{"1": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3825", "width": "2191", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0001.jp2"}, "2": {"fulltext": "Class K4/H .T\\nGcpiglitl?.iSi^\\nCflPQUCHT DEPOSm", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0002.jp2"}, "3": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3709", "width": "2222", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0003.jp2"}, "4": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0004.jp2"}, "5": {"fulltext": "z\\nf /3", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0005.jp2"}, "6": {"fulltext": "2Q- 7-S", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0006.jp2"}, "7": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH\\na Poem in Jsiint Books\\nBY\\nELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING\\nFK03I THE TWELFTH LONDON EDITION\\n23\\nBliistrateti tg\\nF. T. MERRILL, MARY B. SMITH, FLORENTINE H. HAYDEN,\\nAND F. E. WRIGHT\\nlEngrabEti bg\\nANDREW, KILBURN, AND SEAVERNS\\nNEW YORK N^/7-y\\nTHOMAS Y. CROW ELL\\nNo. 13 AsTOR Place", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0009.jp2"}, "8": {"fulltext": "T\u00c2\u00ab\\nW/\\nCopyright,\\nBy T, Y. Crowell Co.\\n1SS3.\\nELECTROTYPED.\\nBOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY,\\nNO. 4 PEARL STREET.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0010.jp2"}, "9": {"fulltext": "\u00c2\u00a9etJication\\nTO\\nJOHN KENYON, ESQUIRE.\\nThe words cousin and friend are constantly recur-\\nring in this poem, the last pages of which have been finished\\nunder the hospitality of your roof, my own dearest cousin\\nand friend, cousin and friend in a sense of less equality\\nand greater disinterestedness than Romney s.\\nEnding, therefore, and preparing once more to quit Eng-\\nland, I venture to leave in your hands this book, the most\\nmature of my works, and the one into which my highest\\nconvictions upon life and art have entered that as, through\\nmy various efforts in literature, and steps in life, you have\\nbelieved in me, borne with me, and been generous to me, far\\nbeyond the common uses of mere relationship or sympathy\\nof mind, so you may kindly accept in sight of the public this\\npoor sign of esteem, gratitude, and affection from\\nYour unforgetting\\nE. B. B.\\n39 Devonshire Place,\\nOctober 17, 1856.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0011.jp2"}, "10": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0012.jp2"}, "11": {"fulltext": "CONTENTS.\\nPage\\nFirst Book 5\\nSecond Book 4i\\nThird Book Si\\nFourth Book 120\\nFifth Book ^59\\nSixth Book ^99\\nSeventh Book 240\\nEighth Book 280\\nNinth Book 321", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0013.jp2"}, "12": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0014.jp2"}, "13": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH,\\nFIRST BOOK.\\nOf writing many books there is no end\\nAnd I, who have written much in prose and verse\\nFor others uses, will write now for mine,\\nWill write my story for my better self.\\nAs when you paint your portrait for a friend,\\nWho keeps it in a drawer, and looks at it\\nLong after he has ceased to love you, just\\nTo hold together what he was and is.\\nI, writing thus, am still what men call young\\nI have not so far left the coasts of life\\nTo travel inland, that I cannot hear\\nThat murmur of the outer Infinite\\nWhich unweaned babies smile at in their sleep\\nWhen wondered at for smiling not so far.\\nBut still I catch my mother at her post\\nBeside the nursery-door, with finger up,\\nHush, hush, here s too much noise while her sweet eyes\\nLeap forward, taking part against her word\\nIn the child s riot. Still I sit, and feel\\nMy father s slow hand, when she had left us both,\\nStroke out my childish curls across his knee.\\nAnd hear Assunta s daily jest (she knew", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0015.jp2"}, "14": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nHe liked it better than a better jest)\\nInquire how many golden scudi went\\nTo make such ringlets. O my father s hand,\\nStroke heavily, heavily, the poor hair down.\\nDraw, press the child s head closer to thy knee\\nI m still too young, too young, to sit alone.\\nI write. My mother was a Florentine,\\nWhose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me\\nWhen scarcely I was four years old my life\\nA poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp\\nWhich went out therefore. She was weak and frail\\nShe could not bear the joy of giving life\\nThe mother s rapture slew her. If her kiss\\nHad left a longer weight upon my lips,\\nIt might have steadied the uneasy breath,\\nAnd reconciled and fraternized my soul\\nWith the new order. As it was, indeed,\\nI felt a mother-want about the world.\\nAnd still went seeking, like a bleating lamb\\nLeft out at night in shutting up the fold,\\nAs restless as a nest-deserted bird\\nGrown chill through something being away, though what\\nIt knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was born\\nTo make my father sadder, and myself\\nNot overjoyous, truly. Women know\\nThe way to rear up children (to be just)\\nThey know a simple, merry, tender knack\\nOf tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes.\\nAnd stringing pretty words that make no sense,\\nAnd kissing full sense into empty words\\nWhich things are corals to cut life upon.\\nAlthough such trifles children learn by such,\\nLove s holy earnest in a pretty play,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0016.jp2"}, "15": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd get not over-early solemnized,\\nBut seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love s Divine,\\nWhich burns and hurts not, not a single bloom,\\nBecome aware and unafraid of love.\\nSuch good do mothers. Fathers love as well,\\nMine did, I know, but still with heavier brains,\\nAnd wills more consciously responsible.\\nAnd not as wisely, since less foolishly\\nSo mothers have God s license to be missed.\\nMy father was an austere Englishman,\\nWho, after a dry lifetime spent at home\\nIn college-learning, law, and parish talk,\\nWas flooded with a passion unaware.\\nHis whole provisioned and complacent past\\nDrowned out from him that moment. As he stood\\nIn Florence, where he had come to spend a month.\\nAnd note the secret of Da Vinci s drains,\\nHe musing somewhat absently perhaps\\nSome English question whether men should pay\\nThe unpopular but necessary tax\\nWith left or right hand in the alien sun\\nIn that great square of the Santissima\\nThere drifted past him (scarcely marked enough\\nTo move his comfortable island scorn)\\nA train of priestly banners, cross, and psalm.\\nThe white-veiled, rose-crowned maidens holding up\\nTall tapers, weighty for such wrists, aslant\\nTo the blue luminous tremor of the air.\\nAnd letting drop the white wax as they went\\nTo eat the bishop s wafer at the church\\nFrom which long trail of chanting priests and girls\\nA face flashed like a cymbal on his face,\\nAnd shook with silent clangor brain and heart,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0017.jp2"}, "16": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nTransfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus,\\nHe, too, received his sacramental gift\\nWith eucharistic meanings for he loved.\\nAnd thus beloved, she died. I ve heard it said\\nThat but to see him, in the first surprise\\nOf widower and father, nursing me,\\nUnmothered little child of four years old,\\nHis large man s hands afraid to touch my curls.\\nAs if the gold would tarnish, his grave lips\\nContriving such a miserable smile\\nAs if he knew needs must, or I should die,\\nAnd yet twas hard, would almost make the stones\\nCry out for pity. There s a verse he set\\nIn Santa Croce to her memory,\\nWeep for an infant too young to weep much\\nWhen death removed this mother, stops the mirth\\nTo-day on women s faces when they walk,\\nWith rosy children hanging on their gowns,\\nUnder the cloister to escape the sun\\nThat scorches in the piazza. After which\\nHe left our Florence, and made haste to hide\\nHimself, his prattling child, and silent grief,\\nAmong the mountains above Pelago\\nBecause unmothered babes, he thought, had need\\nOf mother-nature more than others use,\\nAnd Pan s white goats, with udders warm, and full\\nOf mystic contemplations, come to feed\\nPoor milkless lips of orphans like his own.\\nSuch scholar-scraps he talked, I ve heard from friends\\nFor even prosaic men who wear grief long\\nWill get to wear it as a hat aside\\nWith a flower stuck in t.- Father, then, and child.\\nWe lived among the mountains many years,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0018.jp2"}, "17": {"fulltext": "I, a little child, would crouch\\nFor hours upon the floor, with knees drawn up,\\nAnd gaze across them, half in terror, half\\nIn adoration at the picture. Page 9.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0019.jp2"}, "18": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0020.jp2"}, "19": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nGod s silence on the outside of the house,\\nAnd we who did not speak too loud within,\\nAnd old Assunta to make up the lire,\\nCrossing herself whene er a sudden flame\\nWhich lightened from the firewood made alive\\nThat picture of my mother on the wall.\\nThe painter drew it after she was dead\\nAnd when the face was finished, throat and hands,\\nHer cameriera carried him, in hate\\nOf the English-fashioned shroud, the last brocade\\nShe dressed in at the Pitti. He should paint\\nNo sadder thing than that, she swore, to wrong\\nHer poor signora. Therefore very strange\\nThe effect was. I, a little child, would crouch\\nFor hours upon the floor, with knees drawn up,\\nAnd gaze across them, half in terror, half\\nIn adoration, at the picture there,\\nThat swan-like supernatural white life\\nJust sailing upward from the red stiff silk\\nWhich seemed to have no part in it, nor power\\nTo keep it from quite breaking out of bounds.\\nFor hours I sate and stared. Assunta s awe\\nAnd my poor father s melancholy eyes\\nStill pointed that way. That way went my thoughts\\nWhen wandering beyond sight. And as I grew\\nIn years, I mixed, confused, unconsciously.\\nWhatever I last read, or heard, or dreamed,\\nAbhorrent, admirable, beautiful,\\nPathetical, or ghastly, or grotesque,\\nWith still that face which did not therefore change.\\nBut kept the mystic level of all forms.\\nHates, fears, and admirations was by turns\\nGhost, fiend, and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0021.jp2"}, "20": {"fulltext": "lO AURORA LEIGH.\\nA dauntless Muse who eyes a dreadful Fate\\nA loving Psyche who loses sight of Love\\nA still Medusa with mild milky brows,\\nAll curdled and all clothed upon with snakes\\nWhose slime falls fast as sweat will or anon\\nOur Lady of the Passion, stabbed with swords\\nWhere the Babe sucked or Lamia in her first\\nMoonlighted pallor, ere she shrunk and blinked,\\nAnd shuddering wriggled down to the unclean\\nOr my own mother, leaving her last smile\\nIn her last kiss upon the baby-mouth\\nMy father pushed down on the bed for that\\nOr my dead mother, without smile or kiss,\\nBuried at Florence. All which images.\\nConcentrated on the picture, glassed themselves\\nBefore my meditative childhood, as\\nThe incoherencies of change and death\\nAre represented fully, mixed and merged.\\nIn the smooth fair mystery of perpetual life.\\nAnd while I stared away my childish wits\\nUpon my mother s picture, (ah, poor child\\nMy father, who through love had suddenly\\nThrown off the old conventions, broken loose\\nFrom chin-bands of the soul, like Lazarus,\\nYet had no time to learn to talk, and walk.\\nOr grow anew familiar with the sun\\nWho had reached to freedom, not to action, lived.\\nBut lived as one entranced, with thoughts, not aims\\nWhom love had unmade from a comman man.\\nBut not completed to an uncommon man,\\nMy father taught me what he had learnt the best\\nBefore he died, and left me, grief and love.\\nAnd seeing we had books among the hills.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0022.jp2"}, "21": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nStrong words of counselling souls confederate\\nWith vocal pines arid waters, out of books\\nHe taught me all the ignorance of men,\\nAnd how God laughs in heaven when any man\\nSays, Here I m learned this I understand\\nIn that I am never caught at fault or doubt.\\nHe sent the schools to school, demonstrating\\nA fool will pass for such through one mistake,\\nWhile a philosopher will pass for such\\nThrough said mistakes being ventured in the gross.\\nAnd heaped up to a system.\\nI am like,\\nThey tell me, my dear father. Broader brows\\nHowbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth\\nOf delicate features, paler, near as grave\\nBut then my mother s smile breaks up the whole.\\nAnd makes it better sometimes than itself.\\nSo nine full years our days were hid with God\\nAmong his mountains. I was just thirteen,\\nStill growing like the plants from unseen roots\\nIn tongue-tied springs, and suddenly awoke\\nTo full life and life s needs and agonies,\\nWith an intense, strong, struggling heart, beside\\nA stone-dead father. Life, struck sharp on death,\\nMakes awful lightning. His last word was, Love\\nLove, my child, love, love (then he had done with grief)\\nLove, my child. Ere I answered, he was gone.\\nAnd none was left to love in all the world.\\nThere ended childhood. What succeeded next\\nI recollect, as, after fevers, men\\nThread back the passage of delirium.\\nMissing the turn still, baffled by the door", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0023.jp2"}, "22": {"fulltext": "12 AURORA LEIGH.\\nSmooth, endless days, notched here and there with knives,\\nA weary, wormy darkness, spurred i the flank\\nWith flame, that it should eat and end itself\\nLike some tormented scorpion. Then at last\\nI do remember clearly how there came\\nA stranger with authority, not right\\n(I thought not), who commanded, caught me up\\nFrom old Assunta s neck how with a shriek\\nShe let me go, while I, with ears too full\\nOf my father s silence to shriek back a word,\\nIn all a child s astonishment at grief,\\nStared at the wharf-edge, where she stood and moaned.\\nMy poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned\\nThe white walls, the blue hills, my Italy,\\nDrawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck.\\nLike one in anger drawing back her skirts\\nWhich suppliants catch at. Then the bitter sea\\nInexorably pushed between us both.\\nAnd, sweeping up the ship with my despair,\\nThrew us out as a pasture to the stars.\\nTen nights and days we voyaged on the deep\\nTen nights and days without the common face\\nOf any day or night the moon and sun\\nCut off from the green reconciling earth,\\nTo starve into a blind ferocity.\\nAnd glare unnatural the very sky\\n(Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea\\nAs if no human heart should scape alive),\\nBedraggled with the desolating salt,\\nUntil it seemed no more that holy heaven\\nTo which my father went. All new and strange\\nThe universe turned stranger, for a child.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0024.jp2"}, "23": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nThen land then England oh, the frosty cliffs\\nLooked cold upon me. Could I find a home\\nAmong those mean red houses through the fog\\nAnd when I heard my father s language first\\nFrom alien lips which had no kiss for mine,\\nI wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept\\nAnd some one near me said the child was mad\\nThrough much sea-sickness. The train swept us on.\\nWas this my father s England the great isle\\nThe ground seemed cut up from the fellowship\\nOf verdure, field from field, as man from man\\nThe skies themselves looked low and positive.\\nAs almost you could touch them with a hand.\\nAnd dared to do it, they were so far off\\nFrom God s celestial crystals all things blurred\\nAnd dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates\\nAbsorb the light here Not a hill or stone\\nWith heart to strike a radiant color up,\\nOr active outline on the indifferent air.\\nI think I see my father s sister stand\\nUpon the hall-step of her country-house\\nTo give me welcome. She stood straight and calm.\\nHer somewhat narrow forehead braided tight\\nAs if for taming accidental thoughts\\nFrom possible pulses brown hair pricked with gray\\nBy fiigid use of life (she was not old,\\nAlthough my father s elder by a year)\\nAnd nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines\\nA close mild mouth, a little soured about\\nThe ends, through speaking unrequited loves\\nOr, peradventure, niggardly half-truths\\nEyes of no color once they might have smiled.\\nBut never, never, have forgot themselves", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0025.jp2"}, "24": {"fulltext": "14 AURORA LEIGH.\\nIn smiling cheeks in which was yet a rose\\nOf perished summers, Hke a rose in a book,\\nKept more for ruth than pleasure if past bloom,\\nPast fading also.\\nShe had lived, we ll say,\\nA harmless life, she called a virtuous life,\\nA quiet life, which was not life at all\\n(But that, she had not lived enough to know),\\nBetween the vicar and the county squires,\\nThe lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes\\nFrom the empyrean to assure their souls\\nAgainst chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss,\\nThe apothecar}^ looked on once a year\\nTo prove their soundness of humility.\\nThe poor-club exercised her Christian gifts\\nOf knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,\\nBecause we are of one flesh, after all,\\nAnd need one flannel (with a proper sense\\nOf difference in the quality) and still\\nThe book-club, guarded from your modern trick\\nOf shaking dangerous questions from the crease,\\nPreserved her intellectual. She had lived\\nA sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,\\nAccounting that to leap from perch to perch\\nWas act and joy enough for any bird.\\nDear Heaven, how silly are the things that live\\nIn thickets, and eat berries\\nI, alas\\nA wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,\\nAnd she was there to meet me. Very kind.\\nBring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.\\nShe stood upon the steps to welcome me,\\nCalm, in black garb. I clung about her neck", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0026.jp2"}, "25": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 15\\nYoung babes, who catch at every shred of wool\\nTo draw the new hght closer, catch and cling\\nLess blindly. In my ears my father s word\\nHummed ignorantly, as the sea in shells,\\nLove, love, my child. She, black there with my grief.\\nMight feel my love she was his sister once.\\nclung to her. A moment she seemed moved,\\nILissed me with cold lips, suffered me to cling,\\nA-nd drew me feebly through the hall into\\nThe room she sate in. There, with some strange spasm\\nOf pain and passion, she wrung loose my hand\\nImperiously, and held me at arm s-length.\\nAnd with two gray-steel naked-bladed eyes\\nSearched through my face, ay, stabbed it through and\\nthrough.\\nThrough brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find\\nA wicked murderer in my innocent face,\\nIf not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath.\\nShe struggled for her ordinary calm,\\nAnd missed it rather told me not to shrink,\\nAs if she had told me not to lie or swear,\\nShe loved my father, and would love me, too,\\nAs long as I deserved it. Very kind.\\nI understood her meaning afterward\\nShe thought to find my mother in my face.\\nAnd questioned it for that. For she, my aunt,\\nHad loved my father truly, as she could,\\nAnd hated with the gall of gentle souls\\nMy Tuscan mother, who had fooled away\\nA wise man from wise courses, a good man\\nFrom obvious duties, and depriving her.\\nHis sister, of the household precedence.\\nHad wronged his tenants, robbed his native land,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0027.jp2"}, "26": {"fulltext": "1 6 AURORA LEIGH,\\nAnd made him mad, alike by life and death,\\nIn love and sorrow. She had pored for years\\nWhat sort of woman could be suitable\\nTo her sort of hate, to entertain it with,\\nAnd so her very curiosity\\nBecame hate, too, and all the idealism\\nShe ever used in life was used for hate,\\nTill hate, so nourished, did exceed at last\\nThe love from which it grew in strength and heat,\\nAnd wrinkled her smooth conscience with a sense\\nOf disputable virtue (say not sin)\\nWhen Christian doctrine was enforced at church.\\nAnd thus my father s sister was to me\\nMy mother s hater. From that day she did\\nHer duty by me (I appreciate it\\nIn her own word as spoken to herself).\\nHer duty in large measure, well pressed out.\\nBut measured always. She was generous, bland.\\nMore courteous than was tender, gave me still\\nThe first place, as if fearful that God s saints\\nWould look down suddenly and say, Herein\\nYou missed a point, I think, through lack of love\u00e2\u0080\u009e\\nAlas a mother never is afraid\\nOf speaking angrily to any child.\\nSince love, she knows, is justified of love.\\nAnd I I was a good child, on the whole,\\nA meek and manageable child. Why not\\nI did not live to have the faults of life.\\nThere seemed more true life in my father s grave\\nThan in all England. Since that threw me off\\nWho fain would cleave (his latest will, they say,\\nConsigned me to his land), I only thought", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0028.jp2"}, "27": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 7\\nOf lying quiet there, where I was thrown\\nLike seaweed on the rocks, and suffering her\\nTo prick me to a pattern with her pin,\\nFibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf.\\nAnd dry out from my drowned anatomy\\nThe last sea-salt left in me.\\nSo it was.\\nI broke the copious curls upon my head\\nIn braids, because she liked smooth-ordered hair,\\nI left off saying my sweet Tuscan words\\nWhich still at any stirring of the heart\\nCame up to float across the English phrase\\nAs lilies {Bene or Che che), because\\nShe liked my father s child to speak his tongue.\\nI learnt the collects and the catechism\\nThe creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice^\\nThe Articles, the Tracts against the times\\n(By no means Buonaventure s Prick of Love\\nAnd various popular synopses of\\nInhuman doctrines never taught by John,\\nBecause she liked instructed piety.\\nI learnt my complement of classic French\\n(Kept pure of Balzac and neologism)\\nAnd German also, since she liked a range\\nOf liberal education, tongues, not books.\\nI learnt a little algebra, a little\\nOf the mathematics, brushed with extreme flounce\\nThe circle of the sciences, because\\nShe misliked women who are frivolous.\\nI learnt the royal genealogies\\nOf Oviedo, the internal laws\\nOf the Burmese Empire^ by how many feet\\nMount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe,\\nWhat navigable river joins itself", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0029.jp2"}, "28": {"fulltext": "1 8 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo Lara, and what census of the year five\\nWas taken at Klagenfurt, because she liked\\nA general insight into useful facts.\\nI learnt much music, such as would have been\\nAs quite impossible in Johnson s day\\nAs still it might be wished, fine sleights of hand\\nAnd unimagined fingering, shuffling off\\nThe hearer s soul through hurricanes of notes\\nTo a noisy Tophet and I drew costumes\\nFrom French engravings, nereids neatly draped\\n(With smirks of simmering godship). I washed in\\nLandscapes from nature (rather say, washed out),\\nI danced the polka and Cellarius,\\nSpun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax,\\nBecause she liked accomplishments in girls.\\nI read a score of books on womanhood,\\nTo prove, if women do not think at all.\\nThey may teach thinking (to a maiden-aunt,\\nOr else the author), books that boldly assert\\nTheir right of comprehending husband s talk\\nWhen not too deep, and even of answering\\nWith pretty may it please you, or so it is\\nTheir rapid insight and fine aptitude.\\nParticular worth and general missionariness.\\nAs long as they keep quiet by the fire.\\nAnd never say no when the world says ay,\\nFor that is fatal their angelic reach\\nOf virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn.\\nAnd fatten household sinners their, in brief,\\nPotential faculty in every thing\\nOf abdicating power in it she owned\\nShe liked a woman to be womanly.\\nAnd English women, she thanked God, and sighed\\n(Some people always sigh in thanking God)", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0030.jp2"}, "29": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 9\\nWere models to the universe. And last\\nI learned cross-stitch, because she did not like\\nTo see me wear the night with empty hands,\\nA-doing nothing. So my shepherdess\\nWas something, after all (the pastoral saints\\nBe praised for t), leaning lovelorn, with pink eyes,\\nTo match her shoes, when I mistook the silks.\\nHer head uncrushed by that round weight of hat\\nSo strangely similar to the tortoise-shell\\nWhich slew the tragic poet.\\nBy the way,\\nThe works of women are symbolical.\\nWe sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,\\nProducing what A pair of slippers, sir.\\nTo put on when you re weary, or a stool\\nTo stumble over, and vex you Curse that stool\\nOr else, at best, a cushion, where you lean\\nAnd sleep, and dream of something we are not,\\nBut would be for your sake. Alas, alas\\nThis hurts most, this, that after all we are paid\\nThe worth of our work, perhaps.\\nIn looking down\\nThose years of education (to return)\\nI wonder if Brinvilliers suffered more\\nIn the water-torture flood succeeding flood\\nTo drench the incapable throat, and split the veins\\nThan I did. Certain of your feebler souls\\nGo out in such a process many pine\\nTo a sick, inodorous light my own endured\\nI had relations in the Unseen, and drew\\nThe elemental nutriment and heat\\nFrom nature, as earth feels the sun at nights,\\nOr as a babe sucks surely in the dark\\nI kept the life thrust on me, on the outside", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0031.jp2"}, "30": {"fulltext": "20 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOf the inner life, with all its ample room\\nFor heart and lungs, for will and intellect,\\nInviolable by conventions. God,\\nI thank thee for that grace of thine\\nAt first\\nI felt no life which was not patience did\\nThe thing she bade me, without heed to a thing\\nBeyond it sate in just the chair she placed.\\nWith back against the window, to exclude\\nThe sight of the great lime-tree on the lawn.\\nWhich seemed to have come on purpose from the woods\\nTo bring the house a message, ay, and walked\\nDemurely in her carpeted low rooms,\\nAs if I should not, hearkening my own steps,\\nMisdoubt I was alive. I read her books,\\nWas civil to her cousin, Romney Leigh\\nGave ear to her vicar, tea to her visitors,\\nAnd heard them whisper, when I changed a cup\\n(I blushed for joy at that), The Italian child,\\nFor all her blue eyes and her quiet ways.\\nThrives ill in England. She is paler yet\\nThan when we came the last time she will die.\\nWill die. My Cousin Romney Leigh blushed, too.\\nWith sudden anger, and approaching me.\\nSaid low between his teeth, You re wicked now\\nYou wish to die and leave the world a-dusk\\nFor others, with your naughty light blown out\\nI looked into his face defyingly.\\nHe might have known, that, being what I was,\\nTwas natural to hke to get away\\nAs far as dead folk can and then, indeed.\\nSome people make no trouble when they die.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0032.jp2"}, "31": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 21\\nHe turned and went abruptly, slammed the door,\\nAnd shut his dog out.\\nRomney, Romney Leigh.\\nI have not named my cousin hitherto,\\nAnd yet I used him as a sort of friend\\nMy elder by four years, but cold and shy\\nAnd absent tender, when he thought of it,\\nWhich scarcely was imperative, grave betimes,\\nAs well as early master of Leigh Hall,\\nWhereof the nightmare sate upon his youth\\nRepressing all its seasonable delights,\\nAnd agonizing with a ghastly sense\\nOf universal hideous want and wrong\\nTo incriminate possession. When he came\\nFrom college to the country-, very oft\\nHe crossed the hill on visits to my aunt,\\nWith gifts of blue grapes from the hot-houses,\\nA book in one hand, mere statistics (if\\nI chanced to lift the cover), count of all\\nThe goats whose beards grow sprouting down toward hell\\nAgainst God s separative judgment-hour.\\nAnd she, she almost loved him even allowed\\nThat sometimes he should seem to sigh my way\\nIt made him easier to be pitiful.\\nAnd sighing was his gift. So, undisturbed\\nAt whiles, she let him shut my music up,\\nAnd push my needles down, and lead me out\\nTo see in that south angle of the house\\nThe figs grow black as if by a Tuscan rock,\\nOn some light pretext. She would turn her head\\nAt other moments, go to fetch a thing.\\nAnd leave me breath enough to speak with him,\\nFor his sake it was simple.\\nSometimes, too,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0033.jp2"}, "32": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nHe would have saved me utterly, it seemed,\\nHe stood and looked so.\\nOnce he stood so near\\nHe dropped a sudden hand upon my head\\nBent down on woman s work, as soft as rain\\nBut then I rose and shook it off as fire,\\nThe stranger s touch that took my father s place.\\nYet dared seem soft.\\nI used him for a friend\\nBefore I ever knew him for a friend.\\nTwas better, twas worse also, afterward\\nWe came so close, we saw our differences\\nToo intimately. Always Romney Leigh\\nWas looking for the worms, I for the gods.\\nA godlike nature his the gods look down,\\nIncurious of themselves and certainly\\nTis well I should remember, how those days,\\nI was a worm, too, and he looked on me.\\nA little by his act, perhaps, yet more\\nBy something in me, surely not my will,\\nI did not die but slowly, as one in swoon.\\nTo whom life creeps back in the form of death.\\nWith a sense of separation, a blind pain\\nOf blank obstruction, and a roar i the ears\\nOf visionary chariots which retreat\\nAs earth grows clearer slowly, by degrees,\\nI woke, rose up where was I in the world\\nFor uses therefore I must count worth while.