Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“ 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. 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 all shall work too. ”

“ Of yearning passion, as a snow of ghosts
Might beat against the impervious doors of heaven,
I thought, ‘Now, if I had been a woman, such
As God made women, to save men by love,—
By just my love I might have saved this man,
And made a nobler poem for the world
Than all I have failed in.’ But I failed besides
In this; and now he’s lost! through me alone!
And, by my only fault, his empty house
Sucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hell
To keep his hearth cold, make his casements creak
For ever to the tune of plague and sin—
O Romney, O my Romney, O my friend!
My cousin and friend! ”

“ There might be truth betwixt us two, at least, If nothing else. And yet ’twas dangerous. Suppose a real angel came from heaven To live with men and women! he’d go mad, If no considerate hand should tie a blind Across his piercing eyes. ’Tis thus with you: You see us too much in your heavenly light; I always thought so, angel,—and indeed There’s danger that you beat yourself to death Against the edges of this alien world, In some divine and fluttering pity. ‘Yes, It would be dreadful for a friend of yours, To see all England thrust you out of doors And mock you from the windows. ”

“ 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 a hair’s breadth off
The dust of the actual.—Ah, your Fouriers failed,
Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within.—For me,
Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,
Of work like this! . . perhaps a woman’s soul
Aspires, and not creates! yet we aspire,
And yet I’ll try out your perhapses, sir;
And if I fail . . why, burn me up my straw
Like other false works—I’ll not ask for grace,
Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. ”

“ 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. ”

“ O delight And triumph of the poet,—who would say A man’s mere ‘yes,’ a woman’s common ‘no,’ A little human hope of that or this, And says the word so that it burns you through With a special revelation, shakes the heart Of all the men and women in the world, As if one came back from the dead and spoke, With eyes too happy, a familiar thing Become divine i’ the utterance! while for him The poet, the speaker, he expands with joy; The palpitating angel in his flesh Thrills inly with consenting fellowship To those innumerous spirits who sun themselves Outside of time. ”

“ For thus it is in heaven, that first God speaks, And then his angels. Oh, it does me good, It wipes me clean and sweet from devil’s dirt, That Romney Leigh should think me worthy still Of being his true and honourable wife! Henceforth I need not say, on leaving earth, I had no glory in it. For the rest, The reason’s ready (master, angel, friend, Be patient with me) wherefore you and I Can never, never, never join hands so. I know you’ll not be angry like a man (For you are none) when I shall tell the truth,— Which is, I do not love you, Romney Leigh, I do not love you. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Or lovely poet-words grown obsolete, Which will not leave off singing. Up in heaven I have my father,—with my mother’s face Beside him in a blotch of heavenly light; No more for earth’s familiar, household use, No more! The best verse written by this hand, Can never reach them where they sit, to seem Well-done to them. Death quite unfellows us, Sets dreadful odds betwixt the live and dead, And makes us part as those at Babel did, Through sudden ignorance of a common tongue. A living Cæsar would not dare to play At bowls, with such as my dead father is. ”

“ 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 ”

“ To set a tumbling bird’s-nest somewhat straight?
You will not tell him, though we’re innocent
We are not harmless? . . and that both our harms
Will stick to his good smooth noble life like burrs,
Never to drop off though you shake the cloak?
You’ve been my friend: you will not now be his?
You’ve known him, that he’s worthy of a friend;
And you’re his cousin, lady, after all,
And therefore more than free to take his part,
Explaining, since the nest is surely spoilt,
And Marian what you know her,—though a wife,
The world would hardly understand her case
Of being just hurt and honest ”

“ Behold, at last, a book. If life-blood’s necessary,—which it is, (By that blue vein athrob on Mahomet’s brow, Each prophet-poet’s book must show man’s blood!) If life-blood’s fertilising, I wrung mine On every leaf of this,—unless the drops Slid heavily on one side and left it dry. That chances often: many a fervid man Writes books as cold and flat as grave-yard stones [194] From which the lichen’s scraped; and if St. Preux Had written his own letters, as he might, We had never wept to think of the little mole ’Neath Julie’s drooping eyelid. Passion is But something suffered, after all. ”

“ But when I looked, her face was younger ... ay, Youth’s too bright not to be a little hard, And beauty keeps itself still uppermost, That’s true!—Though Lady Waldemar was kind, She hurt me, hurt, as if the morning-sun Should smite us on the eyelids when we sleep, And wake us up with headache. Ay, and soon Was light enough to make my heart ache too: She told me truths I asked for ... ’twas my fault ... ‘That Romney could not love me, if he would, As men call loving; there are bloods that flow Together, like some rivers, and not mix, Through contraries of nature. ”

“ The thrilling, solemn voice, so passionless,
Sustained, yet low, without a rise or fall,
As one who had authority to speak,
And not as Marian.
⁠I looked up to feel
If God stood near me and beheld his heaven
As blue as Aaron’s priestly robe appeared
To Aaron when he took it off to die.
And then I spoke—‘Accept the gift, I say,
My sister Marian, and be satisfied.
The hand that gives has still a soul behind
Which will not let it quail for having given,
Though foolish worldlings talk they know not what,
Of what they know not. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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, . . ”

