But then my cousin sets his dignity On personal virtue. 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. Alas, Poor pretty plaintive face, embodied ghost, He finds it easy, then, to clap thee off From pulling at his sleeve and book and pen,— He locks thee out at night into the cold, Away from butting with thy horny eyes Against his crystal dreams,—that, now, he’s strong To love anew? that Lady Waldemar Succeeds my Marian? After all, why not? He loved not Marian, more than once he loved Aurora. If he loves, at last, that Third, Albeit she prove as slippery as spilt oil On marble floors, I will not augur him Ill luck for that. 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.
My loose long hair began to burn and creep, Alive to the very ends, about my knees: I swept it backward as the wind sweeps flame, With the passion of my hands. Ah, Romney laughed One day ... (how full the memories come up!) ‘—Your Florence fire-flies live on in your hair,’ He said, ‘it gleams so.’ Well, I wrung them out, My fire-flies; made a knot as hard as life, Of those loose, soft, impracticable curls, And then sat down and thought.... ‘She shall not think Her thought of me,’—and drew my desk and wrote.
‘Dear Lady Waldemar, I could not speak With people round me, nor can sleep to-night And not speak, after the great news I heard Of you and of my cousin. May you be Most happy; and the good he meant the world, Replenish his own life. Say what I say, And let my word be sweeter for your mouth, As you are you ... I only Aurora Leigh.’
That’s quiet, guarded! though she hold it up Against the light, she’ll not see through it more Than lies there to be seen. So much for pride; And now for peace, a little! Let me stop All writing back.... ‘Sweet thanks, my sweetest friend, ‘You’ve made more joyful my great joy itself,’ —No, that’s too simple! she would twist it thus, ‘My joy would still be as sweet as thyme in drawers, However shut up in the dark and dry; But violets, aired and dewed by love like yours, Out-smell all thyme! we keep that in our clothes, But drop the other down our bosoms, till They smell like’ ... ah, I see her writing back Just so. She’ll make a nosegay of her words, And tie it with blue ribbons at the end To suit a poet;—pshaw! And then we’ll have The call to church; the broken, sad, bad dream Dreamed out at last; the marriage-vow complete With the marriage-breakfast; praying in white gloves, Drawn off in haste for drinking pagan toasts In somewhat stronger wine than any sipped By gods, since Bacchus had his way with grapes.
A postscript stops all that, and rescues me. ‘You need not write. I have been overworked, And think of leaving London, England even, And hastening to get nearer to the sun, Where men sleep better. So, adieu.’—I fold And seal,—— and now I’m out of all the coil; I breathe now; I spring upward like a branch, A ten-years school-boy with a crooked stick May pull down to his level, in search of nuts, But cannot hold a moment. How we twang Back on the blue sky, and assert our height, While he stares after! Now, the wonder seems That I could wrong myself by such a doubt. We poets always have uneasy hearts; Because our hearts, large-rounded as the globe, Can turn but one side to the sun at once. We are used to dip our artist-hands in gall And potash, trying potentialities Of alternated colour, till at last We get confused, and wonder for our skin How nature tinged it first. Well—here’s the true Good flesh-colour; I recognise my hand,— Which Romney Leigh may clasp as just a friend’s, And keep his clean. And now, my Italy. Alas, if we could ride with naked souls And make no noise and pay no price at all, I would have seen thee sooner, Italy,—For still I have heard thee crying through my life, Thou piercing silence of extatic graves, Men call that name!
But even a witch, to-day, Must melt down golden pieces in the nard Wherewith to anoint her broomstick ere she rides; And poets evermore are scant of gold, And, if they find a piece behind the door, It turns by sunset to a withered leaf. The Devil himself scarce trusts his patented Gold-making art to any who make rhymes, But culls his Faustus from philosophers And not from poets. ‘Leave my Job,’ said God; And so, the Devil leaves him without pence, And poverty proves, plainly, special grace. In these new, just, administrative times Men clamour for an order of merit. Why? Here’s black bread on the table, and no wine! At least I am a poet in being poor; Thank God. I wonder if the manuscript Of my long poem, if ’twere sold outright, Would fetch enough to buy me shoes, to go A-foot, (thrown in, the necessary patch For the other side the Alps)? it cannot be: I fear that I must sell this residue Of my father’s books; although the Elzevirs Have fly-leaves over-written by his hand, In faded notes as thick and fine and brown As cobwebs on a tawny monument Of the old Greeks—conferenda hæc cum his— Corruptè citat—lege potiùs, And so on, in the scholar’s regal way Of giving judgment on the parts of speech, As if he sate on all twelve thrones up-piled, Arraigning Israel. Ay, but books and notes Must go together. And this Proclus too, In quaintly dear contracted Grecian types, Fantastically crumpled, like his thoughts Which would not seem too plain; you go round twice For one step forward, then you take it back, Because you’re somewhat giddy! there’s the rule For Proclus. Ah, I stained this middle leaf With pressing in’t my Florence iris-bell, Long stalk and all: my father chided me For that stain of blue blood,—I recollect The peevish turn his voice took,—‘Silly girls, Who plant their flowers in our philosophy To make it fine, and only spoil the book! No more of it, Aurora.’ Yes—no more! Ah, blame of love, that’s sweeter than all praise Of those who love not! ’tis so lost to me, I cannot, in such beggared life, afford To lose my Proclus. Not for Florence, even.
The kissing Judas, Wolff, shall go instead, Who builds us such a royal book as this To honour a chief-poet, folio-built, And writes above, ‘The house of Nobody:’ Who floats in cream, as rich as any sucked From Juno’s breasts, the broad Homeric lines, And, while with their spondaic prodigious mouths They lap the lucent margins as babe-gods, Proclaims them bastards. Wolff’s an atheist; And if the Iliad fell out, as he says, By mere fortuitous concourse of old songs, We’ll guess as much, too, for the universe.
That Wolff, those Platos: sweep the upper shelves As clean as this, and so I am almost rich, Which means, not forced to think of being poor In sight of ends. To-morrow: no delay. I’ll wait in Paris till good Carrington Dispose of such, and, having chaffered for My book’s price with the publisher, direct All proceeds to me. Just a line to ask His help. And now I come, my Italy, My own hills! Are you ’ware of me, my hills, How I burn toward you? do you feel to-night The urgency and yearning of my soul, As sleeping mothers feel the sucking babe And smile?—Nay, not so much as when, in heat, Vain lightnings catch at your inviolate tops, And tremble while ye are stedfast. Still, ye go Your own determined, calm, indifferent way Toward sunrise, shade by shade, and light by light; Of all the grand progression nought left out; As if God verily made you for yourselves, And would not interrupt your life with ours.