw,–’Jasper first,’ I said,

  ‘And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony;

  The rest in order, . . last, an amethyst.’

  Poems Before Congress

  After the death of an old friend, G.B. Hunter, closely followed by the death of her father in 1860, Barrett Browning’s health worsened again, due to a deteriorating lung function. Feeling a change of scenery may aid her recovery, Robert arranged for her to be moved from Florence to Siena, residing at the Villa Alberti. Deeply engrossed in Italian politics, she issued a small volume of political poems titled Poems before Congress, expressing her sympathy for the Italian cause after the outbreak of fighting in 1859. She dedicated this book to her husband, with affectionate regard to his caring devotion during her continued illness. The poems provoked a furore in England and the conservative magazines Blackwood’s and the Saturday Review labelled Barrett Browning as a fanatic.