2.4: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning both epitomized the condition of women in the Victorian age and refuted it. Held under the “loving” hand of Edward Moulton Barrett, her Victorian patriarch of a father, Barrett Browning was confined to the private realm and the home to an extreme degree. At the age of fifteen, she suffered a spinal injury while saddling a pony. Seven years later a broken blood vessel in her chest left her weakened and suffering a chronic cough. An invalid, she was ultimately confined to her room. Despite these adversities, and with the encouragement and support of her father, Barrett Browning read widely, learned several languages, and published poetry and essays.

Her literary reputation grew to such an extent that she was suggested as a successor to Wordsworth as the Poet Laureate—a position that went to Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). She communicated with the literary giants of her day, including Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), and Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849). Her relationship with Robert Browning (1812-1889) began through his writing to her, expressing admiration for her poetry and love for her. His social visits turned quickly to a courtship that, when discovered by Edward Moulton Barrett, was adamantly opposed. Barrett Browning recorded the stress, uncertainty, and joy of this courtship in her Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). She and Browning ultimately married in secret and sailed to Italy.

In Italy, Barrett Browning became involved in Italian Independence. Much of her work reflects her interest in individual—particularly women’s—rights, child labor, prostitution, abolition, and the plight of the poor and downtrodden. These interests combine in many of her greatest works, including Aurora Leigh (1856), a hybrid novel-poem that depicts the limitations placed upon women’s public and private ambitions. Its aesthetic devices rely upon woman-centric images and allusions. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese take on the most male-dominated of poetic forms asserting her place in this important tradition. In the most famous sonnet from this sequence, Sonnet 43, her highly personal expressions of love and passion—and ostensibly feminine emotionalism—are framed by the repetition of “I,” the poet herself.

2.4.1: "The Cry of the Children"

“Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;”

[Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]—Medea.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;

The young birds are chirping in the nest;

The young fawns are playing with the shadows;

The young flowers are blowing toward the west —

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow,

Why their tears are falling so?

The old man may weep for his to-morrow

Which is lost in Long Ago —

The old tree is leafless in the forest —

The old year is ending in the frost —

The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest —

The old hope is hardest to be lost:

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,

In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their looks are sad to see,

For the man’s grief abhorrent, draws and presses

Down the cheeks of infancy —

“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary;”

“Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak!”

Few paces have we taken, yet are weary —

Our grave-rest is very far to seek!

Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,

For the outside earth is cold —

And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,

And the graves are for the old!”

“True,” say the children, “it may happen

That we die before our time!

Little Alice died last year her grave is shapen

Like a snowball, in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her —

Was no room for any work in the close clay:

From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

Crying, ‘Get up, little Alice! it is day.’

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

With your ear down, little Alice never cries;

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,

For the smile has time for growing in her eyes, —

And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in

The shroud, by the kirk-chime!

It is good when it happens,” say the children,

“That we die before our time!”

Alas, the wretched children! they are seeking

Death in life, as best to have!

They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,

With a cerement from the grave.

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city —

Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do —

Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty

Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!

But they answer, “Are your cowslips of the meadows

Like our weeds anear the mine?

Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine!

“For oh,” say the children, “we are weary,

And we cannot run or leap —

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely

To drop down in them and sleep.

Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping —

We fall upon our faces, trying to go;

And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.

For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,

Through the coal-dark, underground —

Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron

In the factories, round and round.

“For all day, the wheels are droning, turning, —

Their wind comes in our faces, —

Till our hearts turn,— our heads, with pulses burning,

And the walls turn in their places

Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling —

Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall, —

Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling —

All are turning, all the day, and we with all! —

And all day, the iron wheels are droning;

And sometimes we could pray,

‘O ye wheels,’ (breaking out in a mad moaning)

‘Stop ! be silent for to-day!’”

Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth —

Let them touch each other’s hands, in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion

Is not all the life God fashions or reveals —

Let them prove their inward souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! —

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

As if Fate in each were stark;

And the children’s souls, which God is calling sunward,

Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,

To look up to Him and pray —

So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day.

They answer, “Who is God that He should hear us,

While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?

When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word!

And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

Strangers speaking at the door:

Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,

Hears our weeping any more?

“Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;

And at midnight’s hour of harm, —

‘Our Father,’ looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly for a charm.

We know no other words, except ‘Our Father,’

And we think that, in some pause of angels’ song,

God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,

And hold both within His right hand which is strong. ‘Our Father!’ If He heard us, He would surely (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, ‘Come and rest with me, my child.’

“But, no!” say the children, weeping faster,

“He is speechless as a stone;

And they tell us, of His image is the master

Who commands us to work on.

Go to! “ say the children,—” up in Heaven,

Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find!

Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving —

We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.”

Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving,

O my brothers, what ye preach?

For God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving —

And the children doubt of each.

And well may the children weep before you;

They are weary ere they run;

They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory

Which is brighter than the sun:

They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;

They sink in the despair, without its calm —

Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, —

Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm, —

Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly

No dear remembrance keep, —

Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:

Let them weep! let them weep!

They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,

For they think you see their angels in their places,

With eyes meant for Deity; —

“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart, —

Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,

And your purple shews your path;

But the child’s sob curseth deeper in the silence

Than the strong man in his wrath!”

2.4.2: “To George Sand: A Desire”

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man,

Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions

Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance

And answers roar for roar, as spirits can:

I would some mild miraculous thunder ran

Above the applauded circus, in appliance

Of thine own nobler nature’s strength and science,

Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,

From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place

With holier light! that thou to woman’s claim

And man’s, mightst join beside the angel’s grace

Of a pure genius sanctified from blame

Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace

To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.

2.4.3: “A Recognition”

True genius, but true woman! dost deny

The woman’s nature with a manly scorn,

And break away the gauds and armlets worn

By weaker women in captivity?

Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry

Is sobbed in by a woman’s voice forlorn,-

Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn

Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,

Disproving thy man’s name: and while before

The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,

We see thy woman-heart beat evermore

Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher,

Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore

Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!

2.4.4: From Aurora Leigh

From First Book

I am like,

They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows

Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth

Of delicate features,—paler, near as grave;

But then my mother’s smile breaks up the whole,

And makes it better sometimes than itself—

So, nine full years, our days were hid with God

Among his mountains. I was just thirteen,

Still growing like the plants from unseen roots

In tongue-tied Springs,—and suddenly awoke

To full life and its needs and agonies,

With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside

A stone-dead father. Life, struck sharp on death,

Makes awful lightning. His last word was, ‘Love—’

‘Love, my child, love, love!’—(then he had done with grief)

‘Love, my child.’ Ere I answered he was gone,

And none was left to love in all the world.