\\nI had a little chamber in the house,\\nAs green as any privet-hedge a bird\\nMight choose to build in, though the nest itself\\nCould show but dead-brown sticks and straws. The walls", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0034.jp2"}, "33": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 23\\nWere green the carpet was pure green the straight\\nSmall bed was curtained greenly and the folds\\nHung green about the window, which let in\\nThe outdoor world with all its greenery.\\nYou could not push your head out, and escape\\nA dash of dawn-dew from the honeysuckle,\\nBut so you were baptized into the grace\\nAnd privilege of seeing.\\nFirst the lime\\n(I had enough there of the lime, be sure\\nMy morning- dream was often hummed away\\nBy the bees in it) past the lime the lawn.\\nWhich, after sweeping broadly round the house,\\nWent trickling through the shrubberies in a stream\\nOf tender turf, and wore and lost itself\\nAmong the acacias, over which you saw\\nThe irregular line of elms by the deep lane\\nWhich stopped the grounds, and dammed the overflow\\nOf arbutus and laurel. Out of sight\\nThe lane was sunk so deep, no foreign tramp.\\nNor drover of wild ponies out of Wales,\\nCould guess if lady s hall or tenant s lodge\\nDispensed such odors, though his stick, well crooked.\\nMight reach the lowest trail of blossoming brier\\nWhich dipped upon the wall. Behind the elms.\\nAnd through their tops, you saw the folded hills\\nStriped up and down with hedges (burly oaks\\nProjecting from the line to show themselves).\\nThrough which my Cousin Romney s chimneys smoked.\\nAs still as when a silent mouth in frost\\nBreathes, showing where the woodlands hid Leigh Hall\\nWhile, fiar above, a jut of table-land,\\nA promontory without water, stretched.\\nYou could not catch it if the days were thick,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0035.jp2"}, "34": {"fulltext": "24 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOr took it for a cloud but, otherwise,\\nThe vigorous sun would catch it up at eve,\\nAnd use it for an anvil till he had filled\\nThe shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts.\\nProtesting against night and darkness then.\\nWhen all his setting trouble was resolved\\nTo a trance of passive g\\\\ory, you might see\\nIn apparition on the golden sky,\\n(Alas, my Giotto s background the sheep run\\nAlong the fine clear outline, small as mice\\nThat run along a witch s scarlet thread.\\nNot a grand nature not my chestnut woods\\nOf Vallombrosa, cleaving by the spurs\\nTo the precipices not my headlong leaps\\nOf waters, that cry out for joy or fear\\nIn leaping through the palpitating pines,\\nLike a white soul tossed out to eternity\\nWith thrills of time upon it not, indeed,\\nMy multitudinous mountains, sitting in\\nThe magic circle, with the mutual touch\\nElectric, panting from their full, deep hearts\\nBeneath the influent heavens, and waiting for\\nCommunion and commission. Italy\\nIs one thing, England one.\\nOn English ground\\nYou understand the letter, ere the fall\\nHow Adam lived in a garden. All the fields\\nAre tied up fast with hedges, nosegay-like\\nThe hills are crumpled plains, the plains parterres\\nThe trees round, woolly, ready to be clipped\\nAnd if you seek for any wilderness.\\nYou find at best a park. A nature tamed.\\nAnd grown domestic like a barn-door fowl,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0036.jp2"}, "35": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIQH. 25\\nWhich does not awe you with its claws and beak,\\nNor tempt you to an eyry too high up,\\nBut which in cackUng sets you thinking of\\nYour eggs to-morrow at breakfast, in the pause\\nOf finer meditation.\\nRather say,\\nA sweet, familiar nature, stealing in\\nAs a dog might, or child, to touch your hand,\\nOr pluck your gown, and humbly mind you so\\nOf presence and affection, excellent\\nFor inner uses, from the things without.\\nI could not be unthankful, I who was\\nEntreated thus, and holpen. In the room\\nI speak of, ere the house was well awake.\\nAnd also after it was well asleep,\\nI sate alone, and drew the blessing in\\nOf all that nature. With a gradual step,\\nA stir among the leaves, a breath, a ray.\\nIt came in softly, while the angels made\\nA place for it beside me. The moon came.\\nAnd swept my chamber clean of foohsh thoughts,\\nThe sun came, saying, Shall I lift this light\\nAgainst the lime-tree, and you will not look\\nI make the birds sing listen but for you,\\nGod never hears your voice, excepting when\\nYou lie upon the bed at nights, and weep.\\nThen something moved me. Then I wakened up,\\nMore slowly than I verily write now\\nBut wholly, at last, I wakened, opened wide\\nThe window and my soul, and let the airs\\nAnd outdoor sights sweep gradual gospels in,\\nRegenerating what I was. O Life", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0037.jp2"}, "36": {"fulltext": "26 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHow oft we throw it off, and think, Enough,\\nEnough of life in so much here s a cause\\nFor rupture herein we must break with Life,\\nOr be ourselves unworthy here we are wronged,\\nMaimed, spoiled for aspiration farewell. Life\\nAnd so, as fro ward babes, we hide our eyes\\nAnd think all ended. Then Life calls to us\\nIn some transformed, apocalyptic voice.\\nAbove us, or below us, or around\\nPerhaps we name it Nature s voice, or Love s,\\nTricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed\\nTo own our compensations than our griefs\\nStill Life s voice still we make our peace with Life.\\nAnd I, so young then, was not sullen. Soon\\nI used to get up early just to sit\\nAnd watch the morning quicken in the gray,\\nAnd hear the silence open like a flower.\\nLeaf after leaf, and stroke with listless hand\\nThe woodbine through the window, till at last\\nI came to do it with a sort of love,\\nAt foolish unaware whereat I smiled\\nA melancholy smile, to catch myself\\nSmiling for joy.\\nCapacity for joy\\nAdmits temptation.! It seemed, next, worth while\\nTo dodge the sharp sword set against my life.\\nTo slip down stairs through all the sleepy house,\\nAs mute as any dream there, and escape,\\nAs a soul from the body, out of doors,\\nGlide through the shrubberies, drop into the lane,\\nAnd wander on the hills an hour or two.\\nThen back again, before the house should stir.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0038.jp2"}, "37": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 27\\nOr else I sate on in my chamber green,\\nAnd lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed\\nMy prayers without the vicar read my books\\nWithout considering whether they were fit\\nTo do me good. Mark there. We get no goodi\\nBy being ungenerous, even to a book.\\nAnd calculating profits, so much help\\nBy so much reading. It is rather when\\nWe gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge\\nSoul-forward, headlong, into a book s profound,/\\nImpassioned for its beauty and salt of truth,\\nTis then we get the right good from a book.\\nI read much. What my father taught before\\nFrom many a volume, love re-emphasized\\nUpon the self-same pages Theophrast\\nGrew tender with the memory of his eyes,\\nAnd ^lian made mine wet. The trick of Greek\\nAnd Latin he had taught me, as he would\\nHave taught me wrestling, or the game of fives.\\nIf such he had known, most like a shipwrecked man,\\nWho heaps his single platter with goats cheese\\nAnd scarlet berries or like any man\\nWho loves but one, and so gives all at once,\\nBecaus*- he has it, rather than because\\nHe counts it worthy. Thus my father gave\\nAnd thus, as did the women formerly\\nBy young Achilles, when they pinned a veil\\nAcross the boy s audacious front, and swept\\nWith tuneful laughs the silver-fretted rocks,\\nHe wrapt his little daughter in his large\\nMan s doublet, careless did it fit or no.\\nBut after I had read for memory\\nI read for hope. The path my father s foot", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0039.jp2"}, "38": {"fulltext": "28 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHad trod me out (which suddenly broke off\\nWhat time he dropped the wallet of the flesh\\nAnd passed) alone I carried on, and set\\nMy child-heart gainst the thorny underwood,\\nTo reach the grassy shelter of the trees.\\nAh babe i the wood, without a brother-babe\\nMy own self-pity, like the redbreast bird,\\nFlies back to cover all that past with leaves.\\nSublimest danger, over which none weeps.\\nWhen any young wayfaring soul goes forth\\nAlone, unconscious of the perilous road.\\nThe day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes.\\nTo thrust his own way, he an alien, through\\nThe world of books Ah, you you think it fine,\\nYou clap hands A fair day you cheer him on.\\nAs if the worst could happen were to rest\\nToo long beside a fountain. Yet behold.\\nBehold the world of books is still the world,\\nAnd worldlings in it are less merciful\\nAnd more puissant. For the wicked there\\nAre winged like angels every knife that strikes\\nIs edged from elemental fire to assail\\nA spiritual life the beautiful seems right\\nBy force of beauty, and the feeble wrong\\nBecause of weakness power is justified.\\nThough armed against St. Michael many a crown\\nCovers bald foreheads. In the book-world, true.\\nThere s no lack, neither, of God s saints and kings,\\nThat shake the ashes of the grave aside\\nFrom their calm locks, and, undiscomfited.\\nLook steadfast truths against Time s changing mask.\\nTrue, many a prophet teaches in the roads\\nTrue, many a seer pulls down the flaming heavens", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0040.jp2"}, "39": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 29\\nUpon his own head in strong martyrdom\\nIn order to light men a moment s space.\\nBut stay Who judges Who distinguishes\\nTwixt Saul and Nahash justly, at first sight,\\nAnd leaves Kmg Saul precisely at the sin,\\nTo serve King David Who discerns at once\\nThe sound of the trumpets, when the trumpets blow\\nFor Alaric as well as Charlemagne\\nWho judges wizards, and can tell true seers\\nFrom conjurors The child, there Would you leave\\nThat child to wander in a battle-field,\\nAnd push his innocent smile against the guns\\nOr even in a catacomb, his torch\\nGrown ragged in the fluttering air, and all\\nThe dark a-mutter round him not a child.\\nI read books bad and good, some bad and good\\nAt once (good aims not always make good books\\nWell-tempered spades turn up ill-smelling soils\\nIn digging vineyards even) books that prove\\nGod s being so definitely, that man s doubt\\nGrows self-defined the other side the line,\\nMade atheist by suggestion moral books.\\nExasperating to license genial books.\\nDiscounting from the human dignity\\nAnd merry books, which set you weeping when\\nThe sun shines ay, and melancholy books.\\nWhich make you laugh that any one should weep\\nIn this disjointed life for one wrong more.\\nThe world of books is still the world, I write\\nAnd both worlds have God s providence, thank God,\\nTo keep and hearten. With some struggle, indeed,\\nAmong the breakers, some hard swimming through", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0041.jp2"}, "40": {"fulltext": "30 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe deeps, I lost breath in my soul sometimes,\\nAnd cried, God save me, if there s any God\\nBut, even so, God saved me and, being dashed\\nFrom error on to error, every turn\\nStill brought me nearer to the central truth,\\nI thought so. All this anguish in the thick\\nOf men s opinions press and counterpress.\\nNow up, now down, now underfoot, and now\\nEmergent all the best of it, perhaps.\\nBut throws you back upon a noble trust\\nAnd use of your own instinct, merely proves\\nPure reason stronger than bare inference\\nAt strongest. Try it, fix against heaven s wall\\nThe scaling-ladders of school logic, mount\\nStep by step sight goes faster that still ray\\nWhich strikes out from you, how, you cannot tell.\\nAnd why, you know not, (did you eliminate.\\nThat such as you indeed should analyze\\nGoes straight and fast as light, and high as God.\\nThe cygnet finds the water but the man\\nIs born in ignorance of his element.\\nAnd feels out, blind at first, disorganized\\nBy sin i the blood, his spirit-insight dulled\\nAnd crossed by his sensations. Presently\\nHe feels it quicken in the dark sometimes,\\nWhen, mark, be reverent, be obedient,\\nFor such dumb motions of imperfect life\\nAre oracles of vital Deity,\\nAttesting the Hereafter. Let who says\\nThe soul s a clean white paper, rather say,\\nA palimpsest, a prophet s holograph.\\nDefiled, erased, and covered by a monk s,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0042.jp2"}, "41": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 31\\nThe apocalypse, by a Longus poring on\\nWhich obscene text, we may discern, perhaps,\\nSome fair, fine trace of what was written once.\\nSome upstroke of an alpha and omega\\nExpressing the old scripture.\\nBooks, books, books\\nI had found the secret of a garret room,\\nPiled high with cases in my father s name.\\nPiled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out\\nAmong the giant fossils of my past,\\nLike some small nimble mouse between the ribs\\nOf a mastodon, I nibbled here and there\\nAt this or that box, pulling through the gap\\nIn heats of terror, haste, victorious joy.\\nThe first book first. And how I felt it beat\\nUnder my pillow in the morning s dark,\\nAn hour before the sun would let me read\\nMy books At last, because the time was ripe,\\nI chanced upon the poets.\\nAs the earth\\nPlunges in fury, when the internal fires\\nHave reached and pricked her heart, and throwing flat\\nThe marts and temples, the triumphal gates\\nAnd towers of observation, clears herself\\nTo elemental freedom thus my soul.\\nAt poetry s divine first finger-touch.\\nLet go conventions, and sprang up surprised.\\nConvicted of the great eternities\\nBefore two worlds.\\nWhat s this, Aurora Leigh,\\nYou write so of the poets, and not laugh\\nThose virtuous liars, dreamers after dark,\\nExaggerators of the sun and moon,\\nAnd soothsayers in a tea-cup", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0043.jp2"}, "42": {"fulltext": "32 AURORA LEIGH.\\nI write so\\nOf the only truth-tellers now left to God,\\nThe only speakers of essential truth,\\nOpposed to relative, comparative,\\nAnd temporal truths the only holders by\\nHis sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms\\nThe only teachers who instruct mankind.\\nFrom just a shadow on a charnel-wall,\\nTo find man s veritable stature out\\nErect, sublime, the measure of a man\\nAnd that s the measure of an angel, says\\nThe apostle. Ay, and while your common men\\nLay telegraphs, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine,\\nAnd dust the flaunty carpets of the world\\nFor kings to walk on, or our president.\\nThe poet suddenly will catch them up\\nWith his voice like a thunder, This is soul.\\nThis is life, this word is being said in heaven,\\nHere s God down on us what are you about\\nHow all those workers start amid their work.\\nLook round, look up, and feel, a moment s space.\\nThat carpet-dusting, though a pretty trade,\\nIs not the imperative labor, after all\\nMy own best poets, am I one with you,\\nThat thus I love you, or but one through love\\nDoes all this smell of thyme about my feet\\nConclude my visit to your holy hill\\nIn personal presence, or but testify\\nThe rustling of your vesture through my dreams\\nWith influent odors When my joy and pain,\\nMy thought and aspiration, like the stops\\nOf pipe or flute, are absolutely dumb.\\nUnless melodious, do you play on me,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0044.jp2"}, "43": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nMy pipers and if, sooth, you did not blow,\\nWould no sound come or is the music mine,\\nAs a man s voice or breath is called his own.\\nInbreathed by the Life-breather There s a doubt\\nFor cloudy seasons\\nBut the sun was high\\nWhen first I felt my pulses set themselves\\nFor concord when the rhythmic turbulence\\nOf blood and brain swept outward upon words,\\nAs wind upon the alders, blanching them\\nBy turning up their under-natures till\\nThey trembled in dilation. O delight\\nAnd triumph of the poet, who would say,\\nA man s mere yes, a woman s common no,\\nA little human hope of that or this.\\nAnd says the word so that it burns you through\\nWith a special revelation, shakes the heart\\nOf all the men and women in the world.\\nAs if one came back from the dead, and spoke.\\nWith eyes too happy, a familiar thing\\nBecome divine i the utterance while for him\\nThe poet, speaker, he expands with joy\\nThe palpitating angel in his flesh\\nThrills inly with consenting fellowship\\nTo those innumerous spirits who sun themselves\\nOutside of time.\\nO life O poetry,\\nWhich means life in life cognizant of life\\nBeyond this blood-beat, passionate for truth\\nBeyond these senses poetry, my life,\\nMy eagle, with both grappling feet still hot\\nFrom Zeus s thunder, who hast ravished me\\nAway from all the shepherds, sheep and dogs,\\nAnd set me in the Olympian roar and round", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0045.jp2"}, "44": {"fulltext": "34 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOf luminous faces for a cup-bearer,\\nTo keep the mouths of all the godheads moist\\nFor everlasting laughters I myself\\nHalf drunk across the beaker with their eyes\\nHow those gods look\\nEnough so, Ganymede,\\nWe shall not bear above a round or two.\\nWe drop the golden cup at Here s foot.\\nAnd swoon back to the earth, and find ourselves\\nFace down among the pine-cones, cold with dew,\\nWhile the dogs bark, and many a shepherd scoffs,\\nWhat s now come to the youth Such ups and downs\\nHave poets.\\nAm I such indeed The name\\nIs royal, and to sign it like a queen\\nIs what I dare not, though some royal blood\\nWould seem to tingle in me now and then,\\nWith sense of power and ache, with imposthumes\\nAnd manias usual to the race. Howbeit\\nI dare not tis too easy to go mad\\nAnd ape a Bourbon in a crown of straws\\nThe thing s too common.\\nMany fervent souls\\nStrike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel,\\nIf steel had offered, in a restless heat\\nOf doing something. Many tender souls\\nHave strung their losses on a rhyming thread.\\nAs children, cowslips the more pains they take,\\nThe w^ork more withers. Young men, ay, and maids,\\nToo often sow their wild oats in tame verse.\\nBefore they sit down under their own vin^.\\nAnd live for use. Alas near all the birds\\nWill sing at dawn, and yet we do not take\\nThe chaffering swallow for the holy lark.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0046.jp2"}, "45": {"fulltext": "A URORA LEIGH. 3 5\\nIn those days, though, I never analyzed,\\nNot even myself. Analysis comes late.\\nYou catch a sight of Nature earliest\\nIn full front sun-face, and your eyelids wink\\nAnd drop before the wonder oft you miss\\nThe form, through seeing the light. I lived those days,\\nAnd wrote because I lived \u00e2\u0080\u0094r unlicensed else;\\nXMy heart beat in my brain. ^Life s violent flood\\nAbolished bounds and which my neighbor s field.\\nWhich mine, what mattered It is thus in youth.\\nWe play at leap-frog over the god Term\\nThe love within us and the love without\\nAre mixed, confounded if we are loved, or love,\\nWe scarce distinguish. Thus with other power\\nBeing acted on and acting seem the same.\\nIn that first onrush of life s chariot-wheels,\\nWe know not if the forests move, or we.\\nAnd so, like most young poets, in a flush\\nOf individual life I poured myself\\nAlong the veins of others, and achieved\\nMere lifeless imitations of live verse,\\nAnd made the living answer for the dead.\\nProfaning nature. Touch not, do not taste.\\nNor handle, we re too legal, who write young\\nWe beat the phorminx till we hurt our thumbs,\\nAs if still ignorant of counterpoint\\nWe call the Muse, O Muse, benignant Muse\\nAs if we had seen her purple-braided head,\\nWith the eyes in it, start between the boughs\\nAs often as a stag s. What make-believe,\\nWith so much earnest what effete results\\nFrom virile efforts what cold wire-drawn odes.\\nFrom such white heats bucolics, where the cows", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0047.jp2"}, "46": {"fulltext": "36 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWould scare the writer if they splashed the mud\\nIn lashing off the flies didactics, driven\\nAgainst the heels of what the master said\\nAnd counterfeiting epics, shrill with trumps\\nA babe might blow between two straining cheeks\\nOf bubbled rose, to make his mother laugh\\nAnd elegiac griefs, and songs of love.\\nLike cast-off nosegays picked up on the road,\\nThe worse for being warm all these things, writ\\nOn happy mornings, with a morning heart.\\nThat leaps for love, is active for resolve,\\nWeak for art only. Oft the ancient forms\\nWill thrill, indeed, in carrying the young blood.\\nThe wine-skins, now and then a little warped.\\nWill crack even, as the new wine gurgles in.\\nSpare the old bottles Spill not the new wine.\\nBy Keats s soul, the man who never stepped\\nIn gradual progress like another man.\\nBut, turning grandly on his central self,\\nEnsphered himself in twenty perfect years,\\nAnd died, not young (the life of a long life\\nDistilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear\\nUpon the world s cold cheek to make it burn\\nForever), by that strong excepted soul\\nI count it strange and hard to understand\\nThat nearly all young poets should write old\\nThat Pope was sexagenary at sixteen.\\nAnd beardless Byron academical,\\nAnd so with others. It may be, perhaps.\\nSuch have not settled long and deep enough\\nIn trance to attain to clairvoyance and still\\nThe memory mixes with the vision, spoils,\\nAnd works it turbid.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0048.jp2"}, "47": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 37\\nOr perhaps, again,\\nIn order to discover the Muse-Sphinx,\\nThe melancholy desert must sweep round,\\nBehind you as before.\\nFor me, I wrote\\nFalse poems, like the rest, and thought them true.\\nBecause myself was true in writing them\\nI, peradventure, have writ true ones since\\nWith less complacence.\\nBut I could not hide\\nMy quickening inner life from those at watch.\\nThey saw a light at a window now and then\\nThey had not set there who had set it there\\nMy father s sister started when she caught\\nMy soul agaze in my eyes. She could not say\\nI had no business with a sort of soul\\nBut plainly she objected, and demurred\\nThat souls were dangerous things to carry straight\\nThrough all the spilt saltpetre of the world.\\nShe said sometimes, Aurora, have you done\\nYour task this morning have you read that book\\nAnd are you ready for the crochet here\\nAs if she said, I know there s something wrong\\nI know I have not ground you down enough\\nTo flatten and bake you to a wholesome crust,\\nFor household uses and proprieties.\\nBefore the rain has got into my barn.\\nAnd set the grains a-sprouting. What, you re green\\nWhh outdoor impudence you almost grow\\nTo which I answered, Would she hear my task.\\nAnd verify my abstract of the book\\nOr should 1 sit down to the crochet-work\\nWas such her pleasure Then I sate and teased\\nThe patient needle till it spilt the thread.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0049.jp2"}, "48": {"fulltext": "38 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWhich oozed off from it in meandering lace\\nFrom hour to hour. I was not therefore sad\\nMy soul was singing at a work apart,\\nBehind the wall of sense, as safe from harm\\nAs sings the lark when sucked up out of sight\\nIn vortices of glory and blue air.\\nAnd so, through forced work and spontaneous work\\nThe inner life informed the outer life,\\nReduced the irregular blood to a settled rhythm.\\nMade cool the forehead with fresh sprinkling dreams,\\nAnd rounding to the spheric soul the thin,\\nPined body, struck a color up the cheeks,\\nThough somewhat faint. I clinched my brows across\\nMy blue eyes, greatening in the looking-glass.\\nAnd said, We ll live, Aurora, we ll be strong.\\nThe dogs are on us but we will not die.\\nWhoever lives true life will love true love.\\nI learnt to love that England. Very oft,\\nBefore the day was born, or otherwise\\nThrough secret windings of the afternoons,\\nI threw my hunters off, and plunged myself\\nAmong the deep hills, as a hunted stag\\nWill take the waters, shivering with the fear\\nAnd passion of the course. And when at last\\nEscaped, so many a green slope built on slope\\nBetwixt me and the enemy s house behind,\\nI dared to rest, or wander in a rest\\nMade sweeter for the step upon the grass,\\nAnd view the ground s most gentle dimplement\\n(As if God s finger touched, but did not press,\\nIn making England) such an up-and-down\\nOf verdure, nothing too much up or down.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0050.jp2"}, "49": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 39\\nA ripple of land such little hills the sky\\nCan stoop to tenderly, and the wheat-fields climb\\nSuch nooks of valleys lined with orchises,\\nFed full of noises by invisible streams,\\nAnd open pastures where you scarcely tell\\nWhite daisies from white dew at intervals\\nThe mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out\\nSelf-poised upon their prodigy of shade,\\nI thought my father s land was worthy too\\nOf being my Shakspeare s.\\nVery oft alone,\\nUnlicensed not unfrequently with leave\\nTo walk the third with Romney and his friend\\nThe rising painter, Vincent Carrington,\\nWhom men judge hardly as bee-bonneted,\\nBecause he holds that, paint a body well.\\nYou paint a soul by implication, like\\nThe grand first Master. Pleasant walks for if\\nHe said, When I was last in Italy,\\nIt sounded as an instrument that s played\\nToo far off for the tune, and yet it s fine\\nTo listen.\\nOfter we walked only two,\\nIf Cousin Romney pleased to walk with me.\\nWe read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced.\\nWe were not lovers, nor even friends well matched\\nSay, rather, scholars upon different tracks,\\nAnd thinkers disagreed, he over-full\\nOf what is, and I, haply, overbold\\nFor what might be.\\nBut then the thrushes sang,\\nAnd shook my pulses and the elm s new leaves.\\nAt which I turned, and held my finger up,\\nAnd bade him mark, that howsoe er the world", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0051.jp2"}, "50": {"fulltext": "40 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWent ill, as he related, certainly\\nThe thrushes still sang in it. At the word\\nHis brow would soften and he bore with me\\nIn melancholy patience, not unkind,\\nWhile, breaking into voluble ecstacy,\\nI flattered all the beauteous country round,\\nAs poets use, the skies, the clouds, the fields.\\nThe happy violets hiding from the roads,\\nThe primroses run down to, carrying gold\\nThe tangled hedge-rows, where the cows push out\\nImpatient horns and tolerant churning mouths\\nTwixt dripping ash-boughs hedge-rows all alive\\nWith birds and gnats, and large white butterflies\\nWhich look as if the Mayflower had caught life.\\nAnd palpitated forth upon the wind\\nHills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist\\nFarms, granges, doubled up among the hills\\nAnd cattle grazing in the watered vales\\nAnd cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods\\nAnd cottage-gardens smelling everywhere,\\nConfused with smell of orchards. See I said,\\nAnd see is not God with us on the earth\\nAnd shall we put him down by aught we do\\nWho says there s nothing for the poor and vile\\nSave poverty and wickedness Behold\\nAnd ankle-deep in English grass I leaped.\\nAnd clapped my hands, and called all very fair.\\nIn the beginning, when God called all good,\\nEven then, was evil near us, it is writ\\nBut we indeed who call things good and fair,\\nThe evil is upon us while we speak\\nDeliver us from evil, let us pray.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0052.jp2"}, "51": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 4I\\nSECOND BOOK.\\nTimes followed one another. Came a morn\\nI stood upon the brink of twenty years,\\nAnd looked before and after, as I stood\\nWoman and artist, either incomplete,\\nBoth credulous of completion. There I held\\nThe whole creation in my little cup,\\nAnd smiled with thirsty lips before I drank\\nGood health to you and me, sweet neighbor mine.\\nAnd all these peoples.\\nI was glad that day\\nThe June was in me, with its multitudes\\nOf nightingales all singing in the dark,\\nAnd rosebuds reddening where the calyx split.\\nI felt so young, so strong, so sure of God,\\nSo glad, I could not choose be very wise,\\nAnd, old at twenty, was inclined to pull\\nMy childhood backward in a childish jest\\nTo see the face oft once more, and farewell\\nIn which fantastic mood. I bounded forth\\nAt early morning, would not wait so long\\nAs even to snatch my bonnet by the strings.\\nBut, brushing a green trail across the lawn\\nWith my gown in the dew, took will and way\\nAmong the acacias of the shrubberies,\\nTo fly my fancies in the open air,\\nAnd keep my birthday till my aunt awoke\\nTo stop good dreams. Meanwhile I murmured on\\nAs honeyed bees keep humming to themselves,\\nThe worthiest poets have remained uncrowned\\nTill death has bleached their foreheads to the bone\\nAnd so with me it must be, unless I prove\\nUnworthy oi the grand adversity", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0053.jp2"}, "52": {"fulltext": "42 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd certainly I would not fail so much.\\nWhat, therefore, if I crown myself to-day\\nIn sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it\\nBefore my brows be numbed as Dante s own\\nTo all the tender pricking of such leaves\\nSuch leaves what leaves\\nI pulled the branches down\\nTo choose from.\\nNot the bay I choose no bay,\\n(The fates deny us if we are overbold)\\nNor myrtle, which means chiefly love and love\\nIs something awful, which one dares not touch\\nSo early o mornings. This verbena strains\\nThe point of passionate fragrance and hard by\\nThis guelder-rose, at far too slight a beck\\nOf the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.\\nAh, there s my choice, that ivy on the wall.\\nThat headlong ivy not a leaf will grow\\nBut thinking of a wreath. Large leaves, smooth leaves,\\nSerrated like my vines, and half as green.