“ Whoever says To a loyal woman, ‘Love and work with me,’ Will get fair answers, if the work and love, Being good themselves, are good for her—the best She was born for. Women of a softer mood, Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life, Will sometimes only hear the first word, love, And catch up with it any kind of work, Indifferent, so that dear love go with it: I do not blame such women, though, for love, They pick much oakum; earth’s fanatics make Too frequently heaven’s saints. ”

“ And still I feel his melancholy eyes
Look judgment on me.⁠It is seven years since:
I know not if ’twas pity or ’twas scorn
Has made them so far-reaching: judge it ye
Who have had to do with pity more than love,
And scorn than hatred.⁠I am used, since then,
To other ways, from equal men.⁠But so,
Even so, we let go hands, my cousin and I,
And, in between us, rushed the torrent-world
To blanch our faces like divided rocks,
And bar for ever mutual sight and touch
Except through swirl of spray and all that roar. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Good love, howe’er ill-placed, Is better for a man’s soul in the end, Than if he loved ill what deserves love well. A pagan, kissing, for a step of Pan, The wild-goat’s hoof-print on the loamy down, Exceeds our modern thinker who turns back The strata ... granite, limestone, coal, and clay, Concluding coldly with, ‘Here’s law! Where’s God?’
And then at worse,—if Romney loves her not,— At worst,—if he’s incapable of love, Which may be—then indeed, for such a man Incapable of love, she’s good enough; For she, at worst too, is a woman still And loves him ... as the sort of woman can. ”

“ Although no stranger ... only Romney Leigh, Which means still less ... than Vincent Carrington ... Your plans in going hence, and where you go. This cannot be a secret.’ ‘All my life Is open to you, cousin. I go hence To London, to the gathering-place of souls, To live mine straight out, vocally, in books; Harmoniously for others, if indeed A woman’s soul, like man’s, be wide enough To carry the whole octave (that’s to prove) Or, if I fail, still, purely for myself. Pray God be with me, Romney.’ ‘Ah, poor child, Who fight against the mother’s ‘tiring hand, And choose the headsman’s! ”

“ Born to wear His father’s shoes, he wears her husband’s too: Indeed, I’ve heard it’s touching. Dear Lord Howe, You shall not praise me so against your heart, When I’m at worst for praise and faggots.’ ‘Be Less bitter with me, for ... in short,’ he said, ‘I have a letter, which he urged me so To bring you ... I could scarcely choose but yield; Insisting that a new love passing through The hand of an old friendship, caught from it Some reconciling perfume.’ ‘Love, you say? My lord, I cannot love. I only find The rhymes for love,—and that’s not love, my lord. ”

“ The only teachers who instruct mankind, From just a shadow on a charnel-wall, To find man’s veritable stature out, [32] Erect, sublime,—the measure of a man, And that’s the measure of an angel, says The apostle. Ay, and while your common men Build pyramids, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine, And dust the flaunty carpets of the world For kings to walk on, or our senators, The poet suddenly will catch them up With his voice like a thunder ... ‘This is soul, This is life, this word is being said in heaven, Here’s God down on us! ”

“ And yet, forbid, That any irreverent fancy or conceit Should litter in the Drama’s throne-room, where The rulers of our art, in whose full veins Dynastic glories mingle, sit in strength And do their kingly work,—conceive, command, And, from the imagination’s crucial heat, Catch up their men and women all a-flame For action, all alive, and forced to prove Their life by living out heart, brain, and nerve, Until mankind makes witness, ‘These be men As we are,’ and vouchsafes the kiss that’s due To Imogen and Juliet—sweetest kin On art’s side. ”

“ Ay, clean as Marian Erle: As Marian Leigh, I know, I were not clean: I have not so much life that I should love, ... Except the child. Ah God! I could not bear To see my darling on a good man’s knees, And know by such a look, or such a sigh, Or such a silence, that he thought sometimes, ‘This child was fathered by some cursed wretch’ ... For, Romney,—angels are less tender-wise Than God and mothers: even you would think What we think never. He is ours, the child ”

“ To Lucy’s home, to nurse her back to life
Or down to death. She knew by such an act,
All place and grace were forfeit in the house,
Whose mistress would supply the missing hand
With necessary, not inhuman haste,
And take no blame. But pity, too, had dues:
She could not leave a solitary soul
To founder in the dark, while she sate still
And lavished stitches on a lady’s hem
As if no other work were paramount.
‘Why, God,’ thought Marian, ‘has a missing hand
This moment; Lucy wants a drink, perhaps. ”

“ Sweet heaven, she takes me up As if she had fingered me and dog-eared me And spelled me by the fireside, half a life! She knows my turns, my feeble points.—What then? The knowledge of a thing implies the thing; Of course, she found that in me, she saw that, Her pencil underscored this for a fault, And I, still ignorant. Shut the book up! close! And crush that beetle in the leaves. O heart, At last we shall grow hard too, like the rest, And call it self-defence because we are soft.
And after all, now, ... why should I be pained, That Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouse This Lady Waldemar? ”

