Aurora Leigh

“ If he understands By love, like others, self-aggrandisement, It is that he may verily be great By doing rightly and kindly. Once he thought, For charitable ends set duly forth In Heaven’s white judgment-book, to marry ... ah, We’ll call her name Aurora Leigh, although She’s changed since then!—and once, for social ends, Poor Marian Erle, my sister Marian Erle, My woodland sister, sweet maid Marian, Whose memory moans on in me like the wind Through ill-shut casements, making me more sad Than ever I find reasons for. ”

“ The whole of that wonderful poem of "Aurora Leigh" is full of such impassioned sympathy with womanhood, and shows the great heart of the poet as perhaps none of her other poems do. Written in the maturity of her powers, and after she had learned much of life in all its intricate depths, it contains perhaps more passion and power and fiery-burning eloquence than any other poem in the English language. Only an inspired womanly hand, which had sounded all the deeps of the world's scanty wisdom, could have penned it. ”

“ Made cool the forehead with fresh-sprinkling dreams,
And, rounding to the spheric soul the thin
Pined body, struck a colour up the cheeks,
Though somewhat faint. I clenched my brows across
My blue eyes greatening in the looking-glass,
And said, ‘We’ll live, Aurora! we’ll be strong.
The dogs are on us—but we will not die.’
Whoever lives true life, will love true love. ”

“ Laid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms,
And sighed for joy: or else (I thank your friend)
Aurora Leigh,—when some indifferent rhymes,
Like those the boys sang round the holy ox
On Memphis-road, have chanced, perhaps, to set
Our Apis-public lowing. Oh, he wants,
Instead of any worthy wife at home,
A star upon his stage of Eglinton!
Advise him that he is not overshrewd
In being so little modest: a dropped star
Makes bitter waters, says a Book I’ve read,—
And there’s his unread letter,’
⁠ ‘My dear friend,’
Lord Howe began . . ”

“ In pity of what I am.’
⁠Ah friend, I thought,
As husband of the Lady Waldemar
You’re granted very sorely pitiable!
And yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voice
From softening in the pity of your case,
As if from lie or licence. Certainly
We’ll soak up all the slush and soil of life
With softened voices, ere we come to you.
At which I interrupted my own thought
And spoke out calmly. ‘Let us ponder, friend,
Whate’er our state, we must have made it first ”

“ O’er level lagunes, to make them shine and stink,—
Laying stress upon us with immediate flame,
While we respond with our miasmal fog,
And call it mounting higher, because we grow
More highly fatal?
⁠Tush, Aurora Leigh!
You wear your sackcloth looped in Cæsar’s way.
And brag your failings as mankind’s. Be still.
There is what’s higher in this very world,
Than you can live, or catch at. Stand aside,
And look at others—instance little Kate! ”

“ 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, . . ”

“ CRITICAL INTRODUCTION.
"How proud we are, in daring to look down upon ourselves!" cries Aurora Leigh, when she is rejecting her past work. Such pride spoke in Miss Barrett's opposition, as early as 1844, to the reissue of any of her Juvenilia. It was the pride of the glowing aim and growing power that made all her young accomplishment look not merely immature and weak, but also imitative beside the dim outline of work peculiarly her own and yet to be. ”

“ Aurora Leigh, daughter of an Englishman and an Italian woman. At her father's death Aurora comes to England to live with a severe, practical aunt. In time she becomes a poet, travels far, sees much, and thinks much of life's problems. She marries her cousin Romney, a philanthropist, blinded by an accident.—Aurora Leigh, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1856) .
Aurora Nuncanou, beautiful Creole widow in The Grandissimes, by George W. Cable. In her thirty-fifth year, she "is the red, red, full-blown, faultless joy of the garden. With her it will be always morning. ”

“ To you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man
Is Romney Leigh; although the sun of youth
Has shone too straight upon his brain, I know,
And fevered him with dreams of doing good
To good-for-nothing people. But a wife
Will put all right, and stroke his temples cool
With healthy touches’ . . ”

“ While I yield to no human being in admiration of, and loving gratitude to Mrs. Browning, and regard the first eight books of 'Aurora Leigh' as vigorous, grand and marvellously beautiful, I can not deny that a painful feeling of mortification seizes me when I read the ninth and concluding book, wherein 'Aurora,' with most unwomanly vehemence, voluntarily declares and reiterates her love for 'Romney.' Tennyson's 'Princess' seems to me more feminine and refined and lovely than 'Aurora' ”

“ The full-voiced rhetoric of those master-mouths.
'Ah, dear Aurora,' he began at last,
His pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile,
'Your printer's devils have not spoilt your heart:
That's well. And who knows but, long years ago,
When you and I talked, you were somewhat right
In being so peevish with me? You, at least,
Have ruined no one through your dreams! ”

“ Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls, Which rul’st for evermore both day and night! I am happy.’ I flung 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. ”