\\nI like such ivy, bold to leap a height\\nTwas strong to climb as good to grow on graves\\nAs twist about a thyrsus pretty, too,\\n(And that s not ill) when twisted round a comb.\\nThus speaking to myself, half singing it,\\nBecause some thoughts are fashioned like a bell,\\nTo ring with once being touched, I drew a wreath\\nDrenched, blinding me with dew, across my brow.\\nAnd, fastening it behind so, turning, faced\\nMy public Cousin Romney with a mouth\\nTwice graver than his eyes.\\nI stood there flxed,\\nMy arms up, like the caryatid, sole", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0054.jp2"}, "53": {"fulltext": "I stood there fixed,\\nMy arms ud. like the caryatid. Page 42.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0055.jp2"}, "54": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0056.jp2"}, "55": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 43\\nOf some abolished temple, helplessly\\nPersistent in a gesture which derides\\nA former purpose. Yet my blush was flame,\\nAs if from flax, not stone.\\nAurora Leigh,\\nThe earliest of Auroras\\nHand stretched out\\nI clasped, as shipwrecked men will clasp a hand.\\nIndifferent to the sort of palm. The tide\\nHad caught me at my pastime, writing down\\nMy foolish name too near upon the sea.\\nWhich drowned me with a blush as foolish. You,\\nMy cousin\\nThe smile died out in his eyes,\\nAnd dropped upon his lips, a cold dead w^eight,\\nFor just a moment, Here s a book I found\\nNo name writ on it poems, by the form\\nSome Greek upon the margin lady s Greek\\nWithout the accents. Read it Not a word.\\nI saw at once the thing had witchcraft in t,\\nWhereof the reading calls up dangerous spirits\\nI rather bring it to the witch.\\nMy book.\\nYou found it\\nIn the hollow by the stream\\nThat beech leans down into, of which you said\\nThe Oread in it has a Naiad s heart.\\nAnd pines for waters.\\nThank you.\\nThanks to you,\\nMy cousin, that I have seen you not too much\\nWitch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest,\\nTo be a woman also.\\nWith a glance", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0057.jp2"}, "56": {"fulltext": "44 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe smile rose in his eyes again, and touched\\nThe ivy on my forehead, light as air.\\nI answered gravely, Poets needs must be,\\nOr men or women, more s the pity.\\nAh,\\nBut men, and still less women, happily.\\nScarce need be poets. Keep to the green wreath,\\nSince even dreaming of the stone and bronze\\nBrings headaches, pretty cousin, and defiles\\nThe clean white morning dresses.\\nSo you judge,\\nBecause I love the beautiful I must\\nLove pleasure chiefly, and be overcharged\\nFor ease and whiteness well, you know the world,\\nAnd only miss your cousin tis not much.\\nBut learn this I would rather take my part\\nWith God s dead, who afford to walk in white,\\nYet spread his glory, than keep quiet here,\\nAnd gather up my feet from even a step,\\nFor fear to soil my gown in so much dust.\\nI choose to walk at all risks. Here, if heads\\nThat hold a rhythmic thought must ache perforce,\\nFor my part I choose headaches, and to-day s my birthday.\\nDear Aurora, choose instead\\nTo cure them. You have balsams.\\nI perceive.\\nThe headache is too noble for my sex.\\nYou think the heartache would sound decenter.\\nSince that s the woman s special, proper ache,\\nAnd altogether tolerable, except\\nTo a woman.\\nSaying which, I loosed my wreath,\\nAnd swinging it beside me as I walked,\\nHalf petulant, half playful, as we walked,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0058.jp2"}, "57": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 45\\nI sent a sidelong look to find his thought,\\nAs falcon set on falconer s finger may,\\nWith sidelong head, and startled, braving eye,\\nWhich means, You ll see, you ll see I ll soon take flighto\\nYou shall not hinder. He, as shaking out\\nHis hand, and answering, Fly, then, did not speak.\\nExcept by such a gesture. Silently\\nWe paced, until, just coming into sight\\nOf the house-windows, he abruptly caught\\nAt one end of the swinging wreath, and said,\\nAurora There I stopped short, breath and all.\\nAurora, let s be serious, and throw by\\nThis game of head and heart. Life means, be sure,\\nBoth heart and head, both active, both complete,\\nAnd both in earnest. Men and women make\\nThe world, as head and heart make human life.\\nWork, man, work, woman, since there s work to do\\nIn this beleaguered earth for head and heart\\nAnd thought can never do the work of love\\nBut work for ends, I mean for uses, not\\nFor such sleek fringes (do you call them ends.\\nStill less God s glory as we sew ourselves\\nUpon the velvet of those baldaquins\\nHeld twixt us and the sun. That book of yours\\nI have not read a page of but I toss\\nA rose up it falls calyx down, you see\\nThe chances are, that being a woman, young\\nAnd pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes.\\nYou write as well and ill upon the whole\\nAs other women. If as well, what then\\nIf even a little better still, what then 1\\nWe want the best in art now, or no art.\\nThe time is done for facile settings-up", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0059.jp2"}, "58": {"fulltext": "46 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOf minnow-gods, nymphs here, and tritons there\\nThe polytheists have gone out in God,\\nThat unity of bests. No best, no God\\nAnd so with art, we say. Give art s divine,\\nDirect, indubitable, real as grief,\\nOr, leave us to the grief, we grow ourselves\\nDivine by overcoming with mere hope\\nAnd most prosaic patience. You, you are young\\nAs Eve, with nature s daybreak on her face\\nBut this same world you are come to, dearest coz,\\nHas done with keeping birthdays, saves her wreaths\\nTo hang upon her ruins, and forgets\\nTo rhyme the cry with which she still beats back\\nThose savage, hungry dogs that hunt her down\\nTo the empty grave of Christ. The world s hard pressed\\nThe sweat of labor in the early curse\\nHas (turning acrid in six thousand years)\\nBecome the sweat of torture. Who has time,\\nAn hour s time think to sit upon a bank.\\nAnd hear the cymbal tinkle in white hands\\nWhen Egypt s slain, I say, let Miriam sing\\nBefore, where s Moses\\nAh, exactly that,\\nWhere s Moses Is a Moses to be found\\nYou ll seek him vainly in the bulrushes,\\nWhile I in vain touch cymbals. Yet concede.\\nSuch sounding brass has done some actual good\\n(The application in a woman s hand.\\nIf that were credible, being scarcely spoilt),\\nIn colonizing beehives.\\nThere it is\\nYou play beside a deathbed like a child,\\nYet measure to yourself a prophet s place\\nTo teach the living. None of all these things", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0060.jp2"}, "59": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 47\\nCan women understand. You generalize,\\nOh, nothing, not even grief Your quick-breathed hearts\\nSo sympathetic to the personal pang.\\nClose on each separate knife-stroke, yielding up\\nA whole life at each wound, incapable\\nOf deepening, widening a large lap of life\\nTo hold the world-full woe. The human race\\nTo you means such a child, or such a man,\\nYou saw one morning waiting in the cold\\nBeside that gate, perhaps. You gather up\\nA few such cases, and when strong sometimes\\nWill write of factories and of slaves, as if\\nYour father were a negro and your son\\nA spinner in the mills. All s yours and you,\\nAll colored with your blood, or otherwise\\nJust nothing to you. Why, I call you hard\\nTo general suffering. Here s the world half-blind\\nWith intellectual light, half-brutalized\\nWith civilization, having caught the plague\\nIn silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west\\nAlong a thousand railroads, mad with pain.\\nAnd sin, too does one woman of you all\\n(You who weep easily) grow pale to see\\nThis tiger shake his cage i Does one of you\\nStand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls.\\nAnd pine and die, because of the great sum\\nOf universal anguish Show me a tear\\nWet as Cordelia s in eyes bright as yours,\\nBecause the world is mad. You cannot count\\nThat you should weep for this account, not you\\nYou weep for what you know. A red-haired child\\nSick in a fever, if you touch him once,\\nThough but so little as with a finger-tip,\\nWill set you weeping but a million sick", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0061.jp2"}, "60": {"fulltext": "48 AURORA LEIGH.\\nYou could as soon weep for the rule-of-three\\nOr compound fractions. Therefore this same world\\nUncomprehended by you, must remain\\nUninfluenced by you. Women as you are,\\nMere women, personal and passionate,\\nYou give us doating mothers and perfect wives,\\nSublime Madonnas and enduring saints\\nWe get no Christ from you, and verily\\nWe shall not get a poet, in my mind.\\nWith which conclusion you conclude\\nBut this\\nX^That you, Aurora, with the large live brow\\nAnd steady eyelids, cannot condescend\\nTo play at art, as children play at swords,\\nTo show a pretty spirit, chiefly admired\\nBecause true action is impossible.\\nYou never can be satisfied with praise\\nWhich men give women when they judge a book\\nNot as mere work, but as mere w oman s woi k..\\nExpressing the comparative respect,\\nWhich means the absolute scorn. Oh, excellent\\nWhat grace, what facile turns, what fluent sweeps.\\nWhat delicate discernment almost thought\\nThe book does honor to the sex, we hold.\\nAmong our female authors we make room\\nFor this fair writer, and congratulate\\nThe country that produces in these times\\nSuch women, competent to spell.\\nStop there,\\nI answered, burning through his thread of talk\\nWith a quick flame of emotion, you have read\\nMy soul, if not my book, and argue well\\nI would not condescend we will not say", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0062.jp2"}, "61": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 49\\nTo such a kind of jDraise (a worthless end\\nIs praise of all kinds), but to such a use\\nOf holy art and golden life. I am young,\\nAnd peradventure weak you tell me so\\nThrough being a woman. And for all the rest,\\nTake thanks for justice. I would rather dance\\nAt fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped\\nTheir gingerbread for joy, than shift the types\\nFor tolerable verse, intolerable\\nTo men wdio act and suffer. Better far\\nPursue a frivolous trade by serious means,\\nThan a sublime art frivolously.\\nYou\\nChoose nobler work than either, O moist eyes.\\nAnd hurrying lips, and heaving heart We are young,\\nAurora, you and I. The world, look round,\\nThe world we re come to late is swollen hard\\nWith perished generations and their sins\\nThe civilizer s spade grinds horribly\\nOn dead men s bones, and cannot turn up soil\\nThat s otherwise than fetid. All success\\nProves partial failure all advance implies\\nWhat s left behind all triumph, something crushed\\nAt the chariot-wheels all government, some wrong\\nAnd rich men make the poor, who curse the rich,\\nWho agonize together, rich and poor,\\nUnder and over, in the social spasm\\nAnd crisis of the ages. Here s an age\\nThat makes its own vocation here we have stepped\\nAcross the bounds of time here s naught to see.\\nBut just the rich man and just Lazarus,\\nAnd both in torments with a mediate gulf.\\nThough not a hint of Abraham s bosom. Who,\\nBeing man, Aurora, can stand calmly by", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0063.jp2"}, "62": {"fulltext": "50 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd view these things, and never tease his soul\\nFor some great cure No physic for this grief,\\nIn all the earth and heavens, too?\\nYou believe\\nIn God, for your part ay that He who makes\\nCan make good things from ill things, best from worst,\\nAs men plant tulips upon dunghills when\\nThey wish them finest\\nTrue. A death-heat is\\nThe same as life-heat, to be accurate\\nAnd in all nature is no death at all,\\nAs men account of death, so long as God\\nStands witnessing for life perpetually.\\nBy being just God. That s abstract truth, I know,\\nPhilosophy or sympathy with God\\nBut I, I sympathize with man, not God,\\n(I think I was a man for chiefly this,)\\nAnd, when I stand beside a dying bed,\\nTis death to me. Observe it had not much\\nConsoled the race of mastodons to know,\\nBefore they went to fossil, that anon\\nTheir place would quicken with the elephant\\nThey were not elephants, but mastodons\\nAnd I, a man, as men are now, and not\\nAs men may be hereafter, feel with men\\nIn the agonizing present.\\nIs it so,\\nI said, my cousin Is the world so bad.\\nWhile I hear nothing of it through trees\\nThe world was always evil, but so bad t\\nSo bad, Aurora. Dear, my soul is gray\\nWith poring over the long sum of ill\\nSo much for vice, so much for discontent.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0064.jp2"}, "63": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 51\\nSo much for the necessities of power,\\nSo much for the connivances of fear,\\nCoherent in statistical despairs\\nWith such a total of distracted life\\nTo see it down in figures on a page,\\nPale, silent, clear, as God sees through the earth\\nThe sense of all the graves, that s terrible\\nFor one who is not God, and cannot right\\nThe wrong he looks on. May I choose indeed\\nBut vow away my years, my means, my aims.\\nAmong the helpers, if there s any help\\nIn such a social strait The common blood\\nThat swings along my veins is strong enough\\nTo draw me to this duty.\\nThen I spoke\\nI have not stood long on the strand of life,\\nAnd these salt waters have had scarcely time\\nTo creep so high up as to wet my feet\\nI cannot judge these tides I shall, perhaps.\\nA woman s always younger than a man\\nAt equal years, because she is disallowed\\nMaturing by the outdoor sun and air.\\nAnd kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.\\nAh, well I know you men judge otherwise.\\nYou think a woman ripens as a peach.\\nIn the cheeks chiefly. Pass it to me now\\nI m young in age, and younger still, I think,\\nAs a woman. But a child may say amen\\nTo a bishop s prayer, and feel the way it goes.\\nAnd I, incapable to loose the knot\\nOf social questions, can approve, applaud\\nAugust compassion. Christian thoughts that shoot\\nBeyond the vulgar white of personal aims.\\nAccept my reverence.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0065.jp2"}, "64": {"fulltext": "52 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThere he glowed on me\\nWith all his face and eyes. No other help\\nSaid he, no more than so\\nWhat help? I asked.\\nYou d scorn my help, as Nature s self, you say,\\nHas scorned to put her music in my mouth.\\nBecause a woman s. Do you now turn round\\nAnd ask for what a woman cannot give\\nFor what she only can, I turn and ask,\\nHe answered, catching up my hands in his,\\nAnd dropping on me from his high-eaved brow\\nThe full weight of his soul. I ask for love,\\nAnd that she can for life in fellowship\\nThrough bitter duties, that, I know, she can\\nFor wifehood will she\\nNow, I said, may God\\nBe witness twixt us two and with the word,\\nMeseemed I floated into a sudden light\\nAbove his stature, am I proved too weak\\nTo stand alone, yet strong enough to bear\\nSuch leaners on my shoulder poor to think,\\nYet rich enough to sympathize with thought\\nIncompetent to sing, as blackbirds can.\\nYet competent to love, like him\\nI paused\\nPerhaps I darkened, as the lighthouse will\\nThat turns upon the sea. It s always so.\\nAny thing does for a wife.\\nAurora, dear,\\nAnd dearly honored, he pressed in at once\\nWith eager utterance, you translate me ill.\\nI do not contradict my thought of you.\\nWhich is most reverent, with another thought", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0066.jp2"}, "65": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 53\\nFound less so. If your sex is weak for art,\\n(And I who said so did but honor you\\nBy using truth in courtship), it is strong\\nFor life and duty. Place your fecund heart\\nIn mine, and let us blossom for the world\\nThat wants love s color in the gray of time.\\nMy talk, meanwhile, is arid to you, ay.\\nSince all my talk can only set you where\\nYou look down coldly on the arena heaps\\nOf headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct.\\nThe judgment-angel scarce would find his way\\nThrough such a heap of generalized distress\\nTo the individual man with lips and eyes.\\nMuch less Aurora. Ah, my sweet, come down.\\nAnd hand in hand we ll go where yours shall touch\\nThese victims one by one, till, one by one.\\nThe formless, nameless trunk of every man\\nShall seem to wear a head with hair you know.\\nAnd every woman catch your mother s face\\nTo melt you into passion.\\nI am a girl,\\nI answered slowly you do well to name\\nMy mother s face. Though far too early, alas\\nGod s hand did interpose twixt it and me,\\nI know so much of love as used to shine\\nIn that face and another just so much,\\nNo more, indeed, at all. I have not seen\\nSo much love since, I pray you pardon me.\\nAs answers even to make a marriage with\\nIn this cold land of England. What you love\\nIs not a woman, Romney, but a cause\\nYou want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir\\nA wife to help your ends, in her no end.\\nYour cause is noble, your ends excellent", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0067.jp2"}, "66": {"fulltext": "54 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBut I, being most unworthy of these and that,\\nDo otherwise conceive of love. Farewell\\nFarewell, Aurora you reject me thus\\nHe said.\\nSir, you were married long ago.\\nYou have a wife already whom you love,\\nYour social theory. Bless you both, I say.\\nFor my part, I am scarcely meek enough\\nTo be the handmaid of a lawful spouse.\\nDo I look a Hagar, think you\\nSo you jest.\\nNay, so I speak in earnest, I replied.\\nYou treat of marriage too much like, at least,\\nA chief apostle you would bear with you\\nA wife a sister shall we speak it out\\nA sister of charity.\\nThen must it be.\\nIndeed, farewell And was I so far wrong\\nIn hope and in illusion, when I took\\nThe woman to be nobler than the man,\\nYourself the noblest woman in the use\\nAnd comprehension of what love is, love\\nThat generates the likeness of itself\\nThrough all heroic duties so far wrong\\nIn saying bluntly, venturing truth on love,\\nCome, human creature, love and work with me,\\nInstead of, Lady, thou art wondrous fair.\\nAnd, where the Graces walk before, the Muse\\nWill follow at the lightning of their eyes,\\nAnd where the Muse walks, lovers need to creep\\nTurn round and love me, or I die of love\\nWith quiet indignation I broke in,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0068.jp2"}, "67": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 55\\nYou misconceive the question like a man,\\nWho sees a woman as the complement\\nOf his sex merely. You forget too much\\nThat every creature, female as the male.\\nStands single in responsible act and thought\\nAs also in birth and death. Whoever says\\nTo a loyal woman, Love and work with me,\\nWill get fair answers, if the work and love,\\nBeing good themselves, are good for her, the best\\nShe was born for. Women of a softer mood.\\nSurprised by men when scarcely awake to life.\\nWill sometimes only hear the first word, love,\\nAnd catch up with it any kind of work,\\nIndifferent, so that dear love go with it.\\nI do not blame such women, though for love\\nThey pick much oakum earth s fanatics make\\nToo frequently heaven s saints. But me your work\\nIs not the best for, nor your love the best.\\nNor able to commend the kind of work\\nFor love s sake merely. Ah you force me, sir.\\nTo be over-bold in speaking of myself\\nI, too, have my vocation, work to do.\\nThe heavens and earth have set me since I changed\\nMy father s face for theirs, and, though your world\\nWere twice as wretched as you represent,\\nMost serious work, most necessary work\\nAs any of the economists Reform,\\nMake trade a Christian possibility.\\nAnd individual right no general wrong.\\nWipe out earth s furrows of the thine and mine,\\nAnd leave one green for men to play at bowls.\\nWith innings for them all what then, indeed,\\nIf mortals are not greater by the head\\nThan any of their prosperities what then,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0069.jp2"}, "68": {"fulltext": "56 AURORA LEIGH.\\nUnless the artist keep up open roads\\nBetwixt the seen and unseen, bursting through\\nThe best of your conventions with his best,\\nThe speakable, imaginable best\\nGod bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond\\nBoth speech and imagination A starved man\\nExceeds a fat beast we ll not barter, sir,\\nThe beautiful for barley. And, even so,\\nI hold you will not compass your poor ends\\nOf barley-feeding and material ease\\nWithout a poet s individualism\\nTo work your universal. It takes a soul\\nTo move a body it takes a high-souled man\\nTo move the masses even to a cleaner sty\\nIt takes the ideal to blow a hair s-breadth off\\nThe dust of the actual. Ah your Fouriers failed,\\nBecause not poets enough to understand\\nThat life develops from wdthin. For me,\\nPerhaps I am not worthy, as you say,\\nOf work like this perhaps a woman s soul\\nAspires, and not creates yet w^e aspire.\\nAnd yet I ll try out your perhapses, sir,\\nAnd if I fail w^hy, burn me up my straw\\nLike other false works. I ll not ask for grace\\nYour scorn is better. Cousin Romney. I\\nWho love my art w^ould never wish it lower\\nTo suit my stature. I may love my art.\\nYou ll grant that even a woman may love art.\\nSeeing that to waste true love on anything\\nIs womanly, past question.\\nI retain\\nThe very last word w^hich I said that day,\\nAs you the creaking of the door, years past.\\nWhich let upon you such disabling news", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0070.jp2"}, "69": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 57\\nYou ever after have been graver. He,\\nHis eyes, the motions in his silent mouth,\\nWere fiery points on wliich my words were caught,\\nTransfixed forever in my memory\\nFor his sake, not their own. And yet I know\\nI did not love him nor he me that s sure\\nAnd what I said is unrepented of,\\nAs truth is always. Yet a princely man\\nIf hard to me, heroic for himself.\\nHe bears down on me through the slanting years.\\nThe stronger for the distance. If he had loved,\\nAy, loved me, with that retributive face,\\nI might have been a common woman now.\\nAnd happier, less known, and less left alone.\\nPerhaps a better woman, after all.\\nWith chubby children hanging on my neck\\nTo keep me low and wise. Ah me the vines\\nThat bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it.\\nThe palm stands upright in a realm of sand.\\nAnd I, who spoke the truth then, stand upright,\\nStill worthy of having spoken out the truth.\\nBy being content I spoke it, though it set\\nHim there, me here. Oh, woman s vile remorse.\\nTo hanker after a mere name, a show,\\nA supposition, a potential love\\nDoes every man who names love in our lives\\nBecome a power for that Is love s true thing\\nSo much best to us, that what personates love\\nIs next best A potential love, forsooth\\nI m not so vile. No, no He cleaves, I think,\\nThis man, this image, chiefly for the wrong\\nAnd shock he gave my life in finding me\\nPrecisely where the devil of my youth", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0071.jp2"}, "70": {"fulltext": "58 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHad set me on those mountain peaks of hope,\\nAll glittering with the dawn-dew, all erect,\\nAnd famished for the noon, exclaiming, while\\nI looked for empire and much tribute, Come,\\nI have some worthy work for thee below.\\nCome, sweep my barns and keep my hospitals,\\nAnd I will pay thee with a current coin\\nWhich men give women.\\nAs we spoke, the grass\\nWas trod in haste beside us, and my aunt,\\nWith smile distorted by the sun, face, voice.\\nAs much at issue with the summer-day\\nAs if you brought a candle out of doors,\\nBroke in with, Romney, here My child, entreat\\nYour cousin to the house, and have your talk.\\nIf girls must talk upon their birthdays. Come.\\nHe answered for me calmly, with pale lips\\nThat seemed to motion for a smile in vain.\\nThe talk is ended, madam, where we stand.\\nYour brother s daughter has dismissed me here\\nAnd all my answer can be better said\\nBeneath the trees than wrong by such a word\\nYour house s hospitalities. Farewell.\\nWith that he vanished. I could hear his heel\\nRing bluntly in the lane as down he leapt\\nThe short way from us. Then a measured speech\\nWithdrew me. What means this, Aurora Leigh\\nMy brother s daughter has dismissed my guest\\nThe lion in me felt the keeper s voice\\nThrough all its quivering dewlaps I was quelled\\nBefore her, meekened to the child she knew", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0072.jp2"}, "71": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 59\\nI prayed her pardon, said I had Uttle thought\\nTo give dismissal to a guest of hers\\nIn letting go a friend of mine who came\\nTo take me into service as a wife,\\nNo more than that, indeed.\\nNo more, no more\\nPray Heaven, she answered, that 1 was not mad.\\nI could not mean to tell to her face\\nThat Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife,\\nAnd I refused him\\nDid he ask I said,\\nI think he rather stooped to take me up\\nFor certain uses which he found to do\\nFor something called a wife. He never asked.\\nWhat stuff she answered. Are they queens, these girls\\nThey must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks.\\nSpread out upon the ground, before they ll step\\nOne footstep for the noblest lover born.\\nBut I am born, I said with firmness, I,\\nTo walk another way than his, dear aunt.\\nYou walk, you walk A babe at thirteen months\\nWill walk as well as you, she cried in haste,\\nWithout a steadying finger. Why, you child,\\nGod help you you are groping in the dark.\\nFor all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps,\\nThat you, sole offspring of an opulent man,\\nAre rich, and free to choose a way to walk\\nYou think, and it s a reasonable thought,\\nThat I, beside, being well to do in life,\\nWill leave my handful in my niece s hand\\nWhen death shall paralyze these fingers Pray,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0073.jp2"}, "72": {"fulltext": "6o AURORA LEIGH.\\nPray, child, albeit I know you love me not,\\nAs if you loved me, that I may not die\\nFor when I die and leave you, out you go,\\n(Unless I make room for you in my grave,)\\nUnhoused, unfed, my dear, poor brother s lamb,\\n(Ah, heaven that pains) without a right to crop\\nA single blade of grass beneath these trees.\\nOr cast a lamb s small shadow on the lawn.\\nUnfed, unfolded. Ah, my brother, here s\\nThe fruit you planted in your foreign loves\\nAy, there s the fruit he planted Never look\\nAstonished at me with your mother s eyes.\\nFor it was they who set you where you are.\\nAn undowered orphan. Child, your father s choice\\nOf that said mother disinherited\\nHis daughter, his and hers. Men do not think\\nOf sons and daughters when they fall in love.\\nSo much more than of sisters otherwise\\nHe would have paused to ponder what he did.\\nAnd shrunk before that clause in the entail\\nExcluding offspring by a foreign wife,\\n(The clause set up a hundred years ago\\nBy a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girl,\\nAnd had his heart danced over in return\\nBut this man shrank at nothing, never thought\\nOf you, Aurora, any more than me.\\nYour mother must have been a pretty thing,\\nFor all the coarse Italian blacks and browns,\\nTo make a good man, which my brother was,\\nUnchary of the duties to his house\\nBut so it fell indeed. Our Cousin Vane,\\nVane Leigh, the father of this Romney, wrote,\\nDirectly on your birth, to Italy\\nI ask your baby-daughter for my son,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0074.jp2"}, "73": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 6 1\\nIn whom the entail now merges by the law,\\nBetroth her to us out of love, instead\\nOf colder reasons, and she shall not lose\\nBy love or law from henceforth so he wrote.\\nA generous cousin was my Cousin Vane.\\nRemember how he drew you to his knee\\nThe year you came here, just before he died,\\nAnd hollowed out his hands to hold your cheeks.\\nAnd wished them redder. You remember Vane\\nAnd now his son, who represents our house.\\nAnd holds the fiefs and manors in his place.\\nTo whom reverts my pittance when I die,\\n(Except a few books and a pair of shawls)\\nThe boy is generous like him, and prepared\\nTo carry out his kindest word and thought\\nTo 3 ou, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man\\nIs Romney Leigh, although the sun of youth\\nHas shone too straight upon his brain, I know,\\nAnd fevered him with dreams of doing good\\nTo good-for-nothing people. But a wife\\nWill put all right, and stroke his temples cool\\nWith healthy touches.\\nI broke in at that.\\nI could not lift my heavy heart to breathe\\nTill then but then I raised it, and it fell\\nIn broken words like these, No need to wait\\nThe dream of doing good to me, at least,\\nIs ended, without waiting for a wife\\nTo cool the fever for him. We ve escaped\\nThat danger thank Heaven for it.\\nYou, she cried,\\nHave got a fever. What, I talk and talk\\nAn hour long to you, I instruct you how\\nYou cannot eat, or drink, or stand, or sit,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0075.jp2"}, "74": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nOr even die, like any decent wretch\\nIn all this unroofed and unfurnished world,\\nWithout your cousin, and you still maintain\\nThere s room twixt him and you for flirting fans,\\nAnd running knots in eyebrows You must have\\nA pattern lover sighing on his knee\\nYou do not count enough a noble heart\\n(Above book-patterns) which this very morn\\nUnclosed itself in two dear fathers names\\nTo embrace your orphaned life Fie, fie But stay,\\nI write a word, and counteract this sin.\\nShe would have turned to leave me, but I clung.\\nOh, sweet my father s sister, hear my word\\nBefore you write yours. Cousin Vane did well.\\nAnd Cousin Romney well, and I well, too.\\nIn casting back with all my strength and will\\nThe good they meant me. O my God, my God\\nGod meant me good, too, when he hindered me\\nFrom saying yes this morning. If you write\\nA word, it shall be no. I say no, no\\nI tie up no upon his altar-horns\\nQuite out of reach of perjury At least\\nMy soul is not a pauper I can live\\nAt least my soul s life, without alms from men\\nAnd if it must be in heaven instead of earth,\\nLet heaven look to it I am not afraid.