There, ended childhood: what succeeded next

I recollect as, after fevers, men

Thread back the passage of delirium,

Missing the turn still, baffled by the door;

Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives;

A weary, wormy darkness, spurred i’ the flank

With flame, that it should eat and end itself

Like some tormented scorpion. Then, at last,

I do remember clearly, how there came

A stranger with authority, not right,

(I thought not) who commanded, caught me up

From old Assunta’s neck; how, with a shriek,

She let me go,—while I, with ears too full

Of my father’s silence, to shriek back a word,

In all a child’s astonishment at grief

Stared at the wharfage where she stood and moaned,

My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned!

The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy,

Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck,

Like one in anger drawing back her skirts

Which suppliants catch at. Then the bitter sea

Inexorably pushed between us both,

And sweeping up the ship with my despair

Threw us out as a pasture to the stars.

Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep;

Ten nights and days, without the common face

Of any day or night; the moon and sun

Cut off from the green reconciling earth,

To starve into a blind ferocity

And glare unnatural; the very sky

(Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea

As if no human heart should scape alive,)

Bedraggled with the desolating salt,

Until it seemed no more than holy heaven

To which my father went. All new, and strange—

The universe turned stranger, for a child.

Then, land!—then, England! oh, the frosty cliffs

Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home

Among those mean red houses through the fog?

And when I heard my father’s language first

From alien lips which had no kiss for mine,

I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept,—

And some one near me said the child was mad

Through much sea-sickness. The train swept us on.

Was this my father’s England? the great isle?

The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship

Of verdure, field from field, as man from man;

The skies themselves looked low and positive,

As almost you could touch them with a hand,

And dared to do it, they were so far off

From God’s celestial crystals; all things, blurred

And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates

Absorb the light here?—not a hill or stone

With heart to strike a radiant colour up

Or active outline on the indifferent air!

I think I see my father’s sister stand

Upon the hall-step of her country-house

To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,

Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight

As if for taming accidental thoughts

From possible pulses; brown hair pricked with grey

By frigid use of life, (she was not old,

Although my father’s elder by a year)

A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines;

A close mild mouth, a little soured about

The ends, through speaking unrequited loves,

Or peradventure niggardly half-truths;

Eyes of no colour,—once they might have smiled,

But never, never have forgot themselves

In smiling; cheeks in which was yet a rose

Of perished summers, like a rose in a book,

Kept more for ruth than pleasure,—if past bloom,

Past fading also.

She had lived we’ll say,

A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,

A quiet life, which was not life at all,

(But that, she had not lived enough to know)

Between the vicar and the county squires,

The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes

From the empyreal, to assure their souls

Against chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss,

The apothecary looked on once a year,

To prove their soundness of humility.

The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts

Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,

Because we are of one flesh after all

And need one flannel, (with a proper sense

Of difference in the quality)—and still

The book-club guarded from your modern trick

Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,

Preserved her intellectual. She had lived

A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,

Accounting that to leap from perch to perch

Was act and joy enough for any bird.

Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live

In thickets and eat berries!

I, alas,

A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,

And she was there to meet me. Very kind.

Bring the clean water; give out the fresh seed.

She stood upon the steps to welcome me,

Calm, in black garb. I clung about her neck,—

Young babes, who catch at every shred of wool

To draw the new light closer, catch and cling

Less blindly. In my ears, my father’s word

Hummed ignorantly, as the sea in shells,

‘Love, love, my child,’ She, black there with my grief,

Might feel my love—she was his sister once—

I clung to her. A moment, she seemed moved,

Kissed me with cold lips, suffered me to cling,

And drew me feebly through the hall, into

The room she sate in.

There, with some strange spasm

Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands

Imperiously, and held me at arm’s length,

And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyes Searched through my face,—ay, stabbed it through and through,

Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find

A wicked murderer in my innocent face,

If not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath,

She struggled for her ordinary calm,

And missed it rather,—told me not to shrink,

As if she had told me not to lie or swear,—

‘She loved my father, and would love me too

As long as I deserved it.’ Very kind.

I understood her meaning afterward;

She thought to find my mother in my face,

And questioned it for that. For she, my aunt,

Had loved my father truly, as she could,

And hated, with the gall of gentle souls,

My Tuscan mother, who had fooled away

A wise man from wise courses, a good man

From obvious duties, and, depriving her,

His sister, of the household precedence,

Had wronged his tenants, robbed his native land,

And made him mad, alike by life and death,

In love and sorrow. She had pored for years

What sort of woman could be suitable

To her sort of hate, to entertain it with;

And so, her very curiosity

Became hate too, and all the idealism

She ever used in life, was used for hate,

Till hate, so nourished, did exceed at last

The love from which it grew, in strength and heat,

And wrinkled her smooth conscience with a sense

Of disputable virtue (say not, sin)

When Christian doctrine was enforced at church.

And thus my father’s sister was to me

My mother’s hater. From that day, she did

Her duty to me, (I appreciate it

In her own word as spoken to herself)

Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out,

But measured always. She was generous, bland,

More courteous than was tender, gave me still

The first place,—as if fearful that God’s saints

Would look down suddenly and say, ‘Herein

You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.’

Alas, a mother never is afraid

Of speaking angrily to any child,

Since love, she knows, is justified of love.

And I, I was a good child on the whole,

A meek and manageable child. Why not?

I did not live, to have the faults of life:

There seemed more true life in my father’s grave

Than in all England. Since that threw me off

Who fain would cleave, (his latest will, they say,

Consigned me to his land) I only thought

Of lying quiet there where I was thrown

Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her

To prick me to a pattern with her pin,

Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf,

And dry out from my drowned anatomy

The last sea-salt left in me.

So it was.

I broke the copious curls upon my head

In braids, because she liked smooth ordered hair.

I left off saying my sweet Tuscan words

Which still at any stirring of the heart

Came up to float across the English phrase,

As lilies, (Bene . . or che ch’è) because

She liked my father’s child to speak his tongue.

I learnt the collects and the catechism,

The creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice,

The Articles . . the Tracts against the times,

(By no means Buonaventure’s ‘Prick of Love,’)

And various popular synopses of

Inhuman doctrines never taught by John,

Because she liked instructed piety.

I learnt my complement of classic French

(Kept pure of Balzac and neologism,)

And German also, since she liked a range

Of liberal education,—tongues, not books.

I learnt a little algebra, a little

Of the mathematics,—brushed with extreme flounce

The circle of the sciences, because

She misliked women who are frivolous.