“ The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.
Truth so far, in my book! a truth which draws
From all things upwards. I, Aurora, still
Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life
As Jove did Io: and, until that Hand
Shall overtake me wholly, and, on my head,
Lay down its large, unfluctuating peace,
The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down
It must be. Art’s the witness of what Is
Behind this show. If this world’s show were all,
Then imitation would be all in Art ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet I should be stronger.
⁠Never burn
Your letters, poor Aurora! for they stare
With red seals from the table, saying each,
‘Here’s something that you know not.’ Out alas,
’Tis scarcely that the world’s more good and wise
Or even straighter and more consequent
Since yesterday at this time—yet, again,
If but one angel spoke from Ararat,
I should be very sorry not to hear:
So open all the letters! let me read.
Blanche Ord, the writer in the ‘Lady’s Fan,’
Requests my judgment on . . that, afterwards. ”

“ But a man in love Will see the whole sex in his mistress’ hood, The prettier for its lining of fair rose; Although he catches back, and says at last, ‘I’m sorry.’ Sorry. Lady Waldemar At prettiest, under the said hood, preserved From such a light as I could hold to her face To flare its ugly wrinkles out to shame,— Is scarce a wife for Romney, as friends judge, Aurora Leigh, or Vincent Carrington,— That’s plain. ”

“ And hurrying lips, and heaving heart! We are young
Aurora, you and I. The world . . look round . .
The world, we’re come to late, is swollen hard
With perished generations and their sins:
The civiliser’s spade grinds horribly
On dead men’s bones, and cannot turn up soil
That’s otherwise than fetid. ”

“ Perhaps, if I had found a literal Muse, The visit might have taxed me. As it is, You wear your blue so chiefly in your eyes, My fair Aurora, in a frank good way, It comforts me entirely for your fame, As well as for the trouble of my ascent To this Olympus.’ There, a silver laugh Ran rippling through her quickened little breaths The steep stair somewhat justified. ”

“ 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 all the dead keep whispering through the withes,
‘You would be better in your place with us,
‘You pitiful corruption!’ At the thought,
The damps break out on me like leprosy,
Although I’m clean. 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! ”

“ In her new circumstances her strength greatly increased. Her husband and she settled in Florence, and there she wrote Casa Guidi Windows (1851) —by many considered her strongest work—under the inspiration of the Tuscan struggle for liberty. Aurora Leigh, her largest, and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. In 1850 The Sonnets from the Portuguese—the history of her own love-story, thinly disguised by its title—had appeared. In 1860 she issued a coll. ed. of her poems under the title, Poems before Congress. Soon thereafter her health underwent a change for the worse ”

“ He stands on Right’s side; never flinch for him,
As if he stood on the other. You’ll be bound
By me? I am a woman of repute;
No fly-blow gossip ever specked my life;
My name is clean and open as this hand,
Whose glove there’s not a man dares blab about,
As if he had touched it freely:—here’s my hand
To clasp your hand, my Marian, owned as pure!
As pure,—I’m a woman and a Leigh!—
And, as I’m both, I’ll witness to the world
That Romney Leigh is honoured in his choice,
Who chooses Marian for his honoured wife.’
Her broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light ”

“ Straight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear,
Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this,
Had set her own house all a-fire for me,
To light me forwards? Leaning on my face
Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will,
She told me tenderly, (as when men come
To a bedside to tell people they must die)
‘She knew of knowledge,—aye, of knowledge, knew,
‘That Romney Leigh had loved her formerly. ”

“ Her first cry in our strange and strangling air, When cast in spasms out by the shuddering womb, Was wrong against the social code,—forced wrong. What business had the baby to cry there?
I tell her story and grow passionate. She, Marian, did not tell it so, but used Meek words that made no wonder of herself For being so sad a creature. ‘Mister Leigh Considered truly that such things should change. They will, in heaven—but meantime, on the earth, There’s none can like a nettle as a pink, Except himself. We’re nettles, some of us, And give offence by the act of springing up ”

“ In that case,—and the noble house of Leigh
Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:
I cannot speak and burn you up between
Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,—nor speak
And pierce your breast through Romney’s, I who live
His friend and cousin!—so, you are safe. You two
Must grow together like the tares and wheat
Till God’s great fire.—But make the best of time.
‘And hide this letter! let it speak no more
Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,
And set her own love digging her own grave
Within her green hope’s pretty garden-ground ”

“ Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was moved
To hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.
With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells
In this world! Then I spoke,—’I did not think,
My cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.’
‘In fact I never knew her. ’Tis enough
That Vincent did, before he chose his wife
For other reasons than those topaz eyes
I’ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,
For all that. One takes up the world with eyes.’
—Including Romney Leigh, I thought again,
Albeit he knows them only by repute.
How vile must all men be, since he’s a man. ”

“ For me, I’d rather see a rick on fire Than such a woman angry. Then a youth Fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs, Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe, And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts, Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,— All which I saved you, and absorb next week Both manuscript and man,—because a lord [211] Is still more potent than a poetess, With any extreme republican. ”