\\nShe seized my hands with both hers, strained them fast,\\nAnd drew her probing and unscrupulous eyes\\nRight through me, body and heart. Yet, foolish sweet,\\nYou love this man. I ve watched you when he came,\\nAnd when he went, and when we ve talked of him.\\nI am not old for nothing I can tell\\nThe weather-signs of love you love this man.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0076.jp2"}, "75": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 6^\\nGirls blush sometimes because they are alive,\\nHalf wishing they were dead to save the shame.\\nThe sudden blush devours them, neck and brow\\nThey have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats.\\nAnd flare up bodily, wings and all. What then\\nWho s sorry for a gnat or girl\\nI blushed.\\nI feel the brand upon my forehead now\\nStrike hot, sear deep, as guiltless men may feel\\nThe felon s iron, say, and scorn the mark\\nOf what they are not. Most illogical.\\nIrrational nature of our womanhood.\\nThat blushes one way, feels another way,\\nAnd prays, perhaps, another. After all,\\nWe cannot be the equal of the male.\\nWho rules his blood a little.\\nFor although\\nI blushed, indeed, as if I loved the man,\\nAnd her incisive smile, accrediting\\nThat treason of false witness in my blush,\\nDid bow me downward like a swathe of grass\\nBelow its level that struck me, I attest\\nThe conscious skies and all their daily suns,\\nI think I loved him not, nor then, nor since.\\nNor ever. Do we love the schoolmaster.\\nBeing busy in the woods much less, being poor.\\nThe overseer of the parish Do we keep\\nOur love to pay our debts with\\nWhite and cold\\nI grew next moment. As my blood recoiled\\nFrom that imputed ignominy, I made\\nMy heart great with it. Then, at last, I spoke.\\nSpoke veritable words, but passionate,\\nToo passionate perhaps ground up with sobs", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0077.jp2"}, "76": {"fulltext": "64 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo shapeless endings. She let fall my hands\\nAnd took her smile off in sedate disgust,\\nAs peradventure she had touched a snake,\\nA dead snake, mind and, turning round, replied,\\nWe ll leave Italian manners, if you please.\\n1 think you had an English father, child,\\nAnd ought to find it possible to speak\\nA quiet yes or no, like English girls.\\nWithout convulsions. In another month\\nWe ll take another answer, no, or yes.\\nWith that, she left me in the garden-walk.\\nI had a father yes, but long ago,\\nHow long it seemed that moment Oh, how far,\\nHow far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints,\\nWhen once gone from us We may call against\\nThe lighted windows of thy fair June heaven,\\nWhere all the souls are happy, and not one.\\nNot even my father, look from work or play\\nTo ask, Who is it that cries after us\\nBelow there, in the dusk Yet formerly\\nHe turned his face upon me quick enough.\\nIf I said, Father. Now I might cry loud\\nThe little lark reached higher with his song\\nThan I with crying. Oh, alone, alone.\\nNot troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth,\\nI stood there in the garden, and looked up\\nThe deaf blue sky that brings the roses out\\nOn such June mornings.\\nYou who keep account\\nOf crisis and transition in this life.\\nSet down the first time Nature says plain no\\nTo some yes in you, and walks over you\\nIn gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0078.jp2"}, "77": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 05\\nBy singing with the birds, and running fast\\nWith June da3^s, hand in hand but once, for all,\\nThe birds must sing against us, and the sun\\nStrike down upon us like a friend s sword caught\\nBy an enemy to slay us, while we read\\nThe dear name on the blade which bites at us\\nThat s bitter and convincing. After that.\\nWe seldom doubt that something in the large.\\nSmooth order of creation, though no more\\nThan haply a man s footstep, has gone wrong.\\nSome tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled.\\nAs those smile who have no face in the world\\nTo smile back to them. I had lost a friend\\nIn Romney Leigh. The thing was sure, a friend\\nWho had looked at me most gently now and then.\\nAnd spoken of my favorite books, our books,\\nWith such a voice Well, voice and look were now\\nMore utterly shut out from me, I felt.\\nThan even my father s. Romney now was turned\\nTo a benefactor, to a generous man.\\nWho had tied himself to marry me, instead\\nOf such a woman, with low, timorous lids\\nHe lifted with a sudden word one day,\\nAnd left, perhaps, for my sake. Ah, self-tied\\nBy a contract, male Iphigenia bound\\nAt a fatal Aulis for the winds to change,\\n(But loose him, they ll not change,) he well might seem\\nA little cold and dominant in love\\nHe had a right to be dogmatical.\\nThis poor, good Romney. Love to him was made\\nA simple law-clause. If I married him,\\nI should not dare to call my soul my own\\nWhich so he had bought and paid for every thought", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0079.jp2"}, "78": {"fulltext": "66 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd every heart-beat down there in the bill\\nNot one found honestly deductible\\nFrom any use that pleased him He might cut\\nMy body into coins to giv^e away\\nAmong his other paupers change my sons,\\nWhile I stood dumb as Griseld, for black babes\\nOr piteous foundlings might unquestioned set\\nMy right hand teaching in the ragged schools,\\nMy left hand washing in the public baths,\\nWhat time my angel of the Ideal stretched\\nBoth his to me in vain. I could not claim\\nThe poor right of a mouse in a trap to squeal.\\nAnd take so much as pity from myself.\\nFarewell, good Romney if I loved you even,\\nI could but ill afford to let you be\\nSo generous to me. Farewell, friend, since friend\\nBetwixt us two, forsooth, must be a word\\nSo heavily overladen. And, since help\\nMust come to me from those who love me not,\\nFarewell, all helpers I must help myself,\\nAnd am alone from henceforth. Then I stooped\\nAnd lifted the soiled garland from the earth,\\nAnd set it on my head as bitterly\\nAs when the Spanish monarch crowned the bones\\nOf his dead love. So be it. I preserve\\nThat crown still, in the drawer there twas the first\\nThe rest are like it, those Olympian crowns\\nWe run for till we lose sight of the sun\\nIn the dust of the racing chariots.\\nAfter that.\\nBefore the evening fell, I had a note,\\nWhich ran, Aurora, sweet Chaldsean, you read\\nMy meaning backward, like your eastern books,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0080.jp2"}, "79": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 6/\\nWhile I am from the west, dear. Read me now\\nA Uttle plamer. Did you hate me quite\\nBut yesterday I loved you for my part\\nI love you. If I spoke untenderly\\nThis morning, my beloved, pardon it,\\nAnd comprehend me that I loved you so\\nI set you on the level of my soul,\\nAnd overwashed you with the bitter brine\\nOf some habitual thoughts. Henceforth, my flower,\\nBe planted out of reach of any such,\\nAnd lean the side you please with all your leaves.\\nWrite woman s verses, and dream woman s dreams\\nBut let me feel your perfume in my home\\nTo make my sabbath after working-days.\\nBloom out your youth beside me be my wife.\\nI wrote in answer We Chaldaeans discern\\nStill further than we read. I know your heart.\\nAnd shut it like the holy book it is,\\nReserved for mild-eyed saints to pore upon\\nBetwixt their prayers at vespers. Well, you re right,\\nI did not surely hate you yesterday\\nAnd yet I do not love you enough to-day\\nTo wed you, Cousin Romney. Take this word,\\nAnd let it stop you as a generous man\\nFrom speaking further. You may tease, indeed.\\nAnd blow about my feelings, or my leaves\\nAnd here s my aunt will help you with east winds.\\nAnd break a stalk, perhaps, tormenting me\\nBut certain flowers grow near as deep as trees\\nAnd, cousin, you ll not move my root, not you,\\nWith all your confluent storms. Then let me gro\\\\y\\nWithin my wayside hedge, and pass your way.\\nThis flower has never as much to say to you", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0081.jp2"}, "80": {"fulltext": "68 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAs the antique tomb which said to travellers, Pause,\\nSiste^ viator Ending thus, I sighed.\\nThe next week passed in silence, so the next,\\nAnd several after Romney did not come.\\nNor my aunt chide me. I lived on and on,\\nAs if my heart were kept beneath a glass,\\nAnd everybody stood, all eyes and ears.\\nTo see and hear it tick. I could not sit.\\nNor walk, nor take a book, nor lay it down,\\nNor sew on steadily, nor drop a stitch\\nAnd a sigh with it, but I felt her looks\\nStill cleaving to me, like the sucking asp\\nTo Cleopatra s breast, persistently\\nThrough the intermittent pantings. Being observed\\nWhen observation is not sympathy\\nIs just being tortured. If she said a word,\\nA thank you, or an if it please you, dear,\\nShe meant a commination, or at best\\nAn exorcism against the devildom\\nWhich plainly held me. So with all the house.\\nSusannah could not stand and twist my hair.\\nWithout such glancing at the looking-glass,\\nTo see my face there, that she missed the plait.\\nAnd John I never sent my plate for soup.\\nOr did not send it, but the foolish John\\nResolved the problem, twixt his napkined thumbs.\\nOf what was signified by taking soup,\\nOr choosing mackerel. Neighbors who dropped in\\nOn morning visits, feeling a joint wrong.\\nSmiled admonition, sate uneasily.\\nAnd talked with measured, emphasized reserve.\\nOf parish news, like doctors to the sick.\\nWhen not called in, as if, with leave to speak,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0082.jp2"}, "81": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 6g\\nThey might say something. Nay, the very dog\\nWould watch me from his sun-patch on the floor,\\nIn alternation with the large black fly\\nNot yet in reach of snapping. So I lived.\\nA Roman died so, smeared with honey, teased\\nBy insects, stared to torture by the noon\\nAnd many patient souls neath English roofs\\nHave died like Romans. I, in looking back,\\nWish only now I had borne the plague of all\\nWith meeker spirits than were rife at Rome.\\nFor on the sixth week the dead sea broke up.\\nDashed suddenly through beneath the heel of Him\\nWho stands upon the sea and earth, and swears\\nTime shall be nevermore. The clock struck nine\\nThat morning too no lark was out of tune\\nThe hidden farms among the hills breathed straight\\nTheir smoke toward heaven the lime-tree scarcely stirred\\nBeneath the blue weight of the cloudless sky.\\nThough still the July air came floating through\\nThe woodbine at my window, in and out.\\nWith touches of the out-door country news\\nFor a bending forehead. There I sate and wished\\nThat morning truce of God would last till eve,\\nOr longer. Sleep, I thought, late sleepers sleep.\\nAnd spare me yet the burden of your eyes.\\nThen suddenly a single ghastly shriek\\nTore upward from the bottom of the house,\\nLike one who wakens in a grave, and shrieks.\\nThe still house seemed to shriek itself alive,\\nAnd shudder through its passages and stairs.\\nWith slam of doors and clash of bells. I spiang,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0083.jp2"}, "82": {"fulltext": "70 AURORA LEIGH.\\nI stood up in the middle of the room,\\nAnd there confronted at my chamber door,\\nA white face, shivering, ineffectual lips.\\nCome, come they tried to utter, and I went.\\nAs if a ghost had drawn me at the point\\nOf a fiery finger through the uneven dark,\\nI went with reeling footsteps down the stair.\\nNor asked a question.\\nThere she sate, my aunt.\\nBolt upright in the chair beside her bed.\\nWhose pillow had no dint. She had used no bed\\nFor that night s sleeping, yet slept well. My God\\nThe dumb derision of that gray, peaked face\\nConcluded something grave against the sun,\\nWhich filled the chamber with its July burst,\\nWhen Susan drew the curtains, ignorant\\nOf who sate open-eyed behind her. There\\nShe sate it sate. we said she yesterday\\nAnd held a letter with unbroken seal,\\nAs Susan gave it to her hand last night.\\nAll night she had held it. If its news referred\\nTo duchies or to dunghills, not an inch\\nShe d budge, twas obvious, for such worthless odds\\nNor, though the stars were suns, and overburned\\nTheir spheric limitations, swallowing up\\nLike wax the azure spaces, could they force\\nThose open eyes to wink once. What last sight\\nHad left them blank and flat so, drawing out\\nThe faculty of vision from the roots.\\nAs nothing more, worth seeing, remained behind\\nWere those the eyes that watched me, worried me\\nThat dogged me up and down the hours and days,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0084.jp2"}, "83": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. /I\\nA beaten, breathless, miserable soul\\nAnd did I pray, a half hour back, but so\\nTo escape the burden of those eyes those eyes\\nSleep late, I said\\nWhy now, indeed, they sleep.\\nGod answers sharp and sudden on some prayers^\\nAnd thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,\\nA gauntlet with a gift in t. Every wish\\nIs like a prayer, with God.\\nI had my wish.\\nTo read and meditate the thing I would.\\nTo fashion all my life upon my thought.\\nAnd marry, or not marry. Henceforth none\\nCould disapprove me, vex me, hamper me.\\nFull ground-room in this desert newly made,\\nFor Babylon or Balbec, when the breath.\\nNow choked with sand, returns for building towns.\\nThe heir came over on the funeral day,\\nAnd we two cousins met before the dead\\nWith two pale faces. Was it death, or life.\\nThat moved us? When the will was read and done.\\nThe official guests and witnesses withdrawn,\\nWe rose up, in a silence almost hard,\\nAnd looked at one another. Then I said,\\nFarewell, my cousin.\\nBut he touched, just touched\\nMy hatstrings, tied for going (at the door\\nThe carriage stood to take me), and said low.\\nHis voice a little unsteady through his smile,\\nSiste^ viator^\\nIs there time, I asked,\\nIn these last days of railroads, to stop short,\\nLike Caesar s chariot (weighing half a ton),", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0085.jp2"}, "84": {"fulltext": "72 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOn the Appian road, for morals\\nThere is tmie,\\nHe answered grave, for necessary words,\\nInclusive, trust me, of no epitaph\\nOn man or act, my cousin. We have read\\nA will which gives you all the personal goods\\nAnd funded moneys of your aunt.\\nI thank\\nHer memory for it. With three hundred pounds.\\nWe buy in England, even, clear standing-room\\nTo stand and work in. Only two hours since\\nI fancied I was poor.\\nAnd, cousin, still\\nYou re richer than you fancy. The will says,\\nTJwee hundred poicnds^ and aiiy other sum\\nOf which the said testatrix dies possessed.\\nI say she died possessed of other sums.\\nDear Romney, need we chronicle the pence\\nI m richer than I thought that s evident.\\nEnough so.\\nListen, rather. You ve to do\\nWith business and a cousin, he resumed\\nAnd both, I fear, need patience. Here s the fact\\nThe other sum (there is another sum.\\nUnspecified in any will which dates\\nAfter possession, yet bequeathed as much\\nAnd clearly as those said three hundred pounds)\\nIs thirty thousand. You will have it paid\\nWhen where My duty troubles you with words.\\nHe struck the iron when the bar was hot\\nNo wonder if my eyes sent out some sparks.\\nPause there I thank you. You are delicate", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0086.jp2"}, "85": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 73\\nIn glozing gifts but I, who share your blood,\\nAm rather made for giving, like yourself,\\nThan taking like your pensioners. Farewell.\\nHe stopped me with a gesture of calm pride.\\nA Leigh, he said, gives largesse, and gives love,\\nBut glozes never if a Leigh could gloze,\\nHe would not do it, moreover, to a Leigh,\\nWith blood trained up along nine centuries\\nTo hound and hate a lie from eyes like yours,\\nAnd now we ll make the rest as clear. Your aun\\nPossessed these moneys.\\nYou will make it clear,\\nMy cousin, as the honor of us both.\\nOr one of us speaks vainly- That s not I.\\nMy aunt possessed this sum inherited\\nFrom whom and when Bring documents, prove dates.\\nWhy, now indeed you throw your bonnet off\\nAs if you had time left for a logarithm\\nThe faith s the want. Dear cousin, give me faith.\\nAnd you shall walk this road with silken shoes,\\nAs clean as any lady of our house\\nSupposed the proudest. Oh, I comprehend\\nThe whole position from your point of sight.\\nI oust you from your father s halls and lands,\\nAnd make you poor by getting rich that s law\\nConsidering which, in common circumstance,\\nYou would not scruple to accept from me\\nSome compensation, some sufficiency\\nOf income that were justice but, alas\\nI love you that s mere nature you reject\\nMy love that s nature also and at once\\nYou cannot, from a suitor disallowed.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0087.jp2"}, "86": {"fulltext": "74 AURORA LEIGH.\\nA hand thrown back, as mine is, into yours.\\nReceive a doit, a farthing, not for the world\\nThat s woman s etiquette, and obviously\\nExceeds the claim of nature, law, and right,\\nUnanswerable to all. I grant, you see.\\nThe case as you conceive it leave you room\\nTo sweep your ample skirts of womanhood\\nWhile, standing humbly squeezed against the wall,\\nI own myself excluded from being just,\\nRestrained from paying indubitable debts,\\nBecause denied from giving you my soul.\\nThat s my misfortune. I submit to it\\nAs if, in some more reasonable age,\\nTwould not be less inevitable. Enough.\\nYou ll trust me, cousin, as a gentleman.\\nTo keep your honor, as you count it, pure.\\nYour scruples (just as if I thought them wise)\\nSafe and inviolate from gifts of mine.\\nI answered mild but earnest I believe\\nIn no one s honor which another keeps.\\nNor man s nor woman s. As I keep, myself,\\nMy truth and my religion, I depute\\nNo father, though I had one this side death.\\nNor brother, though I had twenty, much less you.\\nThough twice my cousin, and once Romney Leigh,\\nTo keep my honor pure. You face to-day\\nA man who wants instruction, mark me, not\\nA woman who wants protection. As to a man,\\nShow manhood, speak out plainly, be precise\\nWith facts and dates. My aunt inherited\\nThis sum, you say\\nI said she died possessed\\nOf this, dear cousin.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0088.jp2"}, "87": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\n75\\nNot by heritage.\\nThank you we re getting to the facts at last.\\nPerhaps she played at commerce with a ship\\nWhich came in heavy with Australian gold\\nOr touched a lottery with her finger-end,\\nWhich tumbled on a sudden into her lap\\nSome old Rhine tower or principality\\nPerhaps she had to do with a marine\\nSub-transatlantic railroad which prepays\\nAs well as presupposes or perhaps\\nSome stale ancestral debt was after-paid\\nBy a hundred years, and took her by surprise\\nYou shake your head, my cousin I guess ill.\\nYou need not guess, Aurora, nor deride\\nThe truth is not afraid of hurting you.\\nYou ll find no cause in all your scruples, why\\nYour aunt should cavil at a deed of gift\\nTwixt her and me.\\nI thought so ah a gift.\\nYou naturally thought so, he resumed.\\nA very natural gift.\\nA gift, a gift\\nHer individual life being stranded high\\nAbove all want, approaching opulence,\\nToo haughty was she to accept a gift\\nWithout some ultimate aim. Ah, ah, I see\\nA gift intended plainly for her heirs.\\nAnd so accepted if accepted ah.\\nIndeed that might be I am snared perhaps\\nJust so. But, cousin, shall I pardon you.\\nIf thus you have caught me with a cruel spring", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0089.jp2"}, "88": {"fulltext": "76 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHe answered gently, Need you tremble and pant\\nLike a nettled lioness Is t my fault, mine.\\nThat you re a grand wild creature of the woods,\\nAnd hate the stall built for you Any way,\\nThough triply netted, need you glare at me\\nI do not hold the cords of such a net\\nYou re free from me, Aurora.\\nNow may God\\nDeliver me from this strait This gift of yours\\nWas tendered when accepted when I asked.\\nA month a fortnight since Six weeks ago\\nIt was not tendered by a word she dropped\\nI know it was not tendered nor received.\\nWhen was it Bring your dates.\\nWhat matters when\\nA half-hour ere she died, or a half-year.\\nSecured the gift, maintains the heritage\\nInviolable with law. As easy pluck\\nThe golden stars from heaven s embroidered stole\\nTo pin them on the gray side of this earth.\\nAs make you poor again, thank God\\nNot poor\\nNor clean again from henceforth, you thank God\\nWell, sir I ask you I insist at need\\nVouchsafe the special date, the special date.\\nThe day before her death-day, he replied,\\nThe gift was in her hands. We ll find that deed.\\nAnd certify that date to you.\\nAs one\\nWho has climbed a mountain-height, and carried up\\nHis own heart climbing, panting in his throat\\nWith the toil of the ascent, takes breath at last,\\nLooks back in triumph, so I stood and looked.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0090.jp2"}, "89": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. JJ\\nDear cousin Romney, we have reached the top\\nOf this steep question, and may rest, I think.\\nBut first, I pray you pardon that the shock\\nAnd surge of natural feeling and event\\nHas made me oblivious of acquainting you\\nThat this this letter (unread, mark, still sealed)\\nWas found infolded in the poor dead hand.\\nThat spirit of hers had gone beyond the address,\\nWhich could not find her, though you wrote it clear.\\nI know your writing, Romney, recognize\\nThe open-hearted A, the liberal sweep\\nOf the G. Now listen. Let us understand\\nYou will not find that famous deed of gift.\\nUnless you find it in the letter here,\\nWhich, not being mine, I give you back. Refuse\\nTo take the letter Well, then, you and I,\\nAs writer and as heiress, open it\\nTogether, by your leave. Exactly so\\nThe words in which the noble offering s made\\nAre nobler still, my cousin, and I own\\nThe proudest and most delicate heart alive,\\nDistracted from the measure of the gift\\nBy such a grace in giving, might accept\\nYour largesse without thinking any more\\nOf the burthen of it than King Solomon\\nConsidered, when he wore his holy ring\\nCharactered over with the ineffable spell,\\nHow many carats of fine gold made up\\nIts money value. So Leigh gives to Leigh\\nOr rather might have given, observe for that s\\nThe point we come to. Here s a proof of gift\\nBut here s no proof, sir, of acceptancy.\\nBut, rather, disproof. Death s black dust, being blown,\\nInfiltrated through every secret fold", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0091.jp2"}, "90": {"fulltext": "78 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOf this sealed letter by a puff of fate,\\nDried up forever the fresh-written ink,\\nAnnulled the gift, disutilized the grace.\\nAnd left these fragments.\\nAs I spoke, I tore\\nThe paper up and down, and down and up.\\nAnd crosswise, till it fluttered from my hands.\\nAs forest-leaves, stripped suddenly, and rapt\\nBy a whirlwind on Valdarno, drop again,\\nDrop slow, and strew the melancholy ground\\nBefore the amazed hills why so, indeed,\\nI m writing like a poet, somewhat large\\nIn the type of the image, and exaggerate\\nA small thing with a great thing, topping it\\nBut then I m thinking how his eyes looked, his,\\nWith what despondent and surprised reproach\\nI think the tears were in them as he looked\\nI think the manly mouth just trembled. Then\\nHe broke the silence.\\nI may ask, perhaps,\\nAlthough no stranger only Romney Leigh,\\nWhich means still less than Vincent Carrington,\\nYour plans in going hence, and where you go.\\nThis cannot be a secret.\\nAll my life\\nIs open to you, cousin. I go hence\\nTo London, to the gathering-place of souls,\\nTo live mine straight out, vocally, in books.\\nHarmoniously for others, if indeed\\nA woman s soul, like man s, be wide enough\\nTo carry the whole octave (that s to prove)\\nOr, if I fail, still purely for myself.\\nPray God be with me, Romney.\\nAh poor child", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0092.jp2"}, "91": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 79\\nWho fight against the mother s tiring hand,\\nAnd choose the headsman s. May God change his world\\nFor your sake, sweet, and make it mild as heaven,\\nAnd juster than I have found you.\\nBut I paused.\\nAnd you, my cousin\\nI, he said you ask\\nYou care to ask Well, girls have curious minds.\\nAnd fain would know^ the end of everything.\\nOf cousins, therefore, with the rest. For me,\\nAurora, I ve my work you know my work\\nAnd, having missed this year some personal hope,\\nI must bew^are the rather that I miss\\nNo reasonable duty. While you sing\\nYour happy pastorals of the meads and trees,\\nBethink you that I go to impress and prove\\nOn stifled brains and deafened ears, stunned deaf,\\nCrushed dull with grief, that nature sings itself.\\nAnd needs no mediate poet, lute, or voice\\nTo make it vocal. While you ask of men\\nYour audience, I may get their leave, perhaps.\\nFor hungry orphans to say audibly,\\nWe re hungry, see for beaten and bullied wives\\nTo hold their unweaned babies up in sight.\\nWhom orphanage would better and for all\\nTo speak and claim their portion by no means\\nOf the soil but of the sweat in tilling it\\nSince this is nowadays turned privilege,\\nTo have only God s curse on us, and not man s.\\nSuch work I have for doing, elbows-deep\\nIn social problems, as you tie your rhymes.\\nTo draw my uses to cohere with needs.\\nAnd bring the uneven world back to its round,\\nOr, failing so much, fill up, bridge at least,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0093.jp2"}, "92": {"fulltext": "So A URORA LEIGH.\\nTo smoother issues, some abysmal cracks\\nAnd feuds of earth intestine heats have made\\nTo keep men separate, using sorry shifts\\nOf hospitals, almshouses, infant schools,\\nAnd other practical stuff of partial good\\nYou lovers of the beautiful and whole\\nDespise by system.\\ndespise The scorn\\nIs yours, my cousin. Poets become such\\nThrough scorning nothing. You decry them for\\nThe good of beauty sung and taught by them,\\nWhile they respect your practical partial good,\\nAs being a part of beauty s self. Adieu\\nWhen God helps all the workers for his world,\\nThe singers shall have help of him, not last.\\nHe smiled as men smile when they will not speak\\nBecause of something bitter in the thought\\nAnd still I feel his melancholy eyes\\nLook judgment on me. It is seven years since.\\nI know not if twas pity or twas scorn\\nHas made them so far-reaching judge it, ye\\nWho have had to do with pity more than love,\\nAnd scorn than hatred. I am used since then.\\nTo other ways from equal men. But so,\\nEven so, we let go hands, my cousin and I,\\nAnd in between us rushed the torrent-world\\nTo blanch our faces like divided rocks,\\nAnd bar forever mutual sight and touch.\\nExcept through swirl of spray and all that roar.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0094.jp2"}, "93": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nTHIRD BOOK.\\nToday thou girdest up thy loins thyself\\nAnd goest where thou wouldest presently\\nOthers shall gird thee, said the Lord, to go\\nWhere thou wouldst not. He spoke to Peter thus.\\nTo signify the death which he should die\\nWhen crucified head downward.\\nIf he spoke\\nTo Peter then, he speaks to us the same.\\nThe word suits many different martyrdoms.\\nAnd signifies a multiform of death.\\nAlthough we scarcely die apostles, we,\\nAnd have mislaid the keys of heaven and earth.\\nFor tis not in mere death that men die most;\\nAnd, after our first girding of the loins\\nIn youth s fine linen and fair broidery\\nTo run up hill and meet the rising sun,\\nWe are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool.\\nWhile others gird us with the violent bands\\nOf social figments, feints, and formalisms,\\nReversing our straight nature, lifting up\\nOur base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts.\\nHead downward on the cross-sticks of the world.\\nYet he can pluck us from that shameful cross.\\nGod, set our feet low and our forehead high.\\nAnd show us how a man was made to walk\\nLeave the lamp, Susan, and go up to bed\\nThe room does very well. I have to write\\nBe^^ond the stroke of midnight. Get away;\\nYour steps, forever buzzing in the room,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0095.jp2"}, "94": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nTease me like gnats. Ah, letters Throw them down\\nAt once, as I must have them, to be sure,\\nWhether I bid you never bring me such\\nAt such an hour, or bid you. No excuse\\nYou choose to bring them, as I choose, perhaps.\\nTo throw them in the fire. Now get to bed.\\nAnd dream, if possible, I am not cross.\\nWhy, what a pettish, petty thing I grow\\nA mere, mere woman, a mere flaccid nerve,\\nA kerchief left out all night in the rain.\\nTurned soft so, overtasked and overstrained\\nAnd overlived in this close London life.\\nAnd yet I should be stronger.\\nNever burn\\nYour letters, poor Aurora for they stare\\nWith red seals from the table, saying each,\\nHere s something that you know not. Out, alas\\nTis scarcely that the world s more good and wise,\\nOr even straighter and more consequent,\\nSince yesterday at this time yet, again,\\nIf but one angel spoke from Ararat,\\nI should be very sorry not to hear\\nSo open all the letters, let me read.\\nBlanche Ord, the MTiter in the Lady s Fan,\\nRequests my judgment on that, afterwards.\\nKate Ward desires the model of my cloak.\\nAnd signs, Elisha to you. Pringle Sharpe\\nPresents his work on Social Conduct, craves\\nA little money for his pressing debts\\nFrom me, who scarce have money for my needs\\nArt s fiery chariot which we journey in\\nBeing apt to singe our singing-robes to holes.\\nAlthough you ask me for my cloak, Kate Ward.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0096.jp2"}, "95": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 83\\nHere s Rudgely knows it, editor and scribe\\nHe s forced to marry where his heart is not,\\nBecause the purse lacks where he lost his heart.