Because not poets enough to understand
That life develops from within.For me,
Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,
Of work like this! . . perhaps a woman's soul
Aspires, and not creates! yet we aspire,
And yet I'll try out your perhapses, sir;
And if I fail.. why, burn me up my straw
Like other false works-I'll not ask for grace,
Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I
Who love my art, would never wish it lower
To suit my stature. I may love my art,
You'll grant that even a woman may love art,
Seeing that to waste true love on anything,
Is womanly, past question.'
The very last word which I said, that day,
As you the creaking of the door, years past,
Which let upon you such disabling news
You ever after have been graver.
His eyes, the motions in his silent mouth,
Were fiery points on which my words were caught, Transfixed for ever in my memory
For his sake, not their own. And yet I know
I did not love him. . nor he me .. that's sure..
And what I said, is unrepented of,
As truth is always. Yet . . a princely man!-
If hard to me, heroic for himself!
He bears down on me through the slanting years,
The stronger for the distance. If he had loved,
Ay, loved me, with that retributive face, . .
I might have been a common woman now,
And happier, less known and less left alone;
Perhaps a better woman after all,-
With chubby children hanging on my neck
That bear such fruit, are proud to stoop with it.
The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.
And I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright,
Still worthy of having spoken out the truth,
By being content I spoke it, though it set
Him there, me here.-O woman's vile remorse,
To hanker after a mere name, a show,
A supposition, a potential love!
Does every man who names love in our lives,
Become a power for that? is love's true thing
So much best to us, that what personates love
Is next best? A potential love, forsooth!
We are not so vile. No, no-he cleaves, I think,
This man, this image, . . chiefly for the wrong
And shock he gave my life, in finding me
Precisely where the devil of my youth
Had set me, on those mountain-peaks of hope
All glittering with the dawn-dew, all erect
And famished for the morning,-saying, while
I looked for empire and much tribute, 'Come,
I have some worthy work for thee below.
Come, sweep my barns, and keep my hospitals,—
And I will pay thee with a current coin
Which men give women.'
As we spoke, the grass
Was trod in haste beside us, and my aunt,
With smile distorted by the sun,-face, voice,
As much at issue with the summer-day
As if you brought a candle out of doors,—
Broke in with, 'Romney, here!-My child, entreat
Your cousin to the house, and have your talk,
If girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come.
He answered for me calmly, with pale lips
That seemed to motion for a smile in vain.
'The talk is ended, madam, where we stand.
Your brother's daughter has dismissed me here;
And all my answer can be better said
Beneath the trees, than wrong by such a word
Your house's hospitalities. Farewell.'
With that he vanished. I could hear his heel
Ring bluntly in the lane, as down he leapt
The short way from us.-Then, a measured speech
Withdrew me. 'What means this, Aurora Leigh?
My brother's daughter has dismissed my guests?'
The lion in me felt the keeper's voice,
Through all its quivering dewlaps: I was quelled
Before her,-meekened to the child she knew:
I prayed her pardon, said, 'I had little thought
To give dismissal to a guest of hers,
In letting go a friend of mine, who came
To take me into service as a wife,-
No more than that, indeed.'
Pray heaven,' she answered, 'that I was not mad.
I could not mean to tell her to her face
That Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife,
'I think he rather stooped to take me up
For certain uses which he found to do
For something called a wife. He never asked.'
'What stuff!' she answered; 'are they queens, these
They must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks, Spread out upon the ground, before they'll step One footstep for the noblest lover born.'
'But I am born,' I said with firmness, 'I, To walk another way than his, dear aunt.'
You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months Will walk as well as you,' she cried in haste, 'Without a steadying finger. Why, you child, God help you, you are groping in the dark, For all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps, That you, sole offspring of an opulent man, Are rich and free to choose a way to walk? You think, and it's a reasonable thought, That I besides, being well to do in life, Will leave my handful in my niece's hand When death shall paralyse these fingers? Pray, Pray, child, albeit I know you love me not,— As if you loved me, that I may not die! For when I die and leave you, out you go, (Unless I make room for you in my grave) Unhoused, unfed, my dear, poor brother's lamb, (Ah heaven, that pains!)—without a right to crop A single blade of grass beneath these trees, Or cast a lamb's small shadow on the lawn, Unfed, unfolded! Ah, my brother, here's The fruit you planted in your foreign loves!Ay, there's the fruit he planted! never look Astonished at me with your mother's eyes, For it was they, who set you where you are, An undowered orphan. Child, your father's choice Of that said mother, disinherited
His daughter, his and hers. Men do not think
Of sons and daughters, when they fall in love,
So much more than of sisters; otherwise,
He would have paused to ponder what he did,
And shrunk before that clause in the entail
Excluding offspring by a foreign wife
(The clause set up a hundred years ago
By a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girl.
And had his heart danced over in return)
But this man shrunk at nothing, never thought
Of you, Aurora, any more than me-
Your mother must have been a pretty thing,
For all the coarse Italian blacks and browns,
To make a good man, which my brother was,
Unchary of the duties to his house;
But so it fell indeed. Our cousin Vane,
Vane Leigh, the father of this Romney, wrote
Directly on your birth, to Italy,
'I ask your baby daughter for my son
In whom the entail now merges by the law.
Betroth her to us out of love, instead
Of colder reasons, and she shall not lose
By love or law from henceforth'-
'-so he wrote;
A generous cousin, was my cousin Vane.
Remember how he drew you to his knee
The year you came here, just before he died,
And hollowed out his hands to hold your cheeks,
And wished them redder,-you remember Vane?
And now his son who represents our house
And holds the fiefs and manors in his place,
To whom reverts my pittance when I die,
(Except a few books and a pair of shawls)
The boy is generous like him, and prepared
To carry out his kindest word and thought
To you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man
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