“ Ah, Miss Leigh,
You’re great and pure; but were you purer still,—
As if you had walked, we’ll say, no otherwhere
Than up and down the new Jerusalem,
And held your trailing lutestring up yourself
From brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some
Small speck as little as a needle prick,
White stitched on white,—the child would keep to me,
Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,
And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,
As we do, when God says it’s time to die
And bids us go up higher. Leave us then;
We two are happy. Does he push me off? ”

“ While we, we are shocked at nature’s falling off, We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains, We will not, when she sneezes, look at her, Not even to say ‘God bless her’? That’s our wrong; For that, she will not trust us often with Her larger sense of beauty and desire, But tethers us to a lily or a rose And bids us diet on the dew inside,— Left ignorant that the hungry beggar-boy (Who stares unseen against our absent eyes, And wonders at the gods that we must be, To pass so careless for the oranges!) ”

“ 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,— [350] 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. ”

“ 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 these to those, And bless thy ministration. ”

“ A babe at thirteen months Will walk as well as you,’ she cried in haste, ‘Without a steadying finger. Why, you child, God help you, you are groping in the dark, For all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps, That you, sole offspring of an opulent man, Are rich and free to choose a way to walk? You think, and it’s a reasonable thought, That I besides, being well to do in life, Will leave my handful in my niece’s hand When death shall paralyse these fingers? Pray, Pray, child,—albeit I know you love me not,— As if you loved me, that I may not die! ”

“ What you love, Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause: You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,— A wife to help your ends ... in her no end! [58] Your cause is noble, your ends excellent, But I, being most unworthy of these and that, Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.’
‘Farewell, Aurora? you reject me thus?’ He said. ‘Why, sir, you are married long ago. You have a wife already whom you love, Your social theory. Bless you both, I say. For my part, I am scarcely meek enough To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse. ”

“ I cannot write to Romney, ‘Here she is,
Here’s Marian found! I’ll set you on her track:
I saw her here, in Paris, . . and her child.
She put away your love two years ago,
But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then;
And, now that you’ve forgot her utterly
As any lost year’s annual in whose place
You’ve planted a thick flowering evergreen,
I choose, being kind, to write and tell you this
To make you wholly easy—she’s not dead,
But only . . damned.’
⁠Stop there: I go too fast ”

“ And we would sooner vex a soul in heaven By coupling with it the dead body’s thought, It left behind it in a last month’s grave, Than, in my child, see other than ... my child. We only, never call him fatherless Who has God and his mother. O my babe, My pretty, pretty blossom, an ill-wind Once blew upon my breast! can any think I’d have another,—one called happier, A fathered child, with father’s love and race That’s worn as bold and open as a smile, To vex my darling when he’s asked his name And has no answer? ”

“ 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! ”

“ Cousin Leigh,
I wish you well through all the acts of life
And life’s relation, wedlock, not the least;
And it shall ‘please me,’ in your words, to know
You yield your wife, protection, freedom, ease,
And very tender liking. May you live
So happy with her, Romney, that your friends
May praise her for it. Meantime, some of us
Are wholly dull in keeping ignorant
Of what she has suffered by you, and what debt
Of sorrow your rich love sits down to pay:
But if ’tis sweet for love to pay its debt,
’Tis sweeter still for love to give its gift ”

“ The truth is, I am grown so proud with grief, And He has said so often through his nights And through his mornings, ‘Weep a little still, Thou foolish Marian, because women must, But do not blush at all except for sin,’— That I, who felt myself unworthy once Of virtuous Romney and his high-born race, Have come to learn, ... a woman, poor or rich, Despised or honoured, is a human soul ”

“ So, righting His creation’s balance-scale
(You pulled as low as Tophet) to the top
Of most celestial innocence! For me
Who am not as bold, I own those infant eyes
Have set me praying.
⁠‘While they look at heaven,
No need of protestation in my words
Against the place you’ve made them! let them look!
They’ll do your business with the heavens, be sure:
I spare you common curses.
⁠‘Ponder this.
If haply you’re the wife of Romney Leigh,
(For which inheritance beyond your birth
You sold that poisonous porridge called your soul)
I charge you, be his faithful and true wife! ”

“ I must fail, Who fail at the beginning to hold and move One man,—and he my cousin, and he my friend, And he born tender, made intelligent, Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,— Of me, incurious! likes me very well, And wishes me a paradise of good, Good looks, good means, and good digestion!—ay, But otherwise evades me, puts me off With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,— Too light a book for a grave man’s reading! Go, Aurora Leigh: be humble. There it is; We women are too apt to look to one, Which proves a certain impotence in art. ”

“ Or did I worship? judge, Aurora Leigh!
But, if indeed I loved, ’twas long ago,—
So long! before the sun and moon were made,
Before the hells were open,—ah, before
I heard my child cry in the desert night,
And knew he had no father. It may be,
I’m not as strong as other women are,
Who, torn and crushed, are not undone from love.
It may be, I am colder than the dead,
Who, being dead, love always. But for me
Once killed, . . this ghost of Marian loves no more,
No more . . except the child! . . no more at all. ”