\\nAh lost it because no one picked it up\\nThat s really loss (and passable impudence).\\nMy critic Hammond flatters prettily,\\nAnd wants another volume like the last.\\nMy critic Belfair wants another book\\nEntirely different, which will sell, (and live\\nA striking book, yet not a startling book,\\nThe public blames originalities,\\n(You must not pump spring-water unawares\\nUpon a gracious public full of nerves\\nGood things, not subtle, new yet orthodox.\\nAs easy reading as the dog-eared page\\nThat s fingered by said public fifty years.\\nSince first taught spelling by its grandmother.\\nAnd yet a revelation in some sort\\nThat s hard, my critic Belfair. So what next\\nMy critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts.\\nCall a man John, a woman Joan, says he,\\nAnd do not prate so of humanities\\nWhereat I call my critic simply Stokes.\\nMy critic Johnson recommends more mirth,\\nBecause a cheerful genius suits the times,\\nAnd all true poets laugh unquenchably\\nLike Shakspeare and the gods. That s very hard.\\nThe gods may laugh, and Shakspeare Dante smiled\\nWith such a needy heart on two pale lips.\\nWe cry, Weep, rather, Dante. Poems are\\nMen, if true poems and who dares exclaim\\nAt any man s door, Here, tis understood\\nThe thunder fell last week and killed a wife.\\nAnd scared a sickly husband what of that", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0097.jp2"}, "96": {"fulltext": "84 AURORA LEIGH.\\nGet up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands,\\nBecause a cheerful genius suits the times\\nNone says so to the man, and why, indeed,\\nShould any to the poem A ninth seal\\nThe Apocalypse is drawing to a close.\\nHa this from Vincent Carrington, Dear friend,\\nI want good counsel. Will you lend me wings\\nTo raise me to the subject in a sketch\\nI ll bring to-morrow may I at eleven\\nA poet s only born to turn to use.\\nSo save you for the world and Carrington\\n(Writ after). Have you heard of Romney Leigh,\\nBeyond what s said of him in newspapers.\\nHis phalansteries there, his speeches here.\\nHis pamphlets, pleas, and statements everywhere\\nHe dropped 7Jie long ago but no one drops\\nA golden apple, though, indeed, one day\\nYou hinted that, but jested. Well, at least\\nYou know Lord Howe, who sees him whom he sees,\\nAnd you see, and I hate to see, for Howe\\nStands high upon the brink of theories.\\nObserves the swimmers, and cries, Very fine\\nBut keeps dry linen equally, unlike\\nThat gallant breaster, Romney. Strange it is\\nSuch sudden madness seizing a young man\\nTo make earth over again, while I m content\\nTo make the pictures. Let me bring the sketch\\nA tiptoe Danae, overbold and hot,\\nBoth arms aflame to meet her wishing Jove\\nHalfway, and burn him faster down the face\\nAnd breasts upturned and straining, the loose locks\\nAll glowing with the anticipated gold.\\nOr here s another on the self-same theme.\\nShe lies here flat upon her prison-floor,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0098.jp2"}, "97": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe long hair swathed about her to the heel\\nLike wet seaweed. You dimly see her through\\nThe glittering haze of that prodigious rain,\\nHalf blotted out of nature by a love\\nAs heavy as fate. I ll bring you either sketch.\\nI think, myself, the second indicates\\nMore passion.\\nSurely. Self is put away,\\nAnd calm with abdication. She is Jove,\\nAnd no more Danae greater thus. Perhaps\\nThe painter symbolizes unaware\\nTwo states of the recipient artist-soul,\\nOne, forward, personal, wanting reverence,\\nBecause aspiring only. We ll be calm.\\nAnd know, that, when indeed our Joves come down,\\nAVe all turn stiller than we have ever been.\\nKind Vincent Carringtoh. I ll let him come.\\nHe talks of Florence^ and may say a word\\nOf something as it chanced seven years ago,\\nA hedgehog in the path, or a lame bird,\\nIn those green country walks, in that good time\\nWhen certainly I was so miserable.\\nI seem to have missed a blessing ever since.\\nThe music soars within the little lark.\\nAnd the lark soars. It is not thus with men.\\nWe do not make our places with our strains.\\nContent, while they rise, to remain behind\\nAlone on earth, instead of so in heaven.\\nNo matter I bear on my broken tale.\\nWhen Romney Leigh and I had parted thus,\\nI took a chamber up three flights of stairs", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0099.jp2"}, "98": {"fulltext": "86 AURORA LEIGH.\\nNot far from being as steep as some larks climb,\\nAnd there, in a certain house in Kensington,\\nThree years I lived and worked.,] Get leave to work\\nIn this world tis the best you get at all\\nFor God, in cursing, gives us better gifts\\nThan men in benediction. God says, Sweat\\nFor foreheads men say Crowns. And so we are crowned.\\nAy, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel\\nWhich snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work\\nBe sure tis better than what you w^ork to get.\\nSerene and unafraid of solitude,\\nI worked the short days out, and watched the sun\\nOn lurid morns or monstrous afternoons\\n(Like some Druidic idol s fiery brass.\\nWith fixed unflickering outline of dead heat,\\nFrom which the blood of wretches pent inside\\nSeems oozing forth to incarnadine the air)\\nPush out through fog with his dilated disk,\\nAnd startle the slant roofs and chimney-pots\\nWith splashes of fierce color. Or I saw\\nFog only the great tawny weltering fog\\nInvolve the passive city, strangle it\\nAlive, and draw it off into the void,\\nSpires, bridges, streets, and squares, as if a sponge\\nHad wiped out London, or as noon and night\\nHad clapped together, and utterly struck out\\nThe intermediate time, undoing themselves\\nIn the act. Your city poets see such things\\nNot despicable. Mountains of the south.\\nWhen, drunk and mad with elemental wines.\\nThey rend the seamless mist, and stand up bare\\nMake fewer singers, haply. No one sings,\\nDescending Sinai on Parnassus-mount", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0100.jp2"}, "99": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 8/\\nYou take a mule to climb, and not a muse,\\nExcept in fable and figure forests chant\\nTheir anthems to themselves, and leave you dumb.\\nBut sit in London at the day s decline,\\nAnd view the city perish in the mist\\nLike Pharaoh s armaments in the deep Red Sea,\\nThe chariots, horsemen, footmen, all the host.\\nSucked down and choked to silence then, surprised\\nBy a sudden sense of vision and of tune.\\nYou feel as conquerors, though you did not fight\\nAnd you and Israel s other singing girls,\\nAy, Miriam with them, sing the song you choose.\\nI worked with patience, which means almost power.\\nI did some excellent things indifferently,\\nSome bad things excellently. Both were praised.\\nThe latter loudest. And by such a time\\nThat I myself had set them down as sins\\nScarce worth the price of sackcloth, week by week\\nArrived some letter through the sedulous post,\\nLike these I ve read, and yet dissimilar.\\nWith pretty maiden seals, initials twined\\nOf lilies, or a heart marked E^nily,\\n(Convicting Emily of being all heart\\nOr rarer tokens from young bachelors.\\nWho wrote from college with the same goosequill,\\nSuppose, they had just been plucked of, and a snatch\\nFrom Horace, Collegisse juvac, set\\nUpon the first page. Many a letter, signed\\nOr unsigned, showing the writers at eighteen\\nHad lived too long, although a muse should help\\nTheir dawn by holding candles, compliments\\nTo smile or sigh at. Such could pass with me\\nNo more than coins from Moscow circulate", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0101.jp2"}, "100": {"fulltext": "88 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAt Paris would ten roubles buy a tag\\nOr ribbon on the boulevard, worth a sou\\nI smiled that all this youth should love me, sighed\\nThat such a love could scarcely raise them up\\nTo love what was more worthy than myself\\nThen sighed again, again, less generously,\\nTo think the very love they lavished so\\nProved me inferior. The strong loved me not,\\nAnd he my Cousin Romney did not write.\\nI felt the silent finger of his scorn\\nPrick every bubble of my frivolous fame\\nAs my breath blew it, and resolve it back\\nTo the air it came from. Oh, I justified\\nThe measure he had taken of my height\\nThe thing was plain he was not wrong a line\\nI played at art, made thrusts with a toy-sword,\\nAmused the lads and maidens.\\nCame a sigh\\nDeep, hoarse with resolution, I would work\\nTo better ends, or play in earnest. Pleavens,\\nI think I should be almost popular\\nIf this went on I ripped my verses up.\\nAnd found no blood upon the rapier s point\\nThe heart in them was just an embryo s heart,\\nWhich never yet had beat, that it should die 5\\nJust gasps of make-believe galvanic life\\nMere tones, inorganized to any tune.\\nAnd yet I felt it in me where it burnt.\\nLike those hot fire-seeds of creation held\\nIn Jove s clenched palm before the worlds were sown\\nBut I I was not Juno even my hand\\nWas shut in weak convulsion, woman s ill\\nAnd when I yearned to loose a finger lo,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0102.jp2"}, "101": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 89\\nThe nerve revolted. Tis the same even now\\nThis hand may never haply open large,\\nBefore the spark is quenched, or the palm charred,\\nTo prove the power not else than by the pain.\\nIt burnt, it burns my whole life burnt with it\\nAnd light, not sunlight and not torchlight, flashed\\nMy steps out through the slow and difficult road.\\nI had grown distrustful of too forward springs.\\nThe season s books in drear significance\\nOf morals, dropping round me. Lively books\\nThe ash has livelier verdure than the yew\\nAnd yet the yew s green longer, and alone\\nFound worthy of the holy Christmas time\\nWe ll plant more yews if possible, albeit\\nWe plant the graveyards with them.\\nDay and night\\nI worked my rhythmic thought, and furrowed up\\nBoth watch and slumber with long lines of life\\nWhich did not suit their season. The rose fell\\nFrom either cheek, my eyes globed luminous\\nThrough orbits of blue shadow, and my pulse\\nWould shudder along the purple-veined wrist\\nLike a shot bird. Youth s stern, set face to face\\nWith youth s ideal and when people came\\nAnd said, You work too much, you are looking ill,\\nI smiled for pity on them who pitied me.\\nAnd thought I should be better soon, perhaps.\\nFor those ill looks. Observe I means in youth\\nJust the conscious and eternal soul\\nWith all Its ends, and not the outside life.\\nThe parcel-man, the doublet of the flesh,\\nThe so much liver, lung, integument,\\nWhich make the sum of I hereafter, when", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0103.jp2"}, "102": {"fulltext": "90 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWorld-talkers talk of doing well or ill.\\nprosper if I gain a step, although\\nA nail then pierced my foot although my brain,\\nEmbracing any truth, froze paralyzed,\\n/prosper I but change my instrument\\nI break the spade off, digging deep for gold.\\nAnd catch the mattock up.\\nI worked on, on.\\nThrough all the bristling fence of nights and days\\nWhich hedges time in from the eternities\\nI struggled, never stopped to note the stakes\\nWhich hurt me in my course. The midnight oil\\nWould stink sometimes there came some vulgar needs\\nI had to live that therefore I might work.\\nAnd, being but poor, I was constrained, for life.\\nTo work with one hand for the booksellers\\nWhile working with the other for myself\\nAnd art you swim with feet, as well as hands,\\nOr make small way. I apprehended this.\\nIn England no one lives by verse that lives\\nAnd, apprehending, I resolved by prose\\nTo make a space to sphere my living verse.\\nI wrote for cyclopaedias, magazines.\\nAnd weekly papers, holding up my name\\nTo keep it from the mud. I learnt the use\\nOf the editorial we in a review,\\nAs courtly ladies the fine trick of trains,\\nAnd swept it grandly through the open doors,\\nAs if one could not pass through doors at all.\\nSave so encumbered. I wrote tales beside.\\nCarved many an article on cherry-stones\\nTo suit light readers, something in the lines\\nRevealing, it was said, the mallet-hand\\nBut that I ll never vouch for. What you do", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0104.jp2"}, "103": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 9 1\\nFor bread will taste of common grain, not grapes,\\nAlthough you have a vineyard in Champagne,\\nMuch less in Nephelococcygia,\\nAs mine was, peradventure.\\nHaving bread\\nFor just so many days, just breathing-room\\nFor body and verse, I stood up straight, and worked\\nMy veritable work. And as the soul\\nWhich grows within a child makes the child grow,\\nOr as the fiery sap, the touch from God,\\nCareering through a tree, dilates the bark.\\nAnd roughs with scale and knob, before it strikes\\nThe summer-foliage out in a green flame,\\nSo life, in deepening with me, deepened all\\nThe course I took, the work I did. Indeed,\\nThe academic law convinced of sin\\nThe critics cried out on the falling off,\\nRegretting the first manner. But I felt\\nMy heart s life throbbing in my verse to show\\nIt lived, it also certes incomplete.\\nDisordered with all Adam in the blood.\\nBut even its very tumors, warts, and wens\\nStill organized by and implying life.\\nA lady called upon me on such a day.\\nShe had the low voice of your English dames,\\nUnused, it seemed, to need rise half a note\\nTo catch attention, and their quiet mood,\\nAs if they lived too high above the earth\\nFor that to put them out in anything\\nSo gentle, because verily so proud\\nSo wary and afraid of hurting you,\\nBy no means that you are not really vile,\\nBut that they would not touch you with their foot", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0105.jp2"}, "104": {"fulltext": "92 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo push you to your place so self-possessed,\\nYet gracious and conciliating, it takes\\nAn effort in their presence to speak truth\\nYou know the sort of woman brilliant stuff,\\nAnd out of nature. Lady Waldemar.\\nShe said her name quite simply, as if it meant\\nNot much, indeed, but something took my hands,\\nAnd smiled as if her smile could help my case,\\nAnd dropped her eyes on me and let them melt.\\nIs this, she said, the muse\\nNo sibyl, even,\\nI answered, since she fails to guess the cause\\nWhich taxed you with this visit, madam.\\nGood,\\nShe said. I value what s sincere at once.\\nPerhaps if I had found a literal muse,\\nThe visit might have taxed me. As it is.\\nYou wear your blue so chiefly in your eyes,\\nMy fair Aurora, in a frank, good way,\\nIt comforts me entirely for your fame.\\nAs well as for the trouble of ascent\\nTo this Olympus.\\nThere a silver laugh\\nRan rippling through her quickened little breaths\\nThe steep stair somewhat justified.\\nBut still\\nYour ladyship has left me curious why\\nYou dared the risk of finding the said muse\\nAh, keep me, notwithstanding, to the point,\\nLike any pedant Is the blue in eyes\\nAs awful as in stockings, after all,\\nI wonder, that you d have my business out\\nBefore I breathe exact the epic plunge", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0106.jp2"}, "105": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 93\\nIn spite of gasps Well, naturally you think\\nI ve come here, as the lion-hunters go\\nTo deserts, to secure you with a trap\\nFor exhibition in my drawing-rooms\\nOn zoologic soirees not in the least,\\nRoar softly at me I am frivolous,\\nI dare say I have played at wild-beast shows\\nLike other women of my class, but now\\nI meet my lion simply as Androcles\\nMet his when at his mercy.\\nSo she bent\\nHer head as queens may mock, then, lifting up\\nHer eyelids with a real grave queenly look,\\nWhich ruled, and would not spare, not even herself,\\nI think you have a cousin, Romney Leigh.\\nYou bring a word from hhn my eyes leapt up\\nTo the very height of hers, a word from hi7n\\nI bring a word about him actually.\\nBut first (she pressed me with her urgent eyes),\\nYou do not love him, you\\nYou re frank, at least,\\nIn putting questions, madam, I replied.\\nI love my cousin cousinly no more.\\nI guessed as much. I m ready to be frank\\nIn answering also, if you ll question me.\\nOr even for something less. You stand outside,\\nYou artist women, of the common sex\\nYou share not with us, and exceed us so\\nPerhaps by what you re mulcted in, your hearts\\nBeing starved to make your heads so run the old\\nTraditions of you. I can therefore speak", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0107.jp2"}, "106": {"fulltext": "94 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWithout the natural shame which creatures feel,\\nWhen speaking on their level to their like.\\nThere s many a papist she would rather die\\nThan own to her maid she put a ribbon on\\nTo catch the indifferent eye of such a man,\\nWho yet would count adulteries on her beads\\nAt holy Mary s shrine, and never blush.\\nBecause the saints are so far off we lose\\nAll modesty before them. Thus to-day.\\nTis /love Romney Leigh.\\nForbear! I cried.\\nIf here s no muse, still less is any saint,\\nNor even a friend, that Lady Waldemar\\nShould make confessions\\nThat s unkindly said.\\nIf no friend, what forbids to make a friend\\nTo join to our confession, ere we have done\\nI love your cousin. If it seems unwise\\nTo say so, it s still foolisher (we re frank)\\nTo feel so. My first husband left me young,\\nAnd pretty enough, so please you, and rich enough\\nTo keep my booth in May-fair with the rest\\nTo happy issues. There are marquises\\nWould serve seven years to call me wife, I know.\\nAnd after seven I might consider it.\\nFor there s some comfort in a marquisate,\\nWhen all s said, yes, but after the seven years\\nI now love Romney. You put up your lip\\nSo like a Leigh so like him Pardon me,\\nI m well aware I do not derogate\\nIn loving Romney I^eigh. The name is good.\\nThe means are excellent but the man, the man\\nHeaven help us both, I am near as mad as he\\nIn loving such an one.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0108.jp2"}, "107": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 95\\nShe slowly swung\\nHer heavy ringlets till they touched her smile,\\nAs reasonably sorry for herself,\\nAnd thus continued\\nOf a truth, Miss Leigh,\\nI have not without struggle come to this.\\nI took a master in the German tongue,\\nI gamed a little, went to Paris twice\\nBut, after all, this love you eat of love,\\nAnd do as vile a thing as if you ate\\nOf garlic, which, whatever else you eat,\\nTastes uniformly acrid, till your peach\\nReminds you of your onion. Am I coarse\\nWell, love s coarse, nature s coarse. Ah, there s the rub\\nWe fair fine ladies, who park out our lives\\nFrom common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows\\nFrom flying over we re as natural still\\nAs Blowsalinda. Drape us perfectly\\nIn Lyons velvet, we are not for that\\nLay-figures, look you we have hearts within,\u00e2\u0080\u0094\\nWarm, live, improvident, indecent hearts,\\nAs ready for outrageous ends and acts\\nAs any distressed seamstress of them all\\nThat Romney groans and toils for. We catch love.\\nAnd other fevers, in the vulgar way.\\nLove will not be outwitted by our wit,\\nNor outrun by our equipages mine\\nPersisted, spite of efforts. All my cards\\nTurned up but Romney Leigh; my German stopped\\nAt germane Wertherism my Paris rounds\\nReturned me from the Champs Elysees just\\nA ghost, and sighing like Dido s. I came home\\nUncured, convicted rather to myself", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0109.jp2"}, "108": {"fulltext": "96 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOf being in love in love That s coarse, you ll say,\\nI m talking garlic.\\nColdly I replied\\nApologize for atheism, not love\\nFor me, I do believe in love, and God.\\nI know my cousin Lady Waldemar\\nI know not yet I say as much as this,\\nWhoever loves him, let her not excuse.\\nBut cleanse herself, that, loving such a man,\\nShe may not do it with such unworthy love\\nHe cannot stoop and take it.\\nThat is said\\n-Austerely, like a youthful prophetess,\\nWho knits her brows across her pretty eyes\\nTo keep them back from following the gray flight\\nOf doves between the temple-columns. Dear,\\nBe kinder with me let us two be friends.\\nI m a mere woman, the more weak, perhaps.\\nThrough being so proud you re better as for him,\\nHe s best. Indeed, he builds his goodness up\\nSo high it topples down to the other side,\\nAnd makes a sort of badness there s the worst\\nI have to say against your cousin s best.\\nAnd so be mild, Aurora, with my worst.\\nFor his sake, if not mine.\\nI own myself\\nIncredulous of confidence like this\\nAvailing him or you.\\nAnd I, myself,\\nOf being worthy of him with any love\\nIn your sense I am not so let it pass.\\nAnd yet I save him if I marry him\\nLet that pass, too.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0110.jp2"}, "109": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 97\\nPass, pass we play police\\nUpon my cousin s life to indicate\\nWhat may or may not pass I cried. He knows\\nWhat s worthy of him the choice remains with hb7i\\nAnd what he chooses, act or wife, I think\\nI shall not call unworthy, I, for one.\\nTis somewhat rashly said, she answered slow.\\nNow let s talk reason, though we talk of love.\\nYour Cousin Romney Leigh s a monster there,\\nThe word s out fairly, let me prove the fact.\\nWe ll take, say, that most perfect of antiques.\\nThey call the Genius of the Vatican,\\n(Which seems too beauteous to endure itself\\nIn this mixed world), and fasten it for once\\nUpon the torso of the Dancing Faun\\n(Who might limp, surely, if he did not dance),\\nInstead of Buonarotti s mask what then\\nWe show the sort of monster Romney is.\\nWith godlike virtues and heroic aims\\nSubjoined to limping possibilities\\nOf mismade human nature. Grant the man\\nTwice godlike, twice heroic, still he limps\\nAnd here s the point we come to.\\nPardon me\\nBut, Lady Waldemar, the point s the thing\\nWe never come to.\\nCaustic, insolent\\nAt need I like you, (here she took my hands)\\nAnd now my lioness, help Androcles,\\nFor all your roaring. Help me for myself\\nI would not say so, but for him. He limps\\nSo certainly, he ll fall into the pit\\nA week hence, so I lose him, so he is lost 1", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0111.jp2"}, "110": {"fulltext": "98 AURORA LEIGH.\\nFor when he s fairly married, he a Leigh,\\nTo a girl of doubtful life, undoubtful birth,\\nStarved out in London till her coarse-grained hands\\nAre whiter than her morals, even you\\nMay call his choice unworthy.\\nMarried lost\\nHe Romney\\nAh, you re moved at last, she said.\\nThese monsters, set out in the open sun,\\nOf course throw monstrous shadows those who throw\\nAwry will scarcely act straightly. Who but he\\nAnd who but you can wonder He has been mad.\\nThe whole world knows, since first, a nominal man,\\nHe soured the proctors, tried the gownsmen s wits\\nWith equal scorn of triangles and wine.\\nAnd took no honors, yet was honorable.\\nThey ll tell you he lost count of Homer s ships\\nIn Melbourne s poor-bills, Ashley s factory-bills;\\nIgnored the Aspasia we all dare to praise,\\nFor other women, dear, we could not name\\nBecause we re decent. Well, he had some right\\nOn his side, probably men always have.\\nWho go absurdly wrong. The living boor\\nWho brews your ale exceeds in vital worth\\nDead Caesar who stops bungholes in the cask.\\nAnd also, to do good is excellent.\\nFor persons of his income, even to boors.\\nI sympathize with all such things. But he\\nWent mad upon them madder and more mad\\nFrom college times to these, as, going down hill,\\nThe faster still, the farther. You must know\\nYour Leigh by heart he has sown his black young curls\\nWith bleaching cares of half a million men\\nAlready. If you do not starve, or sin,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0112.jp2"}, "111": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH, 00\\nYou re nothing to him pay the income tax,\\nAnd break your heart upon t, he ll scarce be touched\\nBut come upon the parish, qualified\\nFor the parish stocks, and Romney will be there\\nTo call you brother, sister, or perhaps\\nA tenderer name still. Had I any chance\\nWith Mister Leigh, who am Lady Waldemar,\\nAnd never committed felony\\nYou speak\\nToo bitterly, I said, for the literal truth.\\nThe truth is bitter. Here s a man who looks\\nForever on the ground. You must be low,\\nOr else a pictured ceiling overhead.\\nGood painting thrown away. For me, I ve done\\nWhat women may we re somewhat limited,\\nWe modest women but I ve done my best\\nHow men are perjured when they swear our eyes\\nHave meaning in them They re just blue or brovs n^\\nThey just can drop their lids a little. And yet\\nMine did more for I read half Fourier through,\\nProudhon, Considerant, and Louis Blanc,\\nWith various others of his socialists.\\nAnd, if I had been a fathom less in love.\\nHad cured myself with gaping. As it was\\nI quoted from them prettily enough.\\nPerhaps, to make them sound half rational\\nTo a saner man than he whene er we talked,\\n(For which I dodged occasion learnt by heart\\nHis speeches in the Commons and elsewhere\\nUpon the social question heaped reports\\nOf wicked women and penitentiaries\\nOn all my tables (with a place for Sue)\\nAnd gave my name to swell subscription-lists", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0113.jp2"}, "112": {"fulltext": "100 AURORA LEIGH.\\nToward keeping up the sun at nights in heaven,\\nAnd other possible ends. All things I did,\\nExcept the impossible such as wearing gowns\\nProvided by the Ten Hours movement there\\nI stopped we must stop somewhere. He, meanwhile\\nUnmoved as the Indian tortoise neath the world,\\nLet all that noise go on upon his back.\\nHe would not disconcert or throw me out\\nTwas well to see a woman of my class\\nWith such a dawn of conscience. For the heart\\nMade firewood for his sake, and flaming up\\nTo his face, he merely warmed his feet at it\\nJust deigned to let my carriage stop him short\\nIn park or street, he leaning on the door\\nWith news of the committee which sate last\\nOn pickpockets at suck.\\nYou jest, you jest.\\nAs martyrs jest, dear (if you read their lives),\\nUpon the axe which kills them. When all s done\\nBy me for him you ll ask him presently\\nThe color of my hair he cannot tell.\\nOr answers, Dark, at random while, be sure,\\nHe s absolute on the figure, five or ten.\\nOf my last subscription. Is it bearable,\\nAnd I a woman\\nIs it reparable,\\nThough /were a man\\nI know not. That s to prove.\\nBut first, this shameful marriage\\nAy I cried,\\nThen really there s a marriage\\nYesterday\\nI held him fast upon it. Mister Leigh,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0114.jp2"}, "113": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. lO\\nSaid I, shut up a thing, it makes more noise.\\nThe boiling town keeps secrets ill I ve known\\nYours since last week. Forgive my knowledge so\\nYou feel I m not the woman of the world\\nThe world thinks you have borne with me before,\\nAnd used me in your noble work, our work,\\nAnd now you shall not cast me off because\\nYou re at the difficult point, they^/;/. Tis true\\nEven I can scarce admit the cogency\\nOf such a marriage where you do not love,\\n(Except the class) yet marry, and throw your name\\nDown to the gutter, for a fire-escape\\nTo future generations tis sublime,\\nA great example, a true genesis\\nOf the opening social era. But take heed\\nThis virtuous act must have a patent weight,\\nOr loses half its virtue. Make it tell,\\nInterpret it, and set in the light,\\nAnd do not muffle it in a winter-cloak\\nAs a vulgar bit of shame, as if, at best,\\nA Leigh had made a misalliance, and blushed\\nA Howard should know it. Then I pressed him more\\nHe would not choose, I said, that even his kin\\nAurora Leigh, even should conceive his act\\nLess sacrifice, more fantasy. At which\\nHe grew so pale, dear to the lips, I knew\\nI had touched him. Do you know her, he inquired,\\nMy Cousin Aurora Yes, I said, and lied\\n(But truly we all know you by your books),\\nAnd so I offered to come straight to you,\\nExplain the subject, justify the cause.\\nAnd take you with me to St. Margaret s Court\\nTo see the miracle, this Marian Erie,\\nThis drover s daughter (she s not pretty, he swears).", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0115.jp2"}, "114": {"fulltext": "I02 AURORA LEIGH.\\nUpon whose finger, exquisitely pricked\\nBy a hundred needles, we re to hang the tie\\nTwixt class and class in England, thus indeed\\nBy such a presence, yours and mine, to lift\\nThe match up from the doubtful place. At once\\nHe thanked me, sighing, murmured to himself,\\nShe ll do it, perhaps she s noble, thanked me twice.\\nAnd promised, as my guerdon, to put off\\nHis marriage for a month.\\nI answered then,\\nI understand your drift imperfectly.\\nVou wish to lead me to my cousin s betrothed,\\nTo touch her hand if worthy, and hold her hand\\nIf feeble, thus to justify his match.\\nSo be it, then. But how this serves your ends.\\nAnd how the strange confession of your love\\nServes this, I have to learn I cannot see.\\nShe knit her restless forehead. Then despite,\\nAurora, that most radiant morning name.\\nYou re dull as any London afternoon.\\nI wanted time, and gained it wanted yoic,\\nAnd gain you You will come and see the girl\\nIn whose most prodigal eyes the lineal pearl\\nAnd pride of all your lofty race of Leighs\\nIs destined to solution. Authorized\\nBy sight and knowledge, then, you ll speak your mind,\\nAnd prove to Romney, in your brilliant way,\\nHe ll wrong the people and posterit}^,\\n(Say such a thing is bad for me and you,\\nAnd you fail utterly) by concluding thus\\nAn execrable marriage. Break it up,\\nDisroot it peradventure presently\\nWe ll plant a better fortune in its place.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0116.jp2"}, "115": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 103\\nBe good to me, Aurora, scorn me less\\nFor saying the thing I should not. Well I know\\nI should not. I have kept, as others have,\\nThe iron rule of womanly reserve\\nIn lip and life, till now I wept a week\\nBefore I came here. Ending, she was pale.\\nThe last words, haughtily said, were tremulous.