I learnt the royal genealogies

Of Oviedo, the internal laws

Of the Burmese Empire, . . by how many feet

Mount Chimborazo outsoars Himmeleh,

What navigable river joins itself

To Lara, and what census of the year five

Was taken at Klagenfurt,—because she liked

A general insight into useful facts.

I learnt much music,—such as would have been

As quite impossible in Johnson’s day

As still it might be wished—fine sleights of hand

And unimagined fingering, shuffling off

The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes

To a noisy Tophet; and I drew . . costumes

From French engravings, nereids neatly draped,

With smirks of simmering godship,—I washed in

From nature, landscapes, (rather say, washed out.)

I danced the polka and Cellarius,

Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax,

Because she liked accomplishments in girls.

I read a score of books on womanhood

To prove, if women do not think at all,

They may teach thinking, (to a maiden aunt

Or else the author)—books demonstrating

Their right of comprehending husband’s talk

When not too deep, and even of answering

With pretty ‘may it please you,’ or ‘so it is,’—

Their rapid insight and fine aptitude,

Particular worth and general missionariness,

As long as they keep quiet by the fire

And never say ‘no’ when the world says ‘ay,’

For that is fatal,—their angelic reach

Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn,

And fatten household sinners—their, in brief,

Potential faculty in everything

Of abdicating power in it: she owned

She liked a woman to be womanly,

And English women, she thanked God and sighed,

(Some people always sigh in thanking God)

Were models to the universe.

And last I learnt cross-stitch, because she did not like

To see me wear the night with empty hands,

A-doing nothing. So, my shepherdess

Was something after all, (the pastoral saints

Be praised for’t) leaning lovelorn with pink eyes

To match her shoes, when I mistook the silks;

Her head uncrushed by that round weight of hat

So strangely similar to the tortoise-shell

Which slew the tragic poet.

By the way,

The works of women are symbolical.

We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,

Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,

To put on when you’re weary—or a stool

To tumble over and vex you . . ‘curse that stool!’

Or else at best, a cushion where you lean

And sleep, and dream of something we are not,

But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!

This hurts most, this . . that, after all, we are paid

The worth of our work, perhaps.

In looking down

Those years of education, (to return)

I wondered if Brinvilliers suffered more

In the water torture, . . flood succeeding flood

To drench the incapable throat and split the veins . .

Than I did. Certain of your feebler souls

Go out in such a process; many pine

To a sick, inodorous light; my own endured:

I had relations in the Unseen, and drew

The elemental nutriment and heat

From nature, as earth feels the sun at nights,

Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark.

I kept the life, thrust on me, on the outside

Of the inner life, with all its ample room

For heart and lungs, for will and intellect,

Inviolable by conventions. God,

I thank thee for that grace of thine! . . .

Capacity for joy

Admits temptation. It seemed, next, worth while

To dodge the sharp sword set against my life;

To slip down stairs through all the sleepy house,

As mute as any dream there, and escape

As a soul from the body, out of doors,—

Glide through the shrubberies, drop into the lane,

And wander on the hills an hour or two,

Then back again before the house should stir.

Or else I sat on in my chamber green,

And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed

My prayers without the vicar; read my books,

Without considering whether they were fit

To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good

By being ungenerous, even to a book,

And calculating profits . . so much help

By so much reading. It is rather when

We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge

Soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound,

Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth—

’Tis then we get the right good from a book.

I read much. What my father taught before

From many a volume, Love re-emphasised

Upon the self-same pages: Theophrast

Grew tender with the memory of his eyes,

And Ælian made mine wet. The trick of Greek

And Latin, he had taught me, as he would

Have taught me wrestling or the game of fives

If such he had known,—most like a shipwrecked man

Who heaps his single platter with goats’ cheese

And scarlet berries; or like any man

Who loves but one, and so gives all at once,

Because he has it, rather than because

He counts it worthy. Thus, my father gave;

And thus, as did the women formerly

By young Achilles, when they pinned the veil

Across the boy’s audacious front, and swept

With tuneful laughs the silver-fretted rocks,

He wrapt his little daughter in his large

Man’s doublet, careless did it fit or no.

But, after I had read for memory,

I read for hope. The path my father’s foot

Had trod me out, which suddenly broke off,

(What time he dropped the wallet of the flesh

And passed) alone I carried on, and set

My child-heart ’gainst the thorny underwood,

To reach the grassy shelter of the trees.

Ah, babe i’ the wood, without a brother-babe!

My own self-pity, like the red-breast bird,

Flies back to cover all that past with leaves.

Sublimest danger, over which none weeps,

When any young wayfaring soul goes forth

Alone, unconscious of the perilous road,

The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes,

To thrust his own way, he an alien, through

The world of books! Ah, you!—you think it fine,

You clap hands—‘A fair day!’—you cheer him on,

As if the worst, could happen, were to rest

Too long beside a fountain. Yet, behold,

Behold!—the world of books is still the world;

And worldlings in it are less merciful

And more puissant. For the wicked there

Are winged like angels. Every knife that strikes,

Is edged from elemental fire to assail

A spiritual life. The beautiful seems right

By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong

Because of weakness. Power is justified,

Though armed against St. Michael. Many a crown

Covers bald foreheads. In the book-world, true,

There’s no lack, neither, of God’s saints and kings,

That shake the ashes of the grave aside

From their calm locks, and undiscomfited

Look stedfast truths against Time’s changing mask.

True, many a prophet teaches in the roads;

True, many a seer pulls down the flaming heavens

Upon his own head in strong martyrdom,

In order to light men a moment’s space.

But stay!—who judges?—who distinguishes

’Twixt Saul and Nahash justly, at first sight,

And leaves king Saul precisely at the sin,

To serve king David? who discerns at once

The sound of the trumpets, when the trumpets blow

For Alaric as well as Charlemagne?

Who judges prophets, and can tell true seers

From conjurors? The child, there? Would you leave

That child to wander in a battle-field

And push his innocent smile against the guns?

Or even in the catacombs, . . his torch

Grown ragged in the fluttering air, and all

The dark a-mutter round him? not a child!

I read books bad and good—some bad and good

At once: good aims not always make good books;

Well-tempered spades turn up ill-smelling soils

In digging vineyards, even: books, that prove

God’s being so definitely, that man’s doubt

Grows self-defined the other side the line,

Made Atheist by suggestion; moral books,

Exasperating to license; genial books,

Discounting from the human dignity;

And merry books, which set you weeping when

The sun shines,—ay, and melancholy books,

Which make you laugh that any one should weep

In this disjointed life, for one wrong more.