\\nThis palfrey pranced in harness, arched her neck,\\nAnd only by the foam upon the bit\\nYou saw she champed against it.\\nThen I rose.\\nI love love truth s no cleaner thing than love.\\nI comprehend a love so fiery hot\\nIt burns its natural veil of august shame,\\nAnd stands sublimely in the nude, as chaste\\nAs Medicean Venus. But I know,\\nA love that burns through veils will burn through masks,\\nAnd shrivel up treachery. What, love and lie\\nNay. Go to the opera Your love s curable.\\nI love and lie she said, I lie, forsooth\\nAnd beat her taper foot upon the floor,\\nAnd smiled against the shoe, You re hard, Miss Leigh,\\nUnversed in current phrases. Bowling-greens\\nOf poets are fresher than the world s highways.\\nForgive me that I rashly blew the dust\\nWhich dims our hedges even, in your eyes,\\nAnd vexed you so much. You find, probably,\\nNo evil in this marriage, rather good\\nOf innocence, to pastoralize in song.\\nYou ll give the bond your signature, perhaps,\\nBeneath the lady s mark, indifferent\\nThat Romney chose a wife could write ner name,\\nIn witnessing he loved her.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0117.jp2"}, "116": {"fulltext": "104 AURORA LEIGH.\\nLoved I cried.\\nWho tells you that he wants a wife to love\\nHe gets a horse to use, not love, I think\\nThere s work for wives, as well, and after, straw,\\nWhen men are liberal. For m3^self, you err\\nSupposing power in me to break this match.\\nI could not do it to save Romney s life.\\nAnd would not to save mine.\\nYou take it so,\\nShe said farewell, then. Write your books in peace,\\nAs far as may be for some secret stir\\nNow obvious to me for, most obviously,\\nIn coming hither I mistook the way.\\nWhereat she touched my hand, and bent her head,\\nAnd floated from me like a silent cloud\\nThat leaves the sense of thunder.\\nI drew breath.\\nOppressed in my deliverance. After all,\\nThis woman breaks her social system up\\nFor love, so counted, the love possible\\nTo such; and lilies are still lilies, pulled\\nBy smutty hands, though spotted from their white;\\nAnd thus she is better haply, of her kind,\\nThan Romney Leigh, who lives by diagrams.\\nAnd crosses out the spontaneities\\nOf all his individual, personal life\\nWith formal universals. As if a man\\nWere set upon a high stool at a desk\\nTo keep God s books for him in red and black.\\nAnd feel by millions What if even God\\nWere chiefly God by living out himself\\nTo an individualism of the infinite,\\nEterne, intense, profuse, still throwing up\\nThe golden spray of multitudinous worlds", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0118.jp2"}, "117": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 105\\nIn measure to the proclive weight and rush\\nOf his inner nature, the si3ontaneous love\\nStill proof and outflow of spontaneous life\\nThen live, Aurora.\\nTwo hours afterward,\\nWithin St. Margaret s Court I stood alone,\\nClose-veiled. A sick child, from an ague-fit.\\nWhose wasted right hand gambolled gainst his left\\nWith an old brass button in a blot of sun,\\nJeered weakly at me as 1 passed across\\nThe uneven pavement while a woman rouged\\nUpon the angular cheek-bones, kerchief torn,\\nThm dangling locks, and flat, lascivious mouth.\\nCursed at a window both ways, in and out,\\nBy turns some bed-rid creature and myself,\\nLie still there, mother liker the dead dog\\nYou ll be to-morrow. What, we pick our way,\\nFine madam, with those damnable small feet\\nWe cover up our face from doing good.\\nAs if it were our purse What brings you here,\\nMy lady ist to find my gentleman\\nWho visits his tame pigeon in the eaves\\nOur cholera catch you with its cramps and spasms,\\nAnd tumble up your good clothes, veil and all,\\nAnd turn your whiteness dead-blue I looked up\\nI think I could have walked through hell that day,\\nAnd never flinched. The dear Christ comfort you,\\nI said, you must have been most miserable,\\nTo be so cruel and I emptied out\\nMy purse upon the stones when, as I had cast\\nThe last charm in the caldron, the whole court\\nWent boiling, bubbling up, from all its doors\\nAnd windows, with a hideous wail of laughs.\\nAnd roar of oaths, and blows perhaps I passed", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0119.jp2"}, "118": {"fulltext": "I06 AURORA LEIGH.\\nToo quickly for distinguishing and pushed\\nA Uttle side-door hanging on a hinge,\\nAnd plunged into the dark, and groped and climb\\nThe long, steep, narrow stair twixt broken rail\\nAnd mildewed wall that let the plaster drop\\nTo startle me in the blackness. Still, up, up\\nSo high lived Romney s bride. I paused at last\\nBefore a low door in the roof, and knocked\\nThere came an answer like a hurried dove,\\nSo soon can that be Mister Leigh so soon\\nAnd as I entered an ineffable face\\nMet mine upon the threshold. Oh, not you.\\nNot you The dropping of the voice implied,\\nThen, if not you, for me not any one.\\n1 looked her in the eyes, and held her hands.\\nAnd said, I am his cousin. Romney Leigh s\\nAnd here I come to see my cousm too.\\nShe touched me with her face and with her voice.\\nThis daughter of the people. Such soft flowers.\\nFrom such rough roots the people under there.\\nCan sin so, curse so, look so, smell so faugh\\nYet have such daughters\\nNowise beautiful\\nWas Marian Erie. She was not white nor brown.\\nBut could look either, like a mist that changed\\nAccording to being shone on more or less.\\nThe hair, too, ran its opulence of curls\\nIn doubt twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear\\nTo name the color. Too much hair, perhaps,\\n(I ll name a fault here) for so small a head.\\nWhich seemed to droop on that side and on this,\\nAs a full-blown rose uneasy with its weight.\\nThough not a wind should trouble it. Again,\\nThe dimple in the cheek bad better gone", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0120.jp2"}, "119": {"fulltext": "MARIAN ER LE.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0121.jp2"}, "120": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0122.jp2"}, "121": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 107\\nWith redder, fuller rounds and somewhat large\\nThe mouth was, though the milky little teeth\\nDissolved it to so infantine a smile.\\nFor soon it smiled at me the eyes smiled too,\\nBut twas as if remembering they had wept.\\nAnd knowing they should some day weep again.\\nWe talked. She told me all her story out,\\nWhich I ll retell with fuller utterance.\\nAs colored and confirmed in after times\\nBy others and herself too. Marian Erie\\nWas born upon the ledge of Malvern Hill,\\nTo eastward, in a hut built up at night.\\nTo evade the landlord s eye, of mud and turf\\nStill liable, if once he looked that way.\\nTo being straight levelled, scattered by his foot,\\nLike any other ant-hill. Born, I say.\\nGod sent her to this world commissioned right,\\nHer human testimonials fully signed\\nNot scant in soul, complete in lineaments\\nBut others had to swindle her a place\\nTo wail in when she had come. No place for her\\nBy man s law Born an outlaw was this babe\\nHer first cry in our strange and strangling air,\\nWhen cast in spasms out by the shuddering womb.\\nWas wrong against the social code, forced wrong:\\nWhat business had the baby to cry there\\nI tell her story and grow passionate.\\nShe, Marian, did not tell it so, but used\\nMeek words that made no wonder of herself\\nFor being so sad a creature. Mister Leigh\\nConsidered truly that such things should change.\\nThey will^ in heaven but meantime, on the eartlv", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0123.jp2"}, "122": {"fulltext": "I08 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThere s none can like a nettle as a pink,\\nExcept himself. We re nettles, some of us,\\n.And give offence by the act of springing up\\nAnd, if we leave the damp side of the wall,\\nThe hoes, of course, are on us. So she said.\\nHer father earned his life by random jobs\\nDespised by steadier workmen, keeping swine\\nOn commons, picking hops, or hurrying on\\nThe harvest at wet seasons, or, at need.\\nAssisting the Welsh drovers, when a drove\\nOf startled horses plunged into the mist\\nBelow the mountain road, and sowed the wind\\nWith wandering neighings. In between the gaps\\nOf such irregular work he drank and slept,\\nAnd cursed his wife because, the pence being out,\\nShe could not buy more drink. At which she turned,\\n(The worm) and beat her baby in revenge\\nFor her own broken heart. There s not a crime\\nBut takes its proper change out still in crime\\nIf once rung on the counter of this world\\nLet sinners look to it.\\nYet the outcast child.\\nFor whom the very mother s face forewent\\nThe mother s special patience, lived and grew\\nLearnt early to cry low, and walk alone,\\nWith that pathetic, vacillating roll\\nOf the infant body on the uncertain feet\\n(The earth being felt unstable ground so soon)^\\nAt which most women s arms unclose at once\\nWith irrepressive instinct. Thus at three\\nThis poor weaned kid would run off from the fold,\\nThis babe would steal off from the mother s chair.\\nAnd, creeping through the golden walls of gorse\\nWould find some keyhole toward the secrecy", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0124.jp2"}, "123": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 109\\nOf heaven s high blue, and, nestling down, peer out\\nOh, not to catch the angels at their games,\\nShe had never heard of angels, but to gaze\\nShe knew not why, to see she knew not what,\\nA-hungering outward from the barren earth\\nFor something like a joy. She liked, she said,\\nTo dazzle black her sight against the sky\\nFor then, it seemed, some grand blind Love came down,\\nAnd groped her out, and clasped her with a kiss.\\nShe learnt God that way, and was beat for it\\nWhenever she went home, yet came again,\\nAs surely as the trapped hare, getting free,\\nReturns to his form. This grand blind Love, she said,\\nThis skyey father and mother both in one,\\nInstructed her and civilized her more\\nThan even Sunday-school did afterward,\\nTo which a lady sent her to learn books,\\nAnd sit upon a long bench in a row\\nWith other children. Well, she laughed sometimes\\nTo see them laugh and laugh, and maul their texts\\nBut ofter she was sorrowful with noise,\\nAnd wondered if their mothers beat them hard\\nThat ever they should laugh so. There was one\\nShe loved indeed, Rose Bell, a seven years child,\\nSo pretty and clever, who read syllables\\nWhen Marian was at letters she would laugh\\nAt nothing, hold your finger up, she laughed.\\nThen shook her curls down over eyes and mouth\\nTo hide her make-mirth from the schoolmaster.\\nAnd Rose s pelting glee, as frank as rain\\nOn cherry-blossoms, brightened Marian too.\\nTo see another merry whom she loved.\\nShe whispered once (the children side by side,\\nWith mutual arms entwined about their necks),", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0125.jp2"}, "124": {"fulltext": "no AURORA LEIGH.\\n\u00e2\u0080\u00a2Your mother lets you laugh so? Ay, said Rose,\\nShe lets me. She was dug into the ground\\nSix years since, I being but a yearling wean.\\nSuch mothers let us play, and lose our time,\\nAnd never scold nor beat us. Don t you wish\\nYou had one like that There Marian, breaking off,\\nLooked suddenly in my face. Poor Rose said she\\nI heard her laugh last night in Oxford Street.\\nI d pour out half my blood to stop that laugh.\\nPoor Rose, poor Rose said Marian.\\nShe resumed.\\nIt tried her, when she had learnt at Sunday-school\\nWhat God was, what he wanted from us all,\\nAnd how in choosing sin we vexed the Christ,\\nTo go straight home, and hear her father pull\\nThe Name down on us from the thunder-shelf.\\nThen drink away his soul into the dark\\nFrom seeing judgment. Father, mother, home.\\nWere God and heaven reversed to her the more\\nShe knew of right, the more she guessed their wrong\\nHer price paid down for knowledge was to know\\nThe vileness of her kindred through her heart,\\nHer filial and tormented heart, henceforth,\\nThey struck their blows at virtue. Oh tis hard\\nTo learn you have a father up in heaven\\nBy a gathering certain sense of being, on earth,\\nStill worse than orphaned tis too heavy a grief\\nThe having to thank God for such a joy.\\nAnd so passed Marian s life from year to year.\\nHer parents took her with them when they tramped.\\nDodged lanes and heaths, frequented towns and fairs,\\nAnd once went farther, and saw Manchester,\\nAnd once the sea, that blue end of the world,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0126.jp2"}, "125": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. Ill\\nThat fair scroll-finis of a wicked book,\\nAnd twice a prison, back at intervals.\\nReturning to the hills. Hills draw like heaven,\\nAnd stronger sometimes, holding out their hands\\nTo pull you from the vile flats up to them.\\nAnd though, perhaps, these strollers still strolled back.\\nAs sheep do, simply that they knew the way,\\nThey certainly felt bettered unaware.\\nEmerging from the social smut of towns.\\nTo wipe their feet clean on the mountain turf.\\nIn which long wanderings Marian lived and learned,\\nEndured and learned. The people on the roads\\nWould stojD and ask her why her eyes outgrew\\nHer cheeks, and if she meant to lodge the birds\\nIn all that hair and then they lifted her,\\nThe miller in his cart a mile or twain,\\nThe butcher s boy on horseback. Often, too.\\nThe peddler stopped, and tapped her on the head\\nWith absolute forefinger, brown and ringed.\\nAnd asked, if peradventure she could read\\nAnd when she answered, Ay, would toss hei down\\nSome stray odd volume from his heavy pack,\\nA Thomson s Seasons, mulcted of the spring,\\nOr half a play of Shakspeare s, torn across,\\n(She had to guess the bottom of a page\\nBy just the top, sometimes as difficult\\nAs, sitting upon the moon, to guess the earth\\nOr else a sheaf of leaves (for that small Ruth s\\nSmall gleanings) torn out from the heart of books,\\nFrom Churchyard Elegies and Edens Lost,\\nFrom Burns, and Bunyan, Selkirk, and Tom Jones.\\nTwas somewhat hard to keep the things distinct\\nAnd oft the jangling influence jarred the child,\\nLike looking at a sunset full of grace", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0127.jp2"}, "126": {"fulltext": "112 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThrough a pot-house window, while the drunken oaths\\nWent on behind her. But she weeded out\\nHer book-leaves, threw away the leaves that hurt\\n(First tore them small, that none should find a word),\\nAnd made a nosegay of the sweet and good\\nTo fold within her breast, and pore upon\\nAt broken moments of the noontide glare,\\nWhen leave was given her to untie her cloak,\\nAnd rest upon the dusty highway s bank\\nFrom the road s dust or oft, the journey done,\\nSome city friend would lead her by the hand\\nTo hear a lecture at an institute.\\nAnd thus she had grown, this Marian Erie of ours,\\nTo no book-learning. She was ignorant\\nOf authors not in earshot of the things\\nOutspoken o er the heads of common men\\nBy men who are uncommon, but within\\nThe cadenced hum of such, and capable\\nOf catching from the fringes of the wing\\nSom.e fragmentary phrases here and there\\nOf that fine music, which, being carried in\\nTo her soul, had reproduced itself afresh\\nIn finer motions of the lips and lids.\\nShe said, in speaking of it, If a flow^er\\nWere thrown you out of heaven at intervals.\\nYou d soon attain to a trick of looking up.\\nAnd so with her. She counted me her years,\\nTill /felt old and then she counted me\\nHer sorrowful pleasures, till I felt ashamed.\\nShe told me she was fortunate and calm\\nOn such and such a season, sate and sewed.\\nWith no one to break up her crystal thoughts.\\nWhile rhymes from lovely poems span around", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0128.jp2"}, "127": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. IT3\\nTheir ringing circles of ecstatic tune,\\nBeneath the moistened finger of the hour.\\nHer parents called her a strange, sickly child,\\nNot good for much, and given to sulk and stare.\\nAnd smile into the hedges and the clouds.\\nAnd tremble if one shook her from her fit\\nBy any blow, or word even. Outdoor jobs\\nWent ill with her, and household quiet work\\nShe was not born to. Had they kept the north,\\nThey might have had their pennyworth out of her.\\nLike other parents, in the factories,\\n(Your children work for you, not you for them.\\nOr else they better had been choked with air\\nThe first breath drawn) but, in this tramping life.\\nWas nothing to be done with such a child\\nBut tramp and tramp. And yet she knitted hose\\nNot ill, and was not dull at needle-work\\nAnd all the country people gave her pence\\nFor darning stockings past their natural age,\\nAnd patching petticoats from old to new.\\nAnd other light work done for thrifty wives.\\nOne day, said Marian, the sun shone that day,\\nHer mother had been badly beat, and felt\\nThe bruises sore about her wretched soul,\\n(That must have been) she came in suddenly,\\nAnd snatching in a sort of breathless rage\\nHer daughter s headgear comb, let down the hair\\nUpon her like a sudden waterfall.\\nThen drew her drenched and passive by the arm\\nOutside the hut they lived in. When the child\\nCould clear her blinded face from all that stream\\nOf tresses there a man stood, with beast s eyes.\\nThat seemed as they would swallow her alive,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0129.jp2"}, "128": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nComplete in body and spirit, hair and all,\\nAnd burning stertorous breath that hurt her cheek,\\nHe breathed so near. The mother held her tight.\\nSaying hard between her teeth, Why, wench, why, wench,\\nThe squire speaks to you now the squire s too good\\nHe means to set you up, and comfort us.\\nBe mannerly at least. The child turned round\\nAnd looked up piteous in the mother s face,\\n(Be sure that mother s death-bed will not want\\nAnother devil to damn, than such a look)\\nO mother Then, with desperate glance to heaven,\\nGod, free me from my mother she shrieked out,\\nThese mothers are too dreadful. And, with force\\nAs passionate as fear, she tore her hands,\\nLike lilies from the rocks, from hers and his.\\nAnd sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep,\\nAway from both away, if possible.\\nAs far as God, away They yelled at her.\\nAs famished hounds at a hare. She heard them yell\\nShe felt her name hiss after her from the hills.\\nLike shot from guns. On, on. And now she had cast\\nThe voices off with the uplands. On. Mad fear\\nWas running in her feet, and killing the ground\\nThe white roads curled as if she burnt them up\\nThe green fields melted wayside trees fell back\\nTo make room for her. Then her head grew vexed\\nTrees, fields, turned on her and ran after her\\nShe heard the quick pants of the hills behind.\\nTheir keen air pricked her neck she had lost her feet,\\nCould run no more, yet somehow went as fast,\\nThe horizon red twixt steeples in the east\\nSo sucked her forward, forward, while her heart\\nKept swelling, swelling, till it swelled so big\\nIt seemed to fill her body, when it burst,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0130.jp2"}, "129": {"fulltext": "A wagoner h:id found her in :i ditcii. Page 115.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0131.jp2"}, "130": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0132.jp2"}, "131": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. I15\\nAnd overflowed the world, and swamped the Ught\\nAnd now I am dead and safe, thought Marian Erie.\\nShe had dropped, she had fainted.\\nAs the sense returned.\\nThe night had passed, not life s night. She was ware\\nOf heavy tumbling motions, creaking wheels.\\nThe driver shouting to the lazy team\\nThat swung their rankling bells against her brain.\\nWhile through the wagon s coverture and chinks\\nThe cruel yellow morning pecked at her,\\nAlive or dead upon the straw inside\\nAt which her soul ached back into the dark\\nAnd prayed, No more of that. A wagoner\\nHad found her in a ditch beneath the moon,\\nAs white as moonshine, save for the oozing blood.\\nAt first he thought her dead but when he had wiped\\nThe mouth, and heard it sigh, he raised her up,\\nAnd laid her in his wagon in the straw,\\nAnd so conveyed her to the distant town\\nTo which his business called himself, and left\\nThat heap of misery at the hospital.\\nShe stirred the place seemed new and strange as death.\\nThe white strait bed, with others strait and white.\\nLike graves dug side by side at measured lengths,\\nAnd quiet people walking in and out\\nWith wonderful low voices and soft steps,\\nAnd apparitional equal care for each,\\nAstonished her with order, silence, law\\nAnd when a gentle hand held out a cup,\\nShe took it, as you do at sacrament,\\nHalf awed, half melted, not being used, indeed,\\nTo so much love as makes the form of love\\nAnd courtesy of manners. Delicate drinks.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0133.jp2"}, "132": {"fulltext": "Il6 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd rare white bread, to which some dying eyes\\nWere turned in observation. O my God,\\nHow sick we must be ere we make men just\\nI think it frets the saints in heaven to see\\nHow many desolate creatures on the earth\\nHave learnt the simple dues of fellowship\\nAnd social comfort, in a hospital,\\nAs Marian did. She lay there, stunned, half tranced,\\nAnd wished, at intervals of growing sense,\\nShe might be sicker yet, if sickness made\\nThe world so marvellous kind, the air so hushed,\\nAnd all her wake-time quiet as a sleep\\nFor now she understood (as such things were)\\nHow sickness ended very oft in heaven\\nAmong the unspoken raptures yet more sick,\\nAnd surelier happy. Then she dropped her lids,\\nAnd, folding up her hands as flowers at night,\\nWould lose no moment of the blessed time.\\nShe lay and seethed in fever many weeks.\\nBut youth was strong, and overcame the test\\nRevolted soul and flesh were reconciled.\\nAnd fetched back to the necessary day\\nAnd daylight duties. She could creep about\\nThe long, bare rooms, and stare out drearily\\nFrom any narrow window on the street.\\nTill some one who had nursed her as a friend.\\nSaid coldly to her, as an enemy,\\nShe had leave to go next week, beins: well enousfh,\\n(While only her heart ached.) Go next week, thought\\nshe,\\nNext week how would it be with her next week.\\nLet out into that terrible street alone\\nAmong the pushing people to go where", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0134.jp2"}, "133": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. II7\\nOne da}^, the last before the dreaded last,\\nAmong the convalescents, like herself\\nPrepared to go next morning, she sate dumb,\\nAnd heard half absently the women talk,\\nHow one was famished for her baby s cheeks,\\nThe little wretch would know her a year old\\nAnd lively, like his father one was keen\\nTo get to work, and fill some clamorous mouths\\nAnd one was tender for her dear goodman\\nWho had missed her sorely and one, querulous\\nWould pay backbiting neighbors who had dared\\nTo talk about her as already dead\\nAnd one was proud and if her sweetheart Luke\\nHad left her for a ruddier face than hers\\n(The gossip would be seen through at a glance),\\nSweet riddance of such sweethearts let him hang!\\nTwere good to have been sick for such an end.\\nAnd while they talked, and Marian felt worse\\nFor having missed the worst of all their wrongs,\\nA visitor was ushered through the wards\\nAnd paused among the talkers. When he looked\\nIt was as if he spoke, and when he spoke.\\nHe sang perhaps, said Marian could she tell\\nShe only knew (so much she had chronicled.\\nAs seraphs might the making of the sun)\\nThat he who came and spake was Romney Leigh,\\nAnd then and there she saw and heard him first.\\nAnd when it was her turn to have the face\\nUpon her, all those buzzing pallid lips\\nBeing satisfied with comfort when he changed\\nTo Marian, saying, And you you re going, v/here\\nShe, moveless as a worm beneath a stone\\nWhich some one s stumbling foot has spurned aside.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0135.jp2"}, "134": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nWrithed suddenly, astonished with the hght,\\nAnd breaking into sobs cried, Where I go\\nNone asked me till this moment. Can I say\\nWhere /go, when it has not seemed worth while\\nTo God himself, who thinks of every one.\\nTo think of me, and fix where I shall go\\nSo yomig, he gently asked her, you have lost\\nYour father and your mother\\nBoth, she said,\\nBoth lost My father was burnt up with gin\\nOr ever I sucked milk, and so is lost.\\nMy mother sold me to a man last month,\\nAnd so my mother s lost, tis manifest.\\nAnd I, who fled from her for miles and miles,\\nAs if I had caught sight of the fire of hell\\nThrough some wild gap (she was my mother, sir).\\nIt seems I shall be lost too presently\\nAnd so we end, all three of us.\\nPoor child!\\nHe said, with such a pity in his voice.\\nIt soothed her more than her own tears, poor child\\nTis simple that betrayal by mother s love\\nShould bring despair of God s too. Yet be taught,\\nHe s better to us than many mothers are.\\nAnd children cannot wander beyond reach\\nOf the sweep of his white raiment. Touch and hold\\nAnd, if you weep still, weep where John was laid\\nWhile Jesus loved him.\\nShe could say the words,\\nShe told me, exactly as he uttered them\\nA year back, since in any doubt or dark\\nThey came out like the stars, and shone on her\\nWith just their comfort. Common words, perhaps", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0136.jp2"}, "135": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. IK)\\nThe ministers in church might say the same\\nBut he, he made the church with what he spoke\\nThe difference was the miracle, said slie.\\nThen catching up her smile to ravishment,\\nShe added quickly, 1 repeat his words,\\nBut not his tones can any one repeat\\nThe music of an organ out of church\\nAnd when he said, Poor child I shut my eyes\\nTo feel how tenderly his voice broke through.\\nAs the ointment-box broke on the Holy feet\\nTo let out the rich medicative nard.\\nShe told me how he had raised and rescued her\\nWith reverent pity, as in touching grief\\nHe touched the wounds of Christ, and made her feel\\nMore self-respecting. Hope he called belief\\nIn God work, worship therefore let us pray.\\nAnd thus, to snatch her soul from atheism,\\nAnd keep it stainless from her mother s face.\\nHe sent her to a famous seamstress-house\\nFar off in London, there to work and hope.\\nWith that they parted. She kept sight of heaven.\\nBut not of Romney. He had good to do\\nTo others. Through the days and through the nights\\nShe sewed and sewed and sewed. She drooped sometimes.\\nAnd wondered, while along the tawny light\\nShe struck the new thread into her needle s eye.\\nHow people without mothers on the hills\\nCould choose the town to live in then she drew\\nThe stitch, and mused how Romney s face would look,\\nAnd if twere likely he d remember hers\\nWhen they two had their meeting after death.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0137.jp2"}, "136": {"fulltext": "120 AURORA LEIGH.\\nFOURTH BOOK.\\nThey met still sooner. Twas a year from thence\\nThat Lucy Gresham the sick seamstress girl,\\nWho sewed by Marian s chair so still and quick,\\nAnd leant her head upon its back to cough\\nMore freely, when, the mistress turning round,\\nThe others took occasion to laugh out\\nGave up at last. Among the workers spoke\\nA bold girl with black eyebrows and red lips\\nYou know the news t Who s dying, do you think\\nOur Lucy Gresham. I expected it\\nAs little as Nell Hart s wedding, Blush not, Nell,\\nThy curls be red enough without thy cheeks,\\nAnd some day there ll be found a man to dote\\nOn red curls. Lucy Gresham swooned last night,\\nDropped sudden in the street while going home\\nAnd now the baker says, who took her up\\nAnd laid her by her grandmother in bed.\\nHe ll give her a week to die in. Pass the silk.\\nLet s hope he gave her a loaf, too, within reach\\nFor otherwise they ll starve before they die,\\nThat funny pair of bedfellows Miss Bell,\\nI ll thank you for the scissors. The old crone\\nIs paralytic that s the reason why\\nOur Lucy s thread went faster than her breath,\\nWhich went too quick, we all know. Marian Erie\\nWhy, Marian Erie, you re not the fool to cry\\nYour tears spoil Lady Waldemar s new dress.\\nYou piece of pity\\nMarian rose up straight,\\nAnd, breaking through the talk and through the work.\\nWent outward, in the face of their surprise,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0138.jp2"}, "137": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 121\\nTo Lucy s home, to nurse her back to life\\nOr down to death. She knew, by such an act.\\nAll place and grace were forfeit in the house,\\nWhose mistress would supply the missing hand\\nWith necessary, not inhuman, haste.\\nAnd take no blame. But pity, too, had dues.\\nShe could not leave a solitary soul\\nTo founder in the dark, while she sate still\\nAnd lavished stitches on a lady s hem.\\nAs if no other work were paramount.\\nWhy, God, thought Marian, has a missing hand\\nThis moment Lucy wants a drink, perhaps.\\nLet others miss me never miss me, God\\nSo Marian sate by Lucy s bed, content\\nW^ith duty and was strong, for recompense.\\nTo hold the lamp of human love arm-high,\\nTo catch the death-strained eyes, and comfort them.\\nUntil the angels, on the luminous side\\nOf death, had got theirs ready. And she said.\\nIf Lucy thanked her sometimes, called her kind,\\nIt touched her strangely. Marian Erie, called kind\\nWhat Marian, beaten and sold, who could not die\\nTis verily good fortune to be kind.\\nAh, you she said, who are born to such a grace,\\nBe sorry for the unlicensed class, the poor,\\nReduced to think the best good fortune means\\nThat others simply should be kind to them.\\nFrom sleep to sleep when Lucy had slid away\\nSo gently, like the light upon a hill.\\nOf which none names the moment that it goes\\nThough all see when tis gone, a man came in\\nAnd stood beside the bed. The old idiot wTetch", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0139.jp2"}, "138": {"fulltext": "122 AURORA LEIGH.\\nScreamed feebly, like a baby overlain,\\nSir, sir, you won t mistake me for the corpse\\nDon t look at me^ sir never bury me!\\nAlthough I lie here, I m alive as you,\\nExcept my legs and arms, I eat and drink\\nAnd understand, (that you re the gentleman\\nWho fits the funerals up, Heaven speed you, sir),\\nAnd certainly I should be livelier still\\nIf Lucy here sir, Lucy is the corpse\\nHad worked more properly to buy me wine\\nBut Lucy, sir, was always slow at work,\\nI sha n t lose much by Lucy. Marian Erie,\\nSpeak up, and show the gentleman the corpse.\\nAnd then a voice said, Marian Erie. She rose;\\nIt was the hour for angels there stood hers!\\nShe scarcely marvelled to see Romney Leigh.\\nAs light November snows to empty nests.\\nAs grass to graves, as moss to mildewed stones,\\nAs July suns to ruins, through the rents,\\nAs ministering spirits to mourners, through a loss.\\nAs Heaven itself to men, through pangs of death,\\nHe came uncalled wherever grief had come.\\nAnd so, said Marian Erie, we met anew,\\nAnd added softly, so, we shall not part.\\nHe was not angry that she had left the house\\nWherein he placed her. Well, she had feared it might\\nHave vexed him. Also, when he found her set\\nOn keeping, though the dead was out of sight.\\nThat half-dead, half-live body left behind\\nWith cankerous heart and flesh, which took your best.\\nAnd cursed you for the little good it did,\\n(Could any leave the bed-rid wretch alone,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0140.jp2"}, "139": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 23\\nSo joyless she was thankless even to God,\\nMuch more to you he did not say twas well,\\nYet Marian thought he did not take it ill,\\nSince day by day he came, and every day\\nShe felt within his utterance and his eyes\\nA closer, tenderer presence of the soul,\\nUntil at last he said, We shall not part.\\nOn that same day was Marian s work complete\\nShe had smoothed the empty bed, and swept the floor\\nOf coffin sawdust, set the chairs anew\\nThe dead had ended gossip in, and stood\\nIn that poor room so cold and orderly,\\nThe door-key in her hand, prepared to go\\nAs they had, howbeit not their way. He spoke.\\nDear Marian, of one clay God made us all\\nAnd though men push and poke and paddle in t\\n(As children play at fashioning dirt-pies),\\nAnd call their fancies by the name of facts.\\nAssuming difference, lordship, privilege.\\nWhen all s plain dirt, they come back to it at last\\nThe first grave-digger proves it with a spade,\\nAnd pats all even. Need we wait for this,\\nYou Marian, and 1 Romney\\nShe, at that.\\nLooked blindly in his face, as when one looks\\nThrough driving autumn-rains to find the sky.\\nHe went on speaking\\nMarian, I being born\\nWhat men call noble, and you issued from\\nThe noble people, though the tyrannous sword\\nWhich pierced Christ s heart has cleft the world in twain\\nTwixt class and class, opposing rich to poor,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0141.jp2"}, "140": {"fulltext": "124 AURORA LEIGH.\\nShall we keep parted Not so. Let us lean\\nAnd strain together rather, each to each,\\nCompress the red lips of this gaping wound\\nAs far as two souls can, ay, lean and league,\\nI from my superabundance, from your want\\nYou, joining in a protest gainst the wrong\\nOn both sides.\\nAll the rest he held her hand\\nIn speaking, which confused the sense of much.\\nHer heart against his words beat out so thick,\\nThey might as well be written on the dust\\nWhere some poor bird, escaping from hawk s beak.\\nHas dropped, and beats its shuddering wings, the lines\\nAre rubbed so yet twas something like to this\\nThat they two, standing at the two extremes\\nOf social classes, had received one seal.\\nBeen dedicate and drawn beyond themselves\\nTo mercy and ministration, he, indeed.\\nThrough what he knew, and she, through what she felt;\\nHe, by man s conscience, she, by woman s heart.\\nRelinquishing their several vantage posts\\nOf wealthy ease and honorable toil,\\nTo work with God at love. And since God willed,\\nThat, putting out his hand to touch this ark.\\nHe found a woman s hand there, he d accept\\nThe sign too, hold the tender fingers fast,\\nAnd say, My fellow-worker, be my wife\\nShe told the tale with simple, rustic turns.\\nStrong leaps of meaning in her sudden eyes\\nThat took the gaps of any imperfect phrase\\nOf the unschooled speaker I have rather writ\\nThe thing I understood so than the thing\\nI heard so. And I cannot render right", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0142.jp2"}, "141": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1^5\\nHer quick gesticulation, wild yet soft,\\nSelf-startled from the habitual mood she used,\\nHalf sad, half languid, like dumb creatures (now\\nA rustling bird, and now a wandering deer.\\nOr squirrel gainst the oak-gloom flashing up\\nHis sidelong, burnished head, in just her way\\nOf savage spontaneity), that stir\\nAbruptly the green silence of the woods,\\nAnd make it stranger, holier, more profound\\nAs Nature s general heart confessed itself\\nOf life, and then fell backward on repose.\\nI kissed the lips that ended. So, indeed,\\nHe loves you, Marian\\nLoves me She looked up\\nWith a child s wonder when you ask him first\\nWho made the sun, a puzzled blush, that grew,\\nThen broke off in a rapid, radiant smile\\nOf sure solution. Loves me He loves all.\\nAnd me, of course. He had not asked me else\\nTo work with him forever, and be his wife.\\nHer words reproved me. This, perhaps, was love,\\nTo have its hands too full of gifts to give.\\nFor putting out a hand to take a gift\\nTo love so much, the perfect round of love\\nIncludes in strict conclusion being loved\\nAs Eden-dew went up, and fell again.\\nEnough for watering Eden. Obviously\\nShe had not thought about his love at all.\\nThe cataracts of her soul had poured themselves.\\nAnd risen self-crowned in rainbow would she ask\\nWho crowned her It sufficed that she was crowned.\\nWith women of my class tis otherwise", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0143.jp2"}, "142": {"fulltext": "126 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWe haggle for the small change of our gold,\\nAnd so much love accord for so much love,\\nRialto-prices. Are we therefore wrong\\nIf marriage be a contract, look to it then,\\nContracting parties should be equal, just\\nBut if a simple fealty on one side,\\nA mere religion, right to give, is all.\\nAnd certain brides of Europe duly ask\\nTo mount the pile as Indian widows do.\\nThe spices of their tender youth heaped up,\\nThe jewels of their gracious virtues worn,\\nMore gems, more glory, to consume entire\\nFor a living husband as the man s alive,\\nNot dead, the woman s duty by so much\\nAdvanced in England beyond Hindostan.\\nI sate there musing, till she touched my hand\\nWith hers, as softly as a strange white bird\\nShe feared to startle in touching. You are kind\\nBut are you, peradventure, vexed at heart\\nBecause your cousin takes me for a wife\\nI know I am not worthy nay, in truth,\\nI m glad on t, since, for that, he chooses me.\\nHe likes the poor things of the world the best\\nI would not, therefore, if I could, be rich.\\nIt pleasures him to stoop for buttercups.\\nI would not be a rose upon the wall\\nA queen might stop at, near the palace-door.\\nTo say to a courtier, Pluck that rose for me\\nIt s prettier than the rest. O Romney Leigh\\nI d rather far be trodden by his foot\\nThan lie in a great queen s bosom.\\nOut of breath,\\nShe paused.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0144.jp2"}, "143": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 12/\\nSweet Marian, do you disavow\\nThe roses widi diat face\\nShe dropt her head\\nAs if the wind had caught that flower of her\\nAnd bent it in the garden, then looked up\\nWith grave assurance. Well, you think me bold\\nBut so we all are, when we re praying God.\\nAnd if I m bold, yet, lady, credit me,\\nThat since I know myself for what I am,\\nMuch fitter for his handmaid than his wife.\\nI ll prove the handmaid and the wife at once.\\nServe tenderly, and love obediently.\\nAnd be a worthier mate, perhaps, than some\\nWho are wooed in silk among their learned books\\nWhile I shall set myself to read his eyes.\\nTill such grow plainer to me than the French\\nTo wisest ladies. Do you think I ll miss\\nA letter in the spelling of his mind\\nNo more than they do when they sit and write\\nTheir flying words with flickering wild-fowl tails,\\nNor ever pause to find how many /s,\\nShould that be y or they know t so well\\nI ve seen them writing, when I brought a dress\\nAnd waited, floating out their soft white hands\\nOn shining paper. But they re hard sometimes.\\nFor all those hands. We ve used out many nights,\\nAnd worn the yellow daylight into shreds\\nWhich flapped and shivered down our aching eyes\\nTill night appeared more tolerable, just\\nThat pretty ladies might look beautiful.\\nWho said at last You re lazy in that house 1\\nYou re slow in sending home the work I count\\nI ve waited near an hour for t. Pardon me,\\nI do not blame them, madam, nor misprise", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0145.jp2"}, "144": {"fulltext": "128 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThey are fair and gracious ay, but not like you,\\nSince none but you has Mister Leigh s own blood,\\nBoth noble and gentle, and without it well,\\nThey are fair, I said so fair, it scarce seems strange\\nThat flashing out in any looking-glass\\nThe wonder of their glorious brows and breasts,\\nThey re charmed so, they forget to look behind,\\nAnd mark how pale we ve grown, we pitiful\\nRemainders of the world. And so perhaps\\nIf Mister Leigh had chosen a wife from these,\\nShe might, although he s better than her best.\\nAnd dearly she would know^ it, steal a thought\\nWhich should be all his, an eye-glance from his face.\\nTo plunge into the mirror opposite\\nI n search of her own beauty s pearl while\\nAh, dearest lady, serge will outweigh silk\\nFor winter-wear, when bodies feel a-cold.\\nAnd I ll be a true wife to your Cousin Leigh.\\nBefore I answered, he was there himself.\\nI think he had been standing in the room,\\nAnd listened probably to half her talk.\\nArrested, turned to stone, as white as stone.\\nWill tender sayings make men look so white\\nHe loves her then profoundly.\\n\u00e2\u0080\u00a2You are here,\\nAurora Here I meet you We clasped hands.\\nEven so, dear Romney, Lady Waldemar\\nHas sent me in haste to find a cousin of mine\\nWho shall be.\\nLady Waldemar is good.\\nHere s one, at least, who is good, I sighed, and touched\\nPoor Marian s happy head, as dog-like she,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0146.jp2"}, "145": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 29\\nMost passionately patient, waited on,\\nA-tremble for her turn of greeting words\\nI ve sate a full hour with your INIarian Erie,\\nAnd learnt the thing by heart, and from my heart\\nAm therefore competent to give you thanks\\nFor such a cousin.\\nYou accept at last\\nA gift from me, Aurora, without scorn\\nAt last I please you How his Voice was changed\\nYou cannot please a woman against her will,\\nAnd once you vexed me. Shall we speak of that\\nWe ll say, then, you were noble in it all,\\nAnd I not ignorant let it pass And now\\nYou please me, Romney, when you please yourself\\nSo, please you, be fanatical in love,\\nAnd I m well pleased. Ah, cousin at the old hall.\\nAmong the gallery portraits of our Leighs,\\nWe shall not find a sweeter signory\\nThan this pure forehead s.\\nNot a word he said.\\nHow arrogant men are Even philanthropists\\nWho try to take a wife up in the way\\nThey put down a subscription-check, if once\\nShe turns, and says, I will not tax you so.\\nMost charitable sir feel ill at ease,\\nAs though she had wronged them somehow. I suppose\\nWe women should remember what we are,\\nAnd not throw back an obolus inscribed\\nWith Caesar s image lightly. I resumed.\\nIt strikes me, some of those sublime Vandykes\\nWere not too proud to make good saints in heaven\\nAnd, if so, then they re not too proud to-day\\nTo bow down (now the ruffs are off their necks)", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0147.jp2"}, "146": {"fulltext": "130 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd own this good, true, noble Marian, yours,\\nAnd mine, I ll say For poets (bear the word),\\nHalf poets even, are still whole democrats,\\nOh, not that we re disloyal to the high,\\nBut loyal to the low, and cognizant\\nOf the less scrutable majesties. For me,\\nI comprehend your choice, I justify\\nYour right in choosing.\\nNo, no, no he sighed,\\nWith a sort of melancholy impatient scorn.\\nAs some grown man who never had a child\\nPuts by some child who plays at being a man,\\nYou did not, do not, can not comprehend\\nMy choice, my ends, my motives, nor myself\\nNo matter now we ll let it pass, you say.\\nI thank you for 3 our generous cousinship\\nWhich helps this present I accept for her\\nYour favorable thoughts. We re fallen on days,\\nWe two who are not poets, when to wed\\nRequires less mutual love than common love\\nFor two together to bear out at once\\nUpon the loveless many. Work in pairs,\\nIn galley-couplings or in marriage-rings.\\nThe difference lies in the honor, not the work,\\nAnd such w-e re bound to, I and she. But love\\n(You poets are benighted in this age.\\nThe hour s too late for catching even moths.\\nYou ve gnats instead), love love s fool-paradise\\nIs out of date, like Adam s. Set a swan\\nTo swim the Trenton rather than true love\\nTo float its fabulous plumage safely down\\nThe cataracts of this loud transition-time.\\nWhose roar forever henceforth in my ears\\nMust keep me deaf to music.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0148.jp2"}, "147": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 131\\nThere, I turned\\nAnd kissed poor Marian, out of discontent.\\nThe man had baffled, chafed me, till I flung\\nFor refuge to the woman, as sometimes,\\nImpatient of some crowded room s close smell.\\nYou throw a window open, and lean out\\nTo breathe a long breath in the dewy night,\\nAnd cool your angry forehead. She, at least.\\nWas not built up as walls are, brick by brick.\\nEach fancy squared, each feeling ranged by line.\\nThe very heat of burning youth applied\\nTo indurate form and system excellent bricks,\\nA well-built wall, which stops you on the road,\\nAnd into which you cannot see an inch\\nAlthough you beat your head against it pshaw\\nAdieu, I said, lor this time, cousins both\\nAnd Cousin Romney, pardon me the word.\\nBe happy, oh in some esoteric sense\\nOf course, I mean no harm in wishing web.\\nAdieu, my Marian. May she come to me.\\nDear Romney, and be married from my house\\nIt is not part of your philosophy\\nTo keep your bird upon the black thorn\\nAy,\\nHe answered but it is. I take my wife\\nDirectly from the people and she comes.\\nAs Austria s daughter to imperial France,\\nBetwixt her eagles, blinking not her race,\\nFrom Margaret s Court at garret-height, to meet\\nAnd wed me at St. James nor put off\\nHer gown of serge for that. The things we do.\\nWe do we ll wear no mask, as if we blushed.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0149.jp2"}, "148": {"fulltext": "132 AURORA LEIGH.\\nDear Romney, you re the poet, I replied,\\nBut felt my smile too mournful for my word,\\nAnd turned and went. Ay, masks, I thought, beware\\nOf tragic masks we tie before the glass.\\nUplifted on the cothurn half a yard\\nAbove the natural stature we would play\\nHeroic parts to ourselves, and end, perhaps\\nAs impotently as Athenian wives\\nWho shrieked in lits at the Eumenides.\\nHis foot pursued me down the stair. At least\\nYou ll suffer me to walk with you beyond\\nThese hideous streets, these graves, where men alive\\nPacked close with earthworms, burr unconsciously\\nAbout the plague that, slew them let me go.\\nThe very women pelt their souls in mud\\nAt any woman who walks here alone.\\nHow came you here alone? you are ignorant\\nWe had a strange and melancholy walk\\nThe night came drizzling downward in dark rain.\\nAnd as we walked, the color of the time.\\nThe act, the presence, my hand upon his arm,\\nHis voice in my ear, and mine to my own sense,\\nAppeared unnatural. We talked modern books\\nAnd daily papers, Spanish marriage-schemes\\nAnd English climate was t so cold last year?\\nAnd will the wind change by to-morrow morn\\nCan Guizot stand is London full is trade\\nCompetitive has Dickens turned his hinge\\nA-pinch upon the fingers of the great\\nAnd are potatoes to grow mythical\\nLike moly will the apple die out too\\nWhich way is the wind to-night southeast due east", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0150.jp2"}, "149": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 133\\nWe talked on fast, while every common word\\nSeemed tangled with the thunder at one end,\\nAnd ready to pull down upon our heads\\nA terror out of sight. And yet to pause\\nWere surelier mortal we tore greedily up\\nAll silence, all the innocent breathing-points,\\nAs if, like pale conspirators in haste.\\nWe tore up papers where our signatures\\nImperilled us to an ugly shame or death.\\nI cannot tell you why it was. Tis plain\\nWe had not loved nor hated wherefore dread\\nTo spill gunpowder on ground safe from fire\\nPerhaps we had lived too closely to diverge\\nSo absolutely: leave two clocks, they say,\\nWound up to different hours, upon one shelf.\\nAnd slowly, through the interior wheels of each\\nThe blind mechanic motion sets itself\\nA-throb to feel out for the mutual time.\\nIt was not so with us, indeed while he\\nStruck midnight, I kept striking six at dawn;\\nW^hile he marked judgment, I, redemption-day\\nAnd such exception to a general law\\nImperious upon inert matter even,\\nMight make us, each to either, insecure,\\nA beckoning mystery, or a troubling fear,\\nI mind me, when we parted at the door,\\nHow strange his good-night sounded, like good-night\\nBeside a deathbed, where the morrow s sun\\nIs sure to come too late for more good days.\\nAnd all that night I thought Good-night, said he.\\nAnd so a month passed. Let me set it down\\nAt once, I have been wrong, I have been wrong.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0151.jp2"}, "150": {"fulltext": "134 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWe are wrong always when we think too much\\nOf what we think or are albeit our thoughts\\nBe verily bitter as self-sacrifice,\\nWe re no less selfish. If we sleep on rocks\\nOr roses, sleeping past the hour of noon,\\nWe re lazy. This I write against myself.\\nI had done a duty in the visit paid\\nTo Marian, and was ready otherwise\\nTo give the witness of my presence and name\\nWhenever she should marry. Which, I though\\nSufficed. I even had cast into the scale\\nAn overweight of justice toward the match.\\nThe Lady Waldemar had missed her tool,\\nAnd broken it in the lock as being too straight\\nFor a crooked purpose while poor Marian Erie\\nMissed nothing in my accents or my acts\\nI had not been ungenerous on the whole,\\nNor yet untender so enough. I felt\\nTired, overworked this marriage somewhat jarred\\nOr, if it did not, all the bridal noise.\\nThe pricking of the map of life with pins,\\nIn schemes of Here we ll go, and There we ll\\nstay,\\nAnd Everywhere we ll prosper in our love,\\nWas scarce my business let them order it\\nWho else should care I threw myself aside.\\nAs one who had done her work, and shut her eyes\\nTo rest the better.\\nI, who should have known,\\nForereckoned mischief Where we disavow\\nBeing keeper to our brother, we re his Cain,\\nI might have held that poor child to my heart\\nA little longer twould have hurt me much", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0152.jp2"}, "151": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 135\\nTo have hastened by its beats the marriage-day,\\nAnd kept her safe meantime from tampering hands,\\nOr, peradventure, traps. What drew me back\\nFrom telling Romney plainly the designs\\nOf Lady Waldemar, as spoken out\\nTo me me had I any right, ay, right.\\nWith womanly compassion and reserve\\nTo break the fall of woman s impudence\\nTo stand by calmly, knowing what I knew.\\nAnd hear him call her good\\nDistrust that word.\\nThere is none good save God, said Jesus Christ.\\nIf he once, in the first creation-week.\\nCalled creatures good, forever afterward.\\nThe Devil only has done it, and his heirs,\\nTh^ knaves who win so, and the fools who lose\\nThe word s grown dangerous. In the middle age\\nI think they called malignant fays and imps\\nGood people. A good neighbor, even in this,\\nIs fatal sometimes, cuts your morning up\\nTo mince-meat of the very smallest talk.\\nThen helps to sugar her bohea at night\\nWith your reputation. I have known good wives.\\nAs chaste, or nearly so, as Potiphar s\\nAnd good, good mothers, who would use a child\\nTo better an intrigue good friends, beside,\\n(Very good) who hung succinctly round your neck\\nAnd sucked your breath, as cats are fabled to do\\nBy sleeping infants. And we all have known\\nGood critics who have stamped out poet s hope,\\nGood statesmen who pulled ruin on the state.\\nGood patriots who for a theory risked a cause.\\nGood kings who disembowelled for a tax.\\nGood popes who brought all good to jeopardy.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0153.jp2"}, "152": {"fulltext": "136 AURORA LEIGH.\\nGood Christians who sate still in easy-chairs\\nAnd damned the general world for standing up.\\nNow may the good God pardon all good men\\nHow bitterly I speak how certainly\\nI The innocent white milk in us is turned\\nBy much persistent shining of the sun\\n/Shake up the sweetest in us long enough\\nWith men, it drops to foolish curd, too sourX\\nXTo feed the most untender of Christ s lambs.\\nI should have thought, a woman of the world\\nLike her I m meaning, centre to herself\\nWho has wheeled on her own pivot half a life\\nIn isolated self-love and self-will,\\nAs a windmill seen at distance radiating\\nIts delicate white vans against the sky,\\nSo soft and soundless, simply beautiful,\\nSeen nearer, what a roar and tear it makes,\\nHow it grinds and bruises if she loves at last,\\nHer love s a readjustment of self-love.\\nNo more, a need felt of another s use\\nTo her one advantage, as the mill wants grain,\\nThe fire wants fuel, the very wolf wants prey.\\nAnd none of these is more unscrupulous\\nThan such a charming woman when she loves.\\nShe ll not be thwarted by an obstacle\\nSo trifling as her soul is much less yours\\nIs God a consideration she loves you,\\nNot God she will not flinch for him indeed\\nShe did not for the Marchioness of Perth,\\nWhen wan^ting tickets for the fancy ball.\\nShe loves you, sir, with passion, to lunacy.\\nShe loves you like her diamonds almost.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0154.jp2"}, "153": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 137\\nWell,\\nA month passed so, and then the notice came,\\nOn such a day the marriage at the church.\\nI was not backward.\\nHalf Saint Giles in frieze\\nWas bidden to meet Saint James in cloth-of-gold,\\nAnd, after contract at the altar, pass\\nTo eat a marriage-feast on Hampstead Heath.\\nOf course the people came in uncompelled,\\nLame, blind, and worse sick, sorrowful, and worse\\nThe humors of the peccant social w ound\\nAll pressed out, poured down upon Pimlico,\\nExasperating the unaccustomed air\\nWith a hideous interfusion. You d suppose\\nA finished generation, dead of plague,\\nSwept outward from their graves into the sun,\\nThe moil of death upon them. What a sight\\nA holiday of miserable men\\nIs sadder than a burial-day of kings.\\nThey clogged the streets, they oozed into the church\\nIn a dark, slow stream, like blood. To see that sight,\\nThe noble ladies stood up in their pews.\\nSome pale for fear, a few as red for hate,\\nSome simply curious, some just insolent,\\nAnd some in wondering scorn, What next? what next?\\nThese crushed their delicate rose lips from the smile\\nThat misbecame them in a holy place,\\nWith broidered hems of perfumed handkerchiefs\\nThose passed the salts, with confidence of eyes,\\nAnd simultaneous shiver of moire silk\\nWhile all the aisles, alive and black with heads,\\nCrawled slowly toward the altar from the street,\\nAs bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0155.jp2"}, "154": {"fulltext": "138 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWith shuddering involution, swaying slow\\nFrom right to left, and then from left to right,\\nIn pants and pauses. What an ugly crest\\nOf faces rose upon you everywhere\\nFrom that crammed mass you did not usually\\nSee faces like them in the open day\\nThey hide in cellars, not to make you mad\\nAs Romney Leigh is. Faces O my God,\\nWe call those faces men s and women s ay,\\nAnd children s babies, hanging like a rag\\nForgotten on their mother s neck poor mouths.\\nWiped clean of mother s milk by mother s blow\\nBefore they are taught her cursing. Faces phew.\\nWe ll call them vices, festering to despairs,\\nOr sorrows, petrifying to vices not\\nA finger-touch of God left whole on them,\\nAll ruined, lost, the countenance worn out\\nAs the garment, the will dissolute as the act,\\nThe passions loose and draggling in the dirt.\\nTo trip a foot up at the first free step\\nThose faces twas as if you had stirred up hell\\nTo heave its lowest dreg-fiends uppermost\\nIn fiery swirls of slime, such strangled fronts,\\nSuch obdurate jaws, were thrown up constantly\\nTo twit you with your race, corrupt your blood,\\nAnd grind to devilish colors all your dreams\\nHenceforth, though haply you should drop asleep\\nBy clink of silver waters, in a muse\\nOn Raffael s mild Madonna of the Bird.\\nI ve waked and slept through many nights and days\\nSince then but still that day will catch my breath\\nLike a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed.\\nIn which the fibrous years have taken root", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0156.jp2"}, "155": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 139\\nSo deeply, that they quiver to their tops\\nWhene er you stir the dust of such a day.\\nMy cousin met me with his eyes and hand,\\nAnd then, with just a word, that Marian Erie\\nWas coming with her bridesmaids presently,\\nMade haste to place me by the altar-stair\\nWhere he and other noble gentlemen\\nAnd high-born ladies waited for the bride.\\nWe waited. It was early there was time\\nPor greeting and the morning s compliment\\nAnd gradually a ripple of women s talk\\nArose and fell, and tossed about a spray\\nOf English j-s, soft as a silent hush,\\nAnd, notwithstanding, quite as audible\\nAs louder phrases thrown out by the men.\\nYes, really, if we need to wait in church\\nWe need to talk there. She tis Lady Ayr,\\nIn blue, not purple that s the dowager.\\nShe looks as young She flirts as young, you mean.\\nWhy, if you had seen her upon Thursday night,\\nYou d call Miss Norris modest. K?w again\\nI waltzed with you three hours back. Up at six,\\nUp still at ten scarce time to change one s shoes\\nI feel as white and sulky as a ghost.\\nSo pray don t speak to me. Lord Belcher. No,\\nI ll look at you instead, and it s enough\\nWhile you have that face. In church, my lord fie fie\\nAdair, you staid for the Division Lost\\nBy one. The devil it is I m sorry for t.\\nAnd if I had not promised Mistress Grove\\nYou might have kept your word to Liverpool.\\nConstituents must remember, after all.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0157.jp2"}, "156": {"fulltext": "140 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWe re mortal. We remind them of it. Hark,\\nThe bride comes here she comes in a stream of milk\\nThere Dear, you are asleep still don t you know\\nThe five Miss Granvilles always dressed in white\\nTo show they re ready to be married. Lower\\nThe aunt is at your elbow. Lady Maud,\\nDid Lady Waldemar tell you she had seen\\nThis o-irl of Leidi s No wait i twas Mistress Brookes\\nWho told me Lady Waldemar told her\\nNo, twasn t Mistress Brookes. She s pretty Who\\nMistress Brookes Lady Waldemar How hot\\nPray is t the law to-day we re not to breathe\\nYou re treading on my shawl I thank you, sir.\\nThey say the bride s a mere child, who can t read,\\nBut knows the things she shouldn t, with wide-awake\\nGreat eyes. I d go through fire to look at her.\\nYou do, I think. And Lady Waldemar\\n(You see her sitting close to Romney Leigh.\\nHow beautiful she looks, a little flushed\\nHas taken up the girl, and methodized\\nLeigh s folly. Should I have come here, you suppose.\\nExcept she d ask me She d have served him more\\nBy marrying him herself.\\nAh there she comes.\\nThe bride, at last\\nIndeed, no. Past eleven.\\nShe puts off her patched petticoat to-day\\nAnd puts on May-fair manners, so begins\\nBy setting us to wait. Yes, yes, this Leigh\\nWas always odd it s in the blood, I think.\\nHis father s uncle s cousin s second son\\nWas, was you understand me and for him,\\nHe s stark has turned quite lunatic upon\\nThis modern question of the poor the poor.", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0158.jp2"}, "157": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. UI\\nAn excellent subject when you re moderate.\\nYou ve seen Prince Albert s model lodging-house\\nDoes honor to his Royal Highness. Good\\nBut would he stop his carriage in Cheapside\\nTo shake a common fellow by the fist\\nWhose name was Shakspeare no. We draw a hne\\nAnd if we stand not by our order, we\\nIn England, we fall headlong. Here s a sight,\\nA hideous sight, a most indecent sight\\nMy wife would come, sir, or I had kept her back.\\nBy heaven, sir, when poor Damiens trunk and hmbs\\nWere torn by horses, women of the court\\nStood by and stared exactly as to-day\\nOn this dismembering of society,\\nWith pretty, troubled faces.\\nNow, at last.\\nShe comes now.\\nWhere who sees you push me, sir,\\nBeyond the point of what is mannerly.\\nYou re standing, madam, on my second flounce.\\nI do beseech you\\nu ;^Q it s not the bride.\\nHalf-past eleven. How late The bridegoom, mark,\\nGets anxious and goes out.\\nAnd, as I said.\\nThese Leighs our best blood running in the rut\\nIt s something awful. We had pardoned him\\nA simple misalliance got up aside\\nFor a pair of sky-blue eyes the House of Lords\\nHas winked at such things, and we ve all been young.\\nBut here s an intermarriage reasoned out,\\nA contract (carried boldly to the light\\nTo challenge observation, pioneer\\nGood acts by a great example) twixt the extremes", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0159.jp2"}, "158": {"fulltext": "142 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOf martyrized society on the left\\nThe well-born, on the right the merest mob,\\nTo treat as equals tis anarchical\\nIt means more than it says tis damnable.