The world of books is still the world, I write,

And both worlds have God’s providence, thank God,

To keep and hearten: with some struggle, indeed,

Among the breakers, some hard swimming through

The deeps—I lost breath in my soul sometimes,

And cried ‘God save me if there’s any God.’

But even so, God saved me; and, being dashed

From error on to error, every turn

Still brought me nearer to the central truth.

I thought so. All this anguish in the thick Of men’s opinions . . press and counterpress Now up, now down, now underfoot, and now Emergent . . all the best of it, perhaps, But throws you back upon a noble trust And use of your own instinct,—merely proves Pure reason stronger than bare inference At strongest. Try it,—fix against heaven’s wall Your scaling ladders of high logic—mount Step by step!—Sight goes faster; that still ray Which strikes out from you, how, you cannot tell, And why, you know not—(did you eliminate, That such as you, indeed, should analyse?) Goes straight and fast as light, and high as God.

The cygnet finds the water: but the man

Is born in ignorance of his element,

And feels out blind at first, disorganised

By sin i’ the blood,—his spirit-insight dulled

And crossed by his sensations. Presently

We feel it quicken in the dark sometimes;

Then, mark, be reverent, be obedient,—

For those dumb motions of imperfect life

Are oracles of vital Deity

Attesting the Hereafter. Let who says

‘The soul’s a clean white paper,’ rather say,

A palimpsest, a prophets holograph

Defiled, erased and covered by a monk’s,—

The apocalypse, by a Longus! poring on

Which obscene text, we may discern perhaps

Some fair, fine trace of what was written once,

Some upstroke of an alpha and omega

Expressing the old scripture.

Books, books, books!

I had found the secret of a garret-room

Piled high with cases in my father’s name;

Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out

Among the giant fossils of my past,

Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs

Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there

At this or that box, pulling through the gap,

In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,

The first book first. And how I felt it beat

Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark,

An hour before the sun would let me read!

My books!

At last, because the time was ripe,

I chanced upon the poets.

As the earth

Plunges in fury, when the internal fires Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat

The marts and temples, the triumphal gates

And towers of observation, clears herself

To elemental freedom—thus, my soul,

At poetry’s divine first finger touch,

Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,

Convicted of the great eternities

Before two worlds.

What’s this, Aurora Leigh,

You write so of the poets, and not laugh?

Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark,

Exaggerators of the sun and moon,

And soothsayers in a tea-cup?

I write so

Of the only truth-tellers, now left to God,—

The only speakers of essential truth,

Opposed to relative, comparative,

And temporal truths; the only holders by

His sun-skirts, through conventional grey glooms;

The only teachers who instruct mankind,

From just a shadow on a charnel-wall,

To find man’s veritable stature out,

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! what are you about?’

How all those workers start amid their work,

Look round, look up, and feel, a moment’s space,

That carpet-dusting, though a pretty trade,

Is not the imperative labour after all.

My own best poets, am I one with you,

That thus I love you,—or but one through love?

Does all this smell of thyme about my feet

Conclude my visit to your holy hill

In personal presence, or but testify

The rustling of your vesture through my dreams

With influent odours? When my joy and pain,

My thought and aspiration, like the stops

Of pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb

If not melodious, do you play on me,

My pipers,—and if, sooth, you did not blow,

Would not sound come? or is the music mine,

As a man’s voice or breath is called his own,

Inbreathed by the Life-breather? There’s a doubt

For cloudy seasons!

But the sun was high

When first I felt my pulses set themselves

For concords; when the rhythmic turbulence

Of blood and brain swept outward upon words,

As wind upon the alders blanching them

By turning up their under-natures till

They trembled in dilation. 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.

O life, O poetry, —

Which means life in life! cognisant of life

Beyond this blood-beat,—passionate for truth

Beyond these senses,—poetry, my life,—

My eagle, with both grappling feet still hot

From Zeus’s thunder, who has ravished me

Away from all the shepherds, sheep, and dogs,

And set me in the Olympian roar and round

Of luminous faces, for a cup-bearer,

To keep the mouths of all the godheads moist

For everlasting laughters,—I, myself,

Half drunk across the beaker, with their eyes!

How those gods look!

Enough so, Ganymede.

We shall not bear above a round or two—

We drop the golden cup at Heré’s foot

And swoon back to the earth,—and find ourselves

Face-down among the pine-cones, cold with dew,

While the dogs bark, and many a shepherd scoffs,

‘What’s come now to the youth?’ Such ups and downs

Have poets.

Am I such indeed? The name

Is royal, and to sign it like a queen,

Is what I dare not,—though some royal blood

Would seem to tingle in me now and then,

With sense of power and ache,—with imposthumes

And manias usual to the race. Howbeit

I dare not: ’tis too easy to go mad,

And ape a Bourbon in a crown of straws;

The thing’s too common.

Many fervent souls

Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel

If steel had offered, in a restless heat

Of doing something. Many tender souls

Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread,

As children, cowslips:—the more pains they take,

The work more withers. Young men, ay, and maids,

Too often sow their wild oats in tame verse,

Before they sit down under their own vine

And live for use. Alas, near all the birds

Will sing at dawn,—and yet we do not take

The chaffering swallow for the holy lark.

In those days, though, I never analysed

Myself even. All analysis comes late.

You catch a sight of Nature, earliest,

In full front sun-face, and your eyelids wink

And drop before the wonder of’t; you miss

The form, through seeing the light. I lived, those days,

And wrote because I lived—unlicensed else:

My heart beat in my brain. Life’s violent flood

Abolished bounds,—and, which my neighbour’s field,

Which mine, what mattered? It is so in youth.

We play at leap-frog over the god Term;

The love within us and the love without

Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love,

We scarce distinguish. So, with other power.

Being acted on and acting seem the same:

In that first onrush of life’s chariot-wheels,

We know not if the forests move or we.

And so, like most young poets, in a flush

Of individual life, I poured myself

Along the veins of others, and achieved

Mere lifeless imitations of live verse,

And made the living answer for the dead,

Profaning nature. ‘Touch not, do not taste,

Nor handle,’—we’re too legal, who write young:

We beat the phorminx till we hurt our thumbs,

As if still ignorant of counterpoint;

We call the Muse . . ‘O Muse, benignant Muse!’—

As if we had seen her purple-braided head

With the eyes in it start between the boughs

As often as a stag’s. What make-believe,

With so much earnest! what effete results,

From virile efforts! what cold wire-drawn odes

From such white heats!—bucolics, where the cows

Would scare the writer if they splashed the mud

In lashing off the flies,—didactics, driven

Against the heels of what the master said;

And counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumps

A babe might blow between two straining cheeks

Of bubbled rose, to make his mother laugh;

And elegiac griefs, and songs of love,

Like cast-off nosegays picked up on the road,

The worse for being warm: all these things, writ

On happy mornings, with a morning heart,

That leaps for love, is active for resolve,

Weak for art only. Oft, the ancient forms

Will thrill, indeed, in carrying the young blood.

The wine-skins, now and then, a little warped,

Will crack even, as the new wine gurgles in.

Spare the old bottles!—spill not the new wine.

By Keats’s soul, the man who never stepped

In gradual progress like another man,

But, turning grandly on his central self,

Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years

And died, not young,—(the life of a long life,

Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear

Upon the world’s cold cheek to make it burn

For ever;) by that strong excepted soul,

I count it strange, and hard to understand,

That nearly all young poets should write old;

That Pope was sexagenarian at sixteen,

And beardless Byron academical,

And so with others. It may be, perhaps,

Such have not settled long and deep enough

In trance, to attain to clairvoyance,—and still

The memory mixes with the vision, spoils,

And works it turbid.

Or perhaps, again,

In order to discover the Muse-Sphinx,

The melancholy desert must sweep round,

Behind you, as before.—

For me, I wrote

False poems, like the rest, and thought them true,

Because myself was true in writing them.

I, peradventure, have writ true ones since

With less complacence.

But I could not hide

My quickening inner life from those at watch.

They saw a light at a window now and then,

They had not set there. Who had set it there?

My father’s sister started when she caught

My soul agaze in my eyes. She could not say

I had no business with a sort of soul,

But plainly she objected,—and demurred,

That souls were dangerous things to carry straight

Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.

She said sometimes, ‘Aurora, have you done

Your task this morning?—have you read that book?

And are you ready for the crochet here?’—

As if she said, ‘I know there’s something wrong,

I know I have not ground you down enough

To flatten and bake you to a wholesome crust

For household uses and proprieties,

Before the rain has got into my barn

And set the grains a-sprouting. What, you’re green

With out-door impudence? you almost grow?’

To which I answered, ‘Would she hear my task,

And verify my abstract of the book?

And should I sit down to the crochet work?

Was such her pleasure?’ . . Then I sate and teased

The patient needle till it spilt the thread,

Which oozed off from it in meandering lace

From hour to hour. I was not, therefore, sad;

My soul was singing at a work apart

Behind the wall of sense, as safe from harm

As sings the lark when sucked up out of sight,

In vortices of glory and blue air.

And so, through forced work and spontaneous work,

The inner life informed the outer life,

Reduced the irregular blood to settled rhythms,

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.

I learnt to love that England. Very oft,

Before the day was born, or otherwise

Through secret windings of the afternoons,

I threw my hunters off and plunged myself

Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag

Will take the waters, shivering with the fear

And passion of the course. And when, at last

Escaped,—so many a green slope built on slope

Betwixt me and the enemy’s house behind,

I dared to rest, or wander,—like a rest

Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,—

And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement,

(As if God’s finger touched but did not press

In making England!) such an up and down

Of verdure,—nothing too much up or down,

A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky

Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb;

Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises,

Fed full of noises by invisible streams;

And open pastures, where you scarcely tell

White daisies from white dew,—at intervals

The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out

Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,—

I thought my father’s land was worthy too

Of being my Shakspeare’s.

Very oft alone,

Unlicensed; not unfrequently with leave

To walk the third with Romney and his friend

The rising painter, Vincent Carrington,

Whom men judge hardly, as bee-bonneted,

Because he holds that, paint a body well,

You paint a soul by implication, like

The grand first Master. Pleasant walks! for if

He said . . ‘When I was last in Italy’ . .

It sounded as an instrument that’s played

Too far off for the tune—and yet it’s fine

To listen.

Often we walked only two,

If cousin Romney pleased to walk with me.

We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced:

We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched—

Say rather, scholars upon different tracks,

And thinkers disagreed; he, overfull

Of what is, and I, haply, overbold

For what might be.

But then the thrushes sang,

And shook my pulses and the elms’ new leaves,—

And then I turned, and held my finger up,

And bade him mark that, howsoe’er the world

Went ill, as he related, certainly

The thrushes still sang in it.—At which word

His brow would soften,—and he bore with me

In melancholy patience, not unkind,

While, breaking into voluble ecstasy,

I flattered all the beauteous country round,

As poets use . . the skies, the clouds, the fields,

The happy violets hiding from the roads

The primroses run down to, carrying gold,—

The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out

Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths

’Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all alive

With birds and gnats and large white butterflies

Which look as if the May-flower had sought life

And palpitated forth upon the wind,—

Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist,

Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills,

And cattle grazing in the watered vales,

And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods,

And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,

Confused with smell of orchards. ‘See,’ I said,

‘And see! is God not with us on the earth?

And shall we put Him down by aught we do?

Who says there’s nothing for the poor and vile

Save poverty and wickedness? behold!’

And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped,

And clapped my hands, and called all very fair.

In the beginning when God called all good,

Even then, was evil near us, it is writ.

But we, indeed, who call things good and fair,

The evil is upon us while we speak;

Deliver us from evil, let us pray.

2.4.5" Sonnets from the Portuguese

I.

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, . .

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me. Straightway I was ‘ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery while I strove, . .

“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death!” I said,

But, there,

The silver answer rang . . “Not Death, but Love.”

II.

But only three in all God’s universe

Have heard this word thou hast said; Himself, beside

Thee speaking and me listening! and replied

One of us . . that was God! . . and laid the curse

So darkly on my eyelids as to amerce

My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,

The deathweights, placed there, would have signified

Less absolute exclusion. “Nay” is worse

From God than from all others, O my friend!

Men could not part us with their worldly jars,

Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend:

Our hands would touch, for all the mountain-bars;—

And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,

We should but vow the faster for the stars.

III.

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

Unlike our uses, and our destinies.

Our ministering two angels look surprise

On one another, as they strike athwart

Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art

A guest for queens to social pageantries,

With gages from a hundred brighter eyes

Than tears, even, can make mine, to ply thy part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do

With looking from the lattice-lights at me,

A poor, tired, wandering singer? . . singing through

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?

The chrism is on thine head,—on mine, the dew,—

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

IV.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor,

Most gracious singer of high poems! where

The dancers will break footing from the care

Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear

To let thy music drop here unaware

In folds of golden fulness at my door?

Look up and see the casement broken in,

Hie bats and owlets builders in the roof!

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Hush! call no echo up in further proof

Of desolation! there’s a voice within

That weeps . . as thou must sing . . alone, aloof.

V.

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow

The grey dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head,

O My beloved, will not shield thee so,

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! Go.

VI.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand

Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore

Alone upon the threshold of my door

Of individual life, I shall command

The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand

Serenely in the sunshine as before,

Without the sense of that which I forbore, . .

Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land

Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

With pulses that beat double. What I do

And what I dream include thee, as the wine

Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue

God for myself. He hears that name of thine,

And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.

VII.

The face of all the world is changed, I think,

Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul

Move still, oh, still, beside me; as they stole

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink

Of obvious death, where I who thought to sink

Was caught up into love and taught the whole

Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole

God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,

And praise its sweetness, sweet, with thee anear.

The names of country, heaven, are changed away

For where thou art or shalt be, there or here;

And this . . this lute and song . . loved yesterday,

(The singing angels know) are only dear,

Because thy name moves right in what they say.

VIII.

What can I give thee back, O liberal

And princely giver, . . who hast brought the gold

And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,

And laid them on the outside of the wall,

For such as I to take, or leave withal,

In unexpected largesse? Am I cold,

Ungrateful, that for these most manifold

High gifts, I render nothing back at all?

Not so. Not cold!—but very poor instead!

Ask God who knows! for frequent tears have run

The colours from my life, and left so dead

And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done

To give the same as pillow to thy head.

Go farther! Let it serve to trample on.

IX.

Can it be right to give what I can give?

To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears

As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years

Re-sighing on my lips renunciative

Through those infrequent smiles, which fail to live

For all thy adjurations? O my fears,

That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,

So to be lovers; and I own and grieve

That givers of such gifts as mine are, must

Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!

I will not soil thy purple with my dust,

Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,

Nor give thee any love . . . which were unjust.

Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

X.

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed

And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,

Let temple bum, or flax! An equal light

Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed.

And love is fire: and when I say at need

I love thee . . mark! . . I love thee! . . in thy sight

I stand transfigured, glorified aright,

With conscience of the new rays that proceed

Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low

In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures

Who love God, God accepts while loving so.

And what I feel, across the inferior features

Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show

How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

XI.

And therefore if to love can be desert,

I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale

As these you see, and trembling knees that fail

To bear the burden of a heavy heart,

This weary minstrel-life that once was girt

To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail

To pipe now ‘gainst the woodland nightingale

A melancholy music! . . why advert

To these things? O Beloved, it is plain

I am not of thy worth nor for thy place:

And yet because I love thee, I obtain

From that same love this vindicating grace,

To live on still in love and yet in vain, . .

To bless thee yet renounce thee to thy face.

XII.

Indeed this very love which is my boast,

And which, when rising up from breast to brow,

Doth crown me with a ruby large enow

To draw men’s eyes, and prove the inner cost, . .

This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,

I should not love withal, unless that thou

Hadst set me an example, shown me how,

When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,

And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak

Of love even, as a good thing of my own.

Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,

And placed it by thee on a golden throne,—

And that I love, (O soul, I must be meek!)

Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

XIII.

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

The love I bear thee, finding words enough,

And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,

Between our faces, to cast light on each?—

I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach

My hand to hold my spirit so far off

From myself. . me . . that I should bring thee proof

In words, of love hid in me out of reach.

Nay, let the silence of my womanhood

Commend my woman-love to thy belief,—

Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,

And rend the garment of my life, in brief,

By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,

Lest one touch of this heart, convey its grief.

XIV.

If thou must love me, let it be for nought

Except for love’s sake only. Do not say

“I love her for her smile . . her look . . her way

Of speaking gently, . . for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may

Be changed, or change for thee,—and love so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,

Since one might well forget to weep who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby.

But love me for love’s sake, that evermore

Thou may’st love on through love’s eternity.

XV.

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear

Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;

For we two look two ways, and cannot shine

With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.

On me thou lookest, with no doubting care,

As on a bee shut in a crystalline,—

For sorrow hath shut me safe in love’s divine,

And to spread wing and fly in the outer air

Were most impossible failure, if I strove

To fail so. But I look on thee . . on thee . .

Beholding, besides love, the end of love,

Hearing oblivion beyond memory . . .

As one who sits and gazes, from above,

Over the rivers to the bitter sea.

XVI.

And yet, because thou overcomest so,

Because thou art more noble and like a king,

Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling

Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow

Too close against thine heart, henceforth to know

How it shook when alone. Why, conquering

May prove as lordly and complete a thing

In lifting upward as in crushing low:

And, as a soldier struck down by a sword

May cry, “My strife ends here,” and sink to earth

Even so, Beloved, I at last record,

Here ends my doubt! If thou invite me forth,

I rise above abasement at the word.

Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.

XVII.

My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes

God set between His After and Before,

And strike up and strike off the general roar

Of the rushing worlds, a melody that floats

In a serene air purely. Antidotes

Of medicated music, answering for

Mankind’s forlornest uses, thou canst pour

From thence into their ears. God’s will devotes

Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine!

How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?

A hope, to sing by gladly? . . or a fine

Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse? . .

A shade, in which to sing . . . of palm or pine?

A grave, on which to rest from singing? . . Choose.

XVIII.

I never gave a lock of hair away

To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,

Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully

I ring out to the full brown length and say

“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;

My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,

Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,

As girls do, any more. It only may

Now shade on two pale cheeks, the mark of tears,

Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside

Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears

Would take this first; but Love is justified:

Take it thou, . . finding pure, from all those years,

The kiss my mother left here when she died.

XIX.

The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandise;

I barter curl for curl upon that mart;

And from my poet’s forehead to my heart,

Receive this lock which outweighs argosies,—

As purply black, as erst to Pindar’s eyes

The dim purpureal tresses gloomed athwart

The nine white Muse-brows. For this counterpart, . .

The bay-crown’s shade, Beloved, I surmise,

Still lingers on thy curl, it is so black!

Thus, with a fillet of smooth-kissing breath,

I tie the shadow safe from gliding back,

And lay the gift where nothing hindereth,

Here on my heart as on thy brow, to lack

No natural heat till mine grows cold in death.

XX.

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think

That thou wast in the world a year ago,

What time I sate alone here in the snow

And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink

No moment at thy voice, . . but link by link

Went counting all my chains as if that so

They never could fall off at any blow

Struck by thy possible hand . . . . why, thus I drink

Of life’s great cup of wonder. Wonderful,

Never to feel thee thrill the day or night

With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull

Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white

Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,

Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

XXI.

Say over again and yet once over again

That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated

Should seem “a cuckoo-song,” as thou dost treat it,

Remember never to the hill or plain,

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain,

Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed!

Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted

By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt’s pain

Cry . . speak once more . . thou lovest! Who can fear

Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll—

Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll

The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,

To love me also in silence, with thy soul.

XXII.

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,

Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Until the lengthening wings break into fire

At either curvèd point,—what bitter wrong

Can the earth do to us, that we should not long

Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,

The angels would press on us, and aspire

To drop some golden orb of perfect song

Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay

Rather on earth, Beloved,—where the unfit

Contrarious moods of men recoil away

And isolate pure spirits, and permit

A place to stand and love in for a day,

With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

XXIII.

Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead,

Would’st thou miss any life in losing mine,

And would the sun for thee more coldly shine,

Because of grave-damps falling round my head?

I marvelled, my Beloved, when I read

Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine—

But . . so much to thee? Can I pour thy wine

While my hands tremble? Then my soul, instead

Of dreams of death, resumes life’s lower range!

Then, love me, Love! look on me . . breathe on me!

As brighter ladies do not count it strange,

For love, to give up acres and degree,

I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange

My near sweet view of Heaven, for earth with thee!

XXIV.

Let the world’s sharpness like a clasping knife

Shut in upon itself and do no harm

In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm;

And let us hear no sound of human strife,

After the click of the shutting. Life to life—

I lean upon thee, Dear, without alarm,

And feel as safe as guarded by a charm,

Against the stab of worldlings who if rife

Are weak to injure. Very whitely still

The lilies of our lives may reassure

Their blossoms from their roots! accessible

Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer;

Growing straight, out of man’s reach, on the hill.

God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

XXV.

A heavy heart, Beloved, have I borne

From year to year until I saw thy face,

And sorrow after sorrow took the place

Of all those natural joys as lightly worn

As the stringed pearls . . each lifted in its turn

By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace

Were changed to long despairs, . . till God’s own grace

Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn

My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring

And let it drop adown thy calmly great

Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing

Which its own nature doth precipitate,

While thine doth close above it mediating

Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.

XXVI.

I lived with visions for my company

Instead of men and women, years ago,

And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know

A sweeter music than they played to me.

But soon their trailing purple was not free

Of this world’s dust,—their lutes did silent grow,

And I myself grew faint and blind below

Their vanishing eyes. Then thou didst come . . to be,

Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,

Their songs, their splendours . . (better, yet the same, . .

As river-water hallowed into fonts . . )

Met in thee, and from out thee overcame

My soul with satisfaction of all wants—

Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

XXVII.

My own Beloved, who hast lifted me

From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown,

And in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown

A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully

Shines out again, as all the angels see,

Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own,

Who earnest to me when the world was gone,

And I who looked for only God, found thee!

I find thee: I am safe, and strong, and glad.

As one who stands in dewless asphodel

Looks backward on the tedious time he had

In the upper life . . so I, with bosom-swell,

Make witness here between the good and bad,

That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

XXVIII.

My letters! all dead paper, . . mute and white!—

And yet they seem alive and quivering

Against my tremulous hands, which loose the string

And let them drop down on my knee to-night.

This said, . . he wished to have me in his sight

Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring

To come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,

Yet I wept for it!—this, . . the paper’s light . .

Said, Dear, I love thee: and I sank and quailed

As if God’s future thundered on my past:

This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled

With lying at my heart that beat too fast:

And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed,

Is what this said, I dared repeat at last!

XXIX.

I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud

About thee, as wild vines about a tree,—

Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see

Except the straggling green which hides the wood.

Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood

I will not have my thoughts instead of thee

Who art dearer, better! Rather instantly

Renew thy presence! As a strong tree should,

Rustle thy boughs, and set thy trunk all bare,

And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee,

Drop heavily down, . . burst, shattered, everywhere!

Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee

And breathe within thy shadow a new air,

I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.

XXX.

I see thine image through my tears to-night,

And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How

Refer the cause?—Beloved, is it thou

Or I? Who makes me sad? The acolyte

Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite,

May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow,

On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow

Perplexed, uncertain, since thou’rt out of sight,

As he, in his swooning ears, the choir’s amen!

Beloved, dost thou love? or did I see all

The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when

Too vehement light dilated my ideal

For my soul’s eyes? Will that light come again,

As now these tears come . . . falling hot and real?

XXXI.

Thou comest! all is said without a word.

I sit beneath thy looks, as children do

In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through

Their happy eyelids from an unaverred

Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred

In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue

The sin most, but the occasion . . . that we two

Should for a moment stand unministered

By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close,

Thou dovelike help! and, when my fears would rise,

With thy broad heart serenely interpose!

Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies

These thoughts which tremble when bereft of those,

Like callow birds left desert to the skies.

XXXII.

The first time that the sun rose on thine oath

To love me, I looked forward to the moon

To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon

And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.

Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;

And, looking on myself, I seemed not one

For such man’s love!—more like an out of tune

Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth

To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,

Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.

I did not wrong myself so, but I placed

A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float

‘Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced,—

And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.

XXXIII.

Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear

The name I used to run at, when a child,

From innocent play, and leave the cowslips piled,

To glance up in some face that proved me dear

With the look of its eyes. I miss the clear

Fond voices, which, being drawn and reconciled

Into the music of Heaven’s undefiled,

Call me no longer. Silence on the bier,

While I call God . . call God!—So let thy mouth

Be heir to those who are now exanimate:

Gather the north flowers to complete the south,

And catch the early love up in the late!

Yes, call me by that name,—and I, in truth,

With the same heart, will answer, and not wait.

XXXIV.

With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee

As those, when thou shalt call me by my name—

Lo, the vain promise! Is the same, the same,

Perplexed and ruffled by life’s strategy?

When called before, I told how hastily

I dropped my flowers, or brake off from a game,

To run and answer with the smile that came

At play last moment, and went on with me

Through my obedience. When I answer now,

I drop a grave thought;—break from solitude:—

Yet still my heart goes to thee . . . ponder how . .

Not as to a single good but all my good!

Lay thy hand on it, best one, and allow

That no child’s foot could run fast as this blood.

XXXV.

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange

And be all to me? Shall I never miss

Home-talk and blessings and the common kiss

That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,

When I look up, to drop on a new range

Of walls and floors . . another home than this?

Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is

Filled by dead eyes, too tender to know change?

That’s hardest! If to conquer love, has tried,

To conquer grief tries more . . . as all things prove

For grief indeed is love, and grief beside,

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love—

Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,

And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

XXXVI.

When we met first and loved, I did not build

Upon the event with marble. Could it mean

To last, a love set pendulous between

Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled,

Distrusting every light that seemed to gild

The onward path, and feared to overlean

A finger even. And, though I have grown serene

And strong since then, I think that God has willed

A still renewable fear . . O love, O troth . .

Lest these enclasped hands should never hold,

This mutual kiss drop down between us both

As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold.

And Love be false! if he, to keep one oath,

Must lose one joy by his life’s star foretold.

XXXVII.

Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make

Of all that strong divineness which I know

For thine and thee, an image only so

Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break.

It is that distant years which did not take

Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow,

Have forced my swimming brain to undergo

Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake

Thy purity of likeness, and distort

Thy worthiest love with worthless counterfeit.

As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,

His guardian sea-god to commemorate,

Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort,

And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.

XXXVIII.

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed

The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,

And ever since it grew more clean and white, . . .

Slow to world-greetings . . quick with its “Oh, list,”

When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst

I could not wear here plainer to my sight,

Than that first kiss. The second passed in height

The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,

Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!

That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown,

With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.

The third, upon my lips, was folded down

In perfect, purple state! since when, indeed,

I have been proud and said, “My Love, my own.”

XXXIX.

Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace

To look through and behind this mask of me,

(Against which, years have beat thus blenchingly

With their rains!) and behold my soul’s true face,

The dim and weary witness of life’s race:—

Because thou hast the faith and love to see,

Through that same soul’s distracting lethargy,

The patient angel waiting for his place

In the new Heavens: because nor sin nor woe,

Nor God’s infliction, nor death’s neighbourhood,

Nor all, which others viewing, turn to go, . .

Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed, . .

Nothing repels thee, . . Dearest, teach me so

To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!

XL.

Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!

I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.

I have heard love talked in my early youth,

And since, not so long back but that the flowers

Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours

Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth

For any weeping. Polypheme’s white tooth

Slips on the nut, if after frequent showers

The shell is over-smooth; and not so much

Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate,

Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such

A lover, my Beloved! thou canst wait

Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch,

And think it soon when others cry “Too late.”

XLI.

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,

With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all

Who paused a little near the prison-wall,

To hear my music in its louder parts,

Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s

Or temple’s occupation, beyond call.

But thou, who in my voice’s sink and fall,

When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s

Own instrument, didst drop down at thy foot,

To hearken what I said between my tears, . .

Instruct me how to thank thee!—Oh, to shoot

My soul’s full meaning into future years,

That they should lend it utterance, and salute

Love that endures! with Life that disappears!

XLII.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith;

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

XLIII.

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers

Plucked in the garden, all the summer through

And winter, and it seemed as if they grew

In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.

So, in the like name of that love of ours,

Take back these thoughts, which here unfolded too,

And which on warm and cold days I withdrew

Front my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers

Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,

And wait thy weeding: yet here’s eglantine,

Here’s ivy!—take them, as I used to do

Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine;

Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,

And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

2.4.6: Mother and Poet

I.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,

And one of them shot in the west by the sea.

Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast

And are wanting a great song for Italy free,

Let none look at me!

II.

Yet I was a poetess only last year,

And good at my art, for a woman, men said;

But this woman, this, who is agonized here, —

The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head

For ever instead.

III.

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!

What art is she good at, but hurting her breast

With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?

Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,

And I proud, by that test.

IV.

What art’s for a woman? To hold on her knees

Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat,

Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees

And ‘broider the long-clothes and neat little coat ;

To dream and to doat.

V.

To teach them . . . It stings there! I made them indeed

Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,

That a country’s a thing men should die for at need.

I prated of liberty, rights, and about

The tyrant cast out.

VI.

And when their eyes flashed . . . O my beautiful eyes! . . .

I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels

Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise

When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels!

God, how the house feels!

VII.

At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled

With my kisses,—of camp-life and glory, and how

They both loved me; and, soon coming home to be spoiled

In return would fan off every fly from my brow

With their green laurel-bough.

VIII.

Then was triumph at Turin: Ancona was free!’

And some one came out of the cheers in the street,

With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.

My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,

While they cheered in the street.

IX.

I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime

As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained

To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time

When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained

To the height he had gained.

X.

And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,

Writ now but in one hand, I was not to faint, —

One loved me for two—would be with me ere long :

And Viva l’ Italia!—he died for, our saint,

Who forbids our complaint.”

XI.

My Nanni would add, he was safe, and aware

Of a presence that turned off the balls,—was imprest

It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,

And how ‘twas impossible, quite dispossessed,

To live on for the rest.”

XII.

On which, without pause, up the telegraph line

Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta : — Shot.

Tell his mother. Ah, ah, his, ‘their ‘ mother,—not mine,’

No voice says “My mother” again to me. What!

You think Guido forgot

XIII.

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,

They drop earth’s affections, conceive not of woe?

I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven

Through THAT Love and Sorrow which reconciled so

The Above and Below.

XIV.

O Christ of the five wounds, who look’dst through the dark

To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,

How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,

Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,

And no last word to say!

XV.

Both boys dead? but that’s out of nature. We all

Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

‘Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;

And, when Italy’s made, for what end is it done

If we have not a son?

XVI.

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta’s taken, what then?

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport

Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?

When the guns of Cavalli with final retort

Have cut the game short?

XVII.

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,

When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,

When you have your country from mountain to sea,

When King Victor has Italy’s crown on his head,

(And I have my Dead) —

XVIII.

What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low,

And burn your lights faintly! My country is there,

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:

My Italy ‘s THERE, with my brave civic Pair,

To disfranchise despair!

XIX.

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,

And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;

But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length

Into wail such as this—and we sit on forlorn

When the man-child is born.

XX.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,

And one of them shot in the west by the sea.

Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast

You want a great song for your Italy free,

Let none look at me!

2.4.7: Reading and Review Questions

1. How, and why, do Barrett Browning’s poems call attention to religious and moral hypocrisies? How, if at all, does she deploy that criticism against social ills?
2. Why, and to what effect, does Barrett Browning’s poetry focus on love? How do you know? How, if at all, does she consider the gendered differences and effects of love?
3. Why, and to what effect, are political issues included in Barrett Browning’s poetry? How does she present, or describe, political issues? What is her viewpoint on the issues she presents? How do you know?
4. Which predecessors or literary mentors, if any, does Barrett Browning lay claim to in her poetry, and why?