\\nWhy, sir, we can t have even our coffee good,\\nUnless we strain it.\\nHere, Miss Leigh\\nLord Howe,\\nYou re Romney s friend. What s all this waiting for t\\nI cannot tell. The bride has lost her head\\n(And way, perhaps) to prove her sympathy\\nWith the bridegroom.\\nWhat, you also disapprove\\nOh, /approve of nothing in the world,\\nHe answered, not of you, still less of me,\\nNor even of Romney, though he s worth us both.\\nWe re all gone wrong. The tune in us is lost\\nAnd whistling down back alleys to the moon\\nWill never catch it.\\nLet me draw Lord Howe.\\nA born aristocrat, bred radical.\\nAnd educated socialist, who still\\nGoes floating, on traditions of his kind.\\nAcross the theoretic flood from France,\\nThough, like a drenched Noah on a rotten deck,\\nScarce safer for his place there. He, at least.\\nWill never land on Ararat, he knows,\\nTo recommence the world on the new plan\\nIndeed, he thinks said world had better end.\\nHe sympathizes rather with the fish\\nOutside than with the drowned paired beasts within,\\nWho cannot couple again or multiply,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0160.jp2"}, "159": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 143\\nAnd that s the sort of Noah he is, Lord Howe.\\nHe never could be anything complete,\\nExcept a loyal, upright gentleman,\\nA liberal landlord, graceful diner-out,\\nAnd entertainer more than hospitable,\\nWhom authors dine with, and forget the hock.\\nWhatever he believes, and it is much.\\nBut nowise certain, now here and now there,\\nHe still has sympathies beyond his creed\\nDiverting him from action. In the House\\nNo party counts upon him, while for all\\nHis speeches have a noticeable weight.\\nMen like his books, too (he has written books),\\nWhich, safe to lie beside a bishop s chair.\\nAt times outreach themselves with jets of fire\\nAt which the foremost of the progressists\\nMay warm audacious hands in passing by.\\nOf stature over-tall, lounging for ease\\nLight hair, that seems to carry a wind in it\\nAnd eyes, that, when they look on you, will lean\\nTheir whole weight, half in indolence, and half\\nIn wishing you unmitigated good,\\nUntil you know not if to flinch from him.\\nOr thank him. Tis Lord Howe.\\nWe re all gone wrong,\\nSaid he and Romney, that dear friend of ours,\\nIs nowise right. There s one true thing on earth.\\nThat s love he takes it up, and dresses it,\\nAnd acts a play with it, as Hamlet did,\\nTo show what cruel uncles we have been,\\n\u00e2\u0080\u00a2And how we should be uneasy in our minds,\\nWhile he. Prince Hamlet, weds a pretty maid\\n(Who keeps us too long waiting, we ll confess)\\nBy symbol to instruct us formally,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0161.jp2"}, "160": {"fulltext": "144 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo fill the ditches up twixt class and class,\\nAnd live together in phalansteries.\\nWhat then he s mad, our Hamlet clap his play.\\nAnd bind him.\\nAh, Lord Howe this spectacle\\nPulls stronger at us than the Dane s. See there\\nThe crammed aisles heave and strain and steam with life.\\nDear Heaven, what life\\nWhy, yes, a poet sees\\nWhich makes him different from a common man.\\nI, too, see somewhat, though I cannot sing\\nI should have been a poet, only that\\nMy mother took fright at the ugly world,\\nAnd bore me tongue-tied. If you ll grant me now\\nThat Romney gives us a fine actor-piece\\nTo make us merry on his marriage morn.\\nThe fable s worse than Hamlet s, I ll concede.\\nThe terrible people, old and poor and blind,\\nTheir eyes eat out with plague and poverty\\nFrom seeing beautiful and cheerful sights,\\nWe ll liken to a brutalized King Lear,\\nLed out, by no means to clear scores with wrongs,\\nHis wrongs are so far back, he has forgot\\n(All s past like youth), but just to witness here\\nA simple contract, he upon his side.\\nAnd Regan with her sister Goneril\\nAnd all the dappled courtiers and court-fools.\\nOn their side. Not that any of these would say\\nThey re sorry, neither. What is done is done,\\nAnd violence is now turned privilege.\\nAs cream turns cheese, if buried long enough\\nWhat could such lovely ladies have to do\\nWith the old man there in those ill-odorous rags,\\nExcept to keep the wind-side of him Lear", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0162.jp2"}, "161": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 145\\nIs flat and quiet as a decent grave\\nHe does not curse his daughters in the least.\\nBe these his daughters Lear is thinking of\\nHis porridge chiefly is it getting cold\\nAt Hampstead t will the ale be served in pots\\nPoor Lear, poor daughters Bravo, Romney s play.\\nA murmur and a movement drew around\\nA naked whisper touched us. Something wrong\\nWhat s wrong The black crowd, as an overstrained\\nCord, quivered in vibration, and I saw\\nWas that his face I saw his Romney Leigh s\\nWhich tossed a sudden horror like a sponge\\nInto all eyes, while himself stood white upon\\nThe topmost altar-stair, and tried to speak.\\nAnd failed, and lifted higher above his head\\nA letter as a man who drowns and gasps.\\nMy brothers, bear with me I am very weak.\\nI meant but only good. Perhaps I meant\\nToo proudly, and God snatched the circumstance,\\nAnd changed it therefore. There s no marriage none,\\nShe leaves me, she departs, she disappears,\\nI lose her. Yet I never forced her ay,\\nTo have her no so cast into my teeth\\nIn manner of an accusation, thus.\\nMy friends, you are dismissed. Go, eat and drink\\nAccording to the programme and farewell\\nHe ended. There was silence in the church.\\nWe heard a baby sucking in its sleep\\nAt the farthest end of the aisle. Then spoke a man,\\nNow, look to it, coves, that all the beef and drink\\nBe not filched from us, like the other fun\\nFor beer s spilt easier than a woman s lost", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0163.jp2"}, "162": {"fulltext": "146 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThis gentry is not honest with the poor\\nThey bring us up, to trick us Go it, Jim\\nA woman screamed back. I m a tender soul\\nI never banged a child at two years old,\\nAnd drew blood from him, but I sobbed for it\\nNext moment, and I ve had a plague of seven.\\nI m tender I ve no stomach even for beef,\\nUntil I know about the girl that s lost.\\nThat s killed mayhap. I did misdoubt at first,\\nThe fine lord meant no good by her or us.\\nHe, maybe, got the upper hand of her\\nBy holding up a wedding-ring, and then\\nA choking finger on her throat last night.\\nAnd just a clever tale to keep us still.\\nAs she is, poor lost innocent. Disappear\\nWho ever disappears, except a ghost\\nAnd who believes a story of a ghost\\nI ask you, would a girl go off, instead\\nOf staying to be married A fine tale\\nA wicked man, I say, a wicked man\\nFor my part I would rather starve on gin\\nThan make my dinner on his beef and beer.\\nAt which a cry rose up, We ll have our rights.\\nWe ll have the girl, the girl Your ladies there\\nAre married safely and smoothly every day.\\nAnd she shall not drop through into a trap\\nBecause she s poor and of the people. Shame\\nWe ll have no tricks played off by gentle folks.\\nWe ll see her righted.\\nThrough the rage and roar\\nI heard the broken words which Romney flung\\nAmong the turbulent masses, from the ground\\nHe held still with his masterful pale face.\\nAs huntsmen throw the ration to the pack,", "height": "3656", "width": "2402", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0164.jp2"}, "163": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 147\\nWho, falling on it headlong, dog on dog.\\nIn heaps of fury, rend it, swallow it up\\nWith yelling hound-jaws, his indignant words,\\nHis suppliant words, his most pathetic words,\\nWhereof I caught the meaning here and there\\nBy his gesture torn in morsels, yelled across.\\nAnd so devoured. From end to end, the church\\nRocked round us like the sea in storm, and then\\nBroke up like the earth in earthquake. Men cried out,\\nPolice and women stood, and shrieked for God,\\nOr dropt and swooned or, like a herd of deer,\\n(For whom the black woods suddenly grow alive,\\nUnleashing their wild shadows down the wind\\nTo hunt the creatures into corners, back\\nAnd forward), madly fled, or blindly fell,\\nTrod screeching underneath the feet of those\\nWho fled and screeched.\\nThe last sight left to me\\nWas Romney s terrible calm face above\\nThe tumult. The last sound was, Pull him down\\nStrike kill him Stretching my unreasoning arms.\\nAs men in dreams, who vainly interpose\\nTwixt gods and their undoing, with a cry\\nI struggled to precipitate myself\\nHeadforemost to the rescue of my soul\\nIn that white face till some one caught me back.\\nAnd so the world went out, I felt no more.\\nW^hat followed was told after by Lord Howe,\\nWho bore me senseless from the strangling crowd\\nIn church and street, and then returned alone\\nTo see the tumult quelled. The men of law\\nHad fallen as thunder on a roaring fire,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0165.jp2"}, "164": {"fulltext": "148 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd made all silent, while the people s smoke\\nPassed eddying slowly from the emptied aisles.\\nHere s Marian s letter, which a ragged child\\nBrought running, just as Romney at the porch\\nLooked out expectant of the bride. He sent\\nThe letter to me by his friend, Lord Howe,\\nSome two hours after, folded in a sheet\\nOn which his well-known hand had left a word.\\nHere s Marian s letter.\\nNoble friend, dear saint,\\nBe patient with me. Never think me vile,\\nWho might to-morrow morning be your wife\\nBut that I loved you more than such a name.\\nFarewell, my Romney. Let me write it once,\\nMy Romney.\\nTis so pretty a coupled word,\\nI have no heart to pluck it with a blot.\\nWe say, My God sometimes, upon our knees,\\nWho is not therefore vexed so bear with it\\nAnd me. I know I m foolish, weak, and vain\\nYet most of all I m angry with myself\\nFor losing your last footstep on the stair\\nThe last time of your coming, yesterday\\nThe very first time I lost step of yours\\n(Its sweetness comes the next to what you speak),\\nBut yesterday sobs took me by the throat\\nAnd cut me off from music.\\nMister Leigh,\\nYou ll set me down as wrong in many things.\\nYou ve praised me, sir, for truth and now you ll learn\\nI had not courage to be rightly true.\\nI once began to tell you how she came.\\nThe woman and you stared upon the floor", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0166.jp2"}, "165": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 149\\nIn cne of your fixed thoughts which put me out\\nFor that day. After, some one spoke of me\\nSo wisely, and of you so tenderly,\\nPersuading me to silence for your sake\\nWell, well it seems this moment I was wrong\\nIn keeping back from telling you the truth\\nThere might be truth betwixt us two, at least.\\nIf nothing else. And yet twas dangerous.\\nSuppose a real angel came from heaven\\nTo live with men and women he d go mad,\\nIf no considerate hand should tie a bUnd\\nAcross his piercing eyes. Tis thus with you\\nYou see. us too much in 5^our heavenly light.\\nI always thought so, angel, and indeed\\nThere s danger that you beat yourself to death\\nAgainst the edges of this alien world,\\nIn some divine and fluttering pity.\\nYes,\\nIt would be dreadful for a friend of yours\\nTo see all England thrust you out of doors,\\nAnd mock you from the windows. You might say,\\nOr think (that s worse), There s some one in the house\\nI miss and love still. Dreadful\\nVery kind,\\nI pray you, mark, was Lady Waldemar.\\nShe came to see me nine times, rather ten\\nSo beautiful, she hurts one like the day\\nLet suddenly on sick eyes.\\nMost kind of all,\\nYour cousin ah, most like you Ere you came\\nShe kissed me mouth to mouth I felt her soul\\nDip through her serious lips in holy fire.\\nGod help me but it made me arrogant.\\nI almost told her that you would not lose", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0167.jp2"}, "166": {"fulltext": "I50 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBy taking me to wife tliough ever since\\nI ve pondered much a certain thing she asked\\nHe loves you, Marian in a sort of mild\\nDerisive sadness as a mother asks\\nHer babe, You ll touch that star, you think\\nFarewell\\nI know I never touched it.\\nThis is worst\\nBabes grow, and lose the hope of things above\\nA silver threepence sets them leaping high\\nBut no more stars mark that.\\nI ve writ all night,\\nYet told you nothing. God, if I could die,\\nAnd let this letter break off innocent\\nJust here But no for your sake\\nHere s the last\\nI never could be happy as your wife,\\nI never could be harmless as your friend,\\nI never will look more into your face\\nTill God says, Look I charge you seek me not,\\nNor vex yourself with lamentable thoughts\\nThat peradventure I have come to grief\\nBe sure I m well, I m merry, I m at ease.\\nBut such a long way, long way, long way off,\\nI think you ll find me sooner in my grave.\\nAnd that s my choice, observe. For what remains.\\nAn over-generous friend will care for me.\\nAnd keep me happy happier\\nThere s a blot\\nThis ink runs thick we light girls lightly weep\\nAnd keep me happier was the thing to say.\\nThan as your wife I could be. Oh, my star.\\nMy saint, my soul for surely you re my soul.\\nThrough whom God touched me I am not so lost", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0168.jp2"}, "167": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 151\\nI cannot thank you for the good you did,\\nThe tears you stopped, which fell down bitterly\\nLike these the times you made me weep for joy\\nAt hoping I should learn to write your notes,\\nAnd save the tiring of your eyes at night\\nAnd most for that sweet thrice you kissed my lips.\\nSaying, Dear Marian.\\nTwould be hard to read,\\nThis letter, for a reader half as learned\\nBut you ll be sure to master it in spite\\nOf ups and downs. My hand shakes, I am blind\\nI m poor at writing at the best and yet\\nI tried to make my^s the way you showed.\\nFarewell 1 Christ love you. Say, Poor Marian now.\\nPoor Marian wanton Marian was it so.\\nOr so For days, her touching, foolish lines\\nWe mused on with conjectural fantasy.\\nAs if some riddle of a summer-cloud\\nOn which one tries unlike similitudes,\\nOf now a spotted hydra-skin cast off.\\nAnd now a screen of carven ivory\\nThat shuts the heavens conventual secrets up\\nFrom mortals over-bold. We sought the sense\\nShe loved him so, perhaps (such words mean love),\\nThat, worked on by some shrewd, perfidious tongue\\n(And then I thought of Lady Waldemar),\\nShe left him not to hurt him or perhaps\\nShe loved one in her class or did not love.\\nBut mused upon her wild, bad, tramping life.\\nUntil the free blood fluttered at her heart,\\nAnd black bread eaten by the roadside hedge\\nSeemed sweeter than being put to Romney s school\\nOf philanthropical self-sacrifice", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0169.jp2"}, "168": {"fulltext": "152 AURORA LEIGH.\\nIrrevocably. Girls are girls, beside,\\nThought I, and like a wedding by one rule.\\nYou seldom catch these birds except with chaff.\\nThey feel it almost an immoral thing\\nTo go out and be married in broad day,\\nUnless some winning, special flattery should\\nExcuse them to themselves for t. No one parts\\nHer hair with such a silver Ime as you.\\nOne moonbeam from the forehead to the crown\\nOr else You bite your lip in such a way\\nIt spoils me for the smiling of the rest\\nAnd so on. Then a worthless gaud or two\\nTo keep for love, a ribbon for the neck.\\nOr some glass pin, they have their weight with girls.\\nAnd Romney sought her many days and weeks.\\nHe sifted all the refuse of the town.\\nExplored the trains, inquired among the ships.\\nAnd felt the country through from end to end\\nNo Marian Though I hinted what I knew,\\nA friend of his had reasons of her own\\nFor throwing back the match, he would not hear\\nThe lady had been ailing ever since.\\nThe shock had harmed her. Something in his tone\\nRepressed me something in me shamed my doubt\\nTo a sigh repressed too. He went on to say,\\nThat, putting questions where his Marian lodged,\\nHe found she had received for visitors\\nBesides himself and Lady Waldemar,\\nAnd, that once, me a dubious woman dressed\\nBeyond us both the rings upon her hands\\nHad dazed the children when she threw them pence\\nShe wore her bonnet as the queen might hers,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0170.jp2"}, "169": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 53\\nTo show the crown, they said, a scarlet crown\\nOf roses that had never been in bud.\\nWhen Romney told me that, for now and then\\nHe came to tell me how the search advanced.\\nHis voice dropped. I bent forward for the rest.\\nThe woman had been with her, it appeared.\\nAt first from week to week, then day by day,\\nAnd last, twas sure\\nI looked upon the ground\\nTo escape the anguish of his eyes, and asked,\\nAs low as when you speak to mourners new\\nOf those they cannot bear yet to call dead,\\nIf Marian had as much as named to hira\\nA certain Rose, an early friend of hers,\\nA ruined creature.\\nNever Starting up,\\nHe strode from side to side about the room,\\nMost like some prisoned lion sprung awake,\\nWho has felt the desert sting him through his dreams.\\nWhat was I to her, that she should tell me aught\\nA friend was a friend I see all clear.\\nSuch devils would pull angels out of heaven.\\nProvided they could reach them tis their pride,\\nAnd that s the odds twixt soul and body plague\\nThe veriest slave who drops in Cairo s street\\nCries, Stand off from me to the passengers\\nWhile these blotched souls are eager to infect,\\nAnd blow their bad breath in a sister s face,\\nAs if they got some ease by it.\\nI broke through.\\nSome natures catch no plagues. I ve read of babes\\nFound whole, and sleeping by the spotted breast", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0171.jp2"}, "170": {"fulltext": "154 AURORA LEIGH,\\nOf one a full day dead, I hold it true,\\nAs I m a woman and know womanhood,\\nThat Marian Erie, however lured from place,\\nDeceived in way, keeps pure in aim and heart\\nAs snow that s drifted from the garden-bank\\nTo the open road.\\nTwas hard to hear him laugh.\\nThe figure s happy. Well, a dozen carts\\nAnd trampers will secure you presently\\nA fine white snow-drift. Leave it there, your snow\\nTwill pass for soot ere sunset. Pure in aim t\\nShe s pure in aim, I grant you, like myself.\\nWho thought to take the world upon my back\\nTo carry it o er a chasm of social ill,\\nAnd end by letting slip, through impotence,\\nA single soul, a child s weight in a soul,\\nStraight down the pit of hell Yes, I and she\\nHave reason to be proud of our pure aims.\\nThen softly, as the last repenting drops\\nOf a thunder-shower, he added, The poor child,\\nPoor Marian twas a luckless day for her,\\nWhen first she chanced on my philanthropy.\\nHe drew a chair beside me, and sate down\\nAnd I instinctively as women use\\nBefore a sweet friend s grief, when in his ear\\nThey hum the tune of comfort, though themselves\\nMost ignorant of the special words of such.\\nAnd quiet so and fortify his brain.\\nAnd give it time and strength for feeling out\\nTo reach the availing sense beyond that sound\\nWent murmuring to him what, if written here.\\nWould seem not much, \\\\y^\\\\. fetched him better help\\nThan peradventure if it had been more.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0172.jp2"}, "171": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 155\\nI ve known the pregnant thinkers of our thue,\\nAnd stood by breathless, hanging on their lips,\\nWhen some chromatic sequence of fine thought\\nIn learned modulation phrased itself\\nTo an unconjectured harmony of truth\\nAnd yet I ve been more moved, more raised, I say,\\nBy a simple word a broken, easy thing\\nA three-years infant might at need repeat,\\nA look, a sigh, a touch upon the palm,\\nWhich meant less than I love you, than by all\\nThe full-voiced rhetoric of those master-mouths.\\nAh, dear Aurora, he began at last.\\nHis pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile,\\nYour printer s devils have not spoilt your heart\\nThat s well. And who knows, but long years ago\\nWhen you and I talked, you were somewhat right\\nIn being so peevish with me You, at least.\\nHave ruined no one through your dreams. Instead\\nYou ve helped the facile youth to live youth s day\\nWith innocent distraction, still, perhaps\\nSuggestive of things better than your rhymes.\\nThe little shepherd-maiden, eight years old,\\nI ve seen upon the mountains of Vaucluse,\\nAsleep i the sun, her head upon her knees,\\nThe flocks all scattered, is more laudable\\nThan any sheep-dog trained imperfectly,\\nWho bites the kids through too much zeal.\\nI look\\nAs if I had slept, then\\nHe was touched at once\\nBy something in my face. Indeed, twas sure\\nThat he and I, despite a year or two\\nOf younger life on my side, and on his", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0173.jp2"}, "172": {"fulltext": "156 AURORA LEIGH\\nThe heaping of the years work on the days,\\nThe three-hour speeches from the member s seat,\\nThe hot committees in and out of doors,\\nThe pamphlets, Arguments, Collective Views,\\nTossed out as straw before sick houses, just\\nTo show one s sick, and so be trod to dirt.\\nAnd no more use, through this world s underground\\nThe burrowing, groping effort, whence the arm\\nAnd heart come torn, twas sure that he and I\\nWere, after all, unequally fatigued\\nThat he, in his developed manhood, stood\\nA little sunburnt by the glare of life.\\nWhile I it seemed no. sun had shone on me,\\nSo many seasons I had missed my springs.\\nMy cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs,\\nAnd all the youth-blood in them had grown white\\nAs dew on autumn cyclamens alone\\nMy eyes and forehead answered for my face.\\nHe said, Aurora, you are changed are ill\\nNot so, my cousin, only not asleep,\\n1 answered, smiling gently. Let it be.\\nYou scarcely found the poet of Vaucluse\\nAs drowsy as the shepherds. What is art\\nBut life upon the larger scale, the higher,\\nWhen, graduating up in a spiral line\\nOf still expanding and ascending gyres.\\nIt pushes toward the intense significance\\nOf all things, hungry for the Infinite\\nArt s life and where we live, we suffer and toil.\\nHe seemed to sift me with his painful eyes.\\nYou take it gravely, cousin you refuse\\nYour dreamland s right of common, and green rest.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0174.jp2"}, "173": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 157\\nYou break the mythic turf where danced the nymphs,\\nWith crooked ploughs of actual life, let in\\nThe axes to the legendary woods.\\nTo pay the poll-tax. You are fallen indeed\\nOn evil days, you poets, if yourselves\\nCan praise that art of yours no otherwise\\nAnd if you cannot better take a trade\\nAnd be of use twere cheaper for your youth.\\nOf use I softly echoed, there s the point\\nWe sweep about forever in argument.\\nLike swallows which the exasperate, dying year\\nSets spinning in black circles, round and round.\\nPreparing for far flights o er unknown seas.\\nAnd we where tend we\\nWhere he said, and sighed.\\nThe whole creation, from the hour we are born.\\nPerplexes us with questions. Not a stone\\nBut cries behind us every weary step,\\nWhere, where I leave stones to reply to stones.\\nEnough for me and for my fleshly heart\\nTo hearken the invocations of my kind.\\nWhen men catch hold upon my shuddering nerves,\\nAnd shriek, What help what hope what bread i the house\\nWhat fire i the frost There must be some response.\\nThough mine fail utterly. This social Sphinx,\\nWho sits between the sepulchres and stews.\\nMakes mock and mow against the crystal heavens.\\nAnd bullies God, exacts a word at least\\nFrom each man standing on the side of God\\nHowever paying a sphinx-price for it.\\nWe pay it also, if we hold our peace.\\nIn pangs and pity. Let me speak and die.\\nAlas you ll say I speak and kill instead.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0175.jp2"}, "174": {"fulltext": "158 AURORA LEIGH.\\nI pressed in there. The best men doing their best,\\nKnow peradventure least of what they do\\nMen usefuUest i the world are simply used\\nThe nail that holds the wood must pierce it first\\nAnd he alone who wields the hammer sees\\nThe work advanced by the earliest blow. Take heart,\\nAh, if I could have taken yours he said\\nBut that s past now. Then rising I will take\\nAt least your kindness and encouragement.\\nI thank you. Dear, be happy. Sing your songs,\\nIf that s your way but sometimes slumber, too.\\nNor tire too much with following, out of breath.\\nThe rhymes upon your mountains of Delight.\\nReflect, if art be in truth the higher life\\nYou need the lower life to stand upon\\nIn order to reach up unto that higher;\\nAnd none can stand a-tiptoe in the place\\nHe cannot stand in with two stable feet.\\nRemember then for art s sake hold your life.\\nWe parted so. I held him in respect.\\nI comprehended what he was in heart\\nAnd sacrificial greatness. Ay, but he\\nSupposed me a thing too small to deign to know.\\nHe blew me, plainly, from the crucible\\nAs some intruding, interrupting fly.\\nNot worth the pains of his analysis\\nAbsorbed on nobler subjects. Hurt a fly\\nHe would not for the world he s pitiful\\nTo flies even. Sing, says he, and tease me still.\\nIf that s your way, poor insect. That s your way", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0176.jp2"}, "175": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 159\\nFIFTH BOOK.\\nAurora Leigh, be humble. Shall I hope\\nTo speak my poems in mysterious tune\\nWith man and nature with the lava lymph\\nThat trickles from successive galaxies\\nStill drop by drop adown the finger of God\\nIn still new worlds with summer-days in this\\nThat scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful\\nWith spring s delicious trouble in the ground,\\nTormented by the quickened blood of roots.\\nAnd softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves\\nIn token of the harvest-time of flowers\\nWith winters and with autumns, and beyond\\nWith the human heart s large seasons, when it hopes\\nAnd fears, joys, grieves, and loves with all that strain\\nOf sexual passion, which devours the flesh\\nIn a sacrament of souls with mothers breasts.\\nWhich, round the new-made creatures hanging there.\\nThrob luminous and harmonious like pure spheres\\nWith multitudinous life, and, finally.\\nWith the great escapings of ecstatic souls.\\nWho, in a rush of too long prisoned flame.\\nTheir radiant faces upward, burn away\\nThis dark of the body, issuing on a world\\nBeyond our mortal Can I speak my verse\\nSo plainly in tune to these things and the rest\\nThat men shall feel it catch them on the quick,\\nAs having the same warrant over them\\nTo hold and move them, if they will or no.\\nAlike imperious as the primal rhythm\\nOf that theurgic nature I must fail\\nWho fail at the beginning to hold and move", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0177.jp2"}, "176": {"fulltext": "l6o AURORA LEIGH.\\nOne man, and he my cousin, and he my friend,\\nAnd he born tender, made intelligent,\\nInclined to ponder the precipitous sides\\nOf difficult questions, yet obtuse to me^\\nOf me, incurious likes me very well,\\nAnd wishes me a paradise of good,\\nGood looks, good means, and good digestion, ay,\\nBut otherwise evades me, puts me off\\nWith kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,\\nToo light a book for a grave man s reading Go,\\nAurora Leigh be humble.\\nThere it is,\\nWe women are too apt to look to one.\\nWhich proves a certain impotence in art.\\nWe strain our natures at doing something great,\\nFar less because it s something great to do\\nThan haply that we, so, commend ourselves\\nAs being not small, and more appreciable\\nTo some one friend. We must have mediators\\nBetwixt our highest conscience and the judge\\nSome sweet saint s blood must quicken in our palms,\\nOr all the life in heaven seems slow and cold\\nGood only being perceived as the end of good.\\nAnd God alone pleased, that s too poor, we think,\\nAnd not enough for us by any means.\\nAy, Romney, I remember, told me once\\nWe miss the abstract when we comprehend\\nWe miss it most when we aspire, and fail.\\nYet, so, I will not. This vile woman s way\\nOf trailing garments shall not trip me up\\nI ll have no traffic with the personal thought\\nIn art s pure temple. Must I work in vain,\\nWithout the approbation of a man", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0178.jp2"}, "177": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. l6l\\nIt cannot be it shall not. Fame itself,\\nThat approbation of the general race,\\nPresents a poor end (though the arrow speed\\nShot straight with vigorous finger to the white),\\nAnd the highest fame was never reached except\\nBy what was aimed above it. Art for art,\\nAnd good for God himself, the essential Good\\nWe ll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,\\nAlthough our woman-hands should shake and fail\\nAnd if we fail But must we\\nShall I fail\\nThe Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase,\\nLet no one be called happy till his death.\\nTo which I add. Let no one till his death\\nBe called unhappy. Measure not the work\\nUntil the day s out and the labor done\\nThen bring your gauges. If the day s work s scant\\nWhy, call it scant affect no compromise\\nAnd, in that we ve nobly striven at least,\\nDeal with us nobly, women though we be,\\nAnd honor us with truth, if not with praise.\\nMy ballads prospered but the ballad s race\\nIs rapid for a poet who bears weights\\nOf thought and golden image. He can stand\\nLike Atlas, in the sonnet, and support\\nHis own heavens pregnant with dynastic stars\\nBut then he must stand still, nor take a step.\\nIn that descriptive poem called The Hills,\\nThe prospects were too far and indistinct.\\nTis true my critics said, A fine view, that\\nThe public scarcely cared to climb my book\\nFor even the finest, and the public s right", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0179.jp2"}, "178": {"fulltext": "1 62 AURORA LEIGH.\\nA tree s mere firewood, unless humanized\\nWhich well the Greeks knew when they stirred its bark\\nWith close-pressed bosoms of subsiding nymphs,\\nAnd made the forest-rivers garrulous\\nWith babble of gods. For us, we are called to mark\\nA still more intimate humanity\\nIn this inferior nature, or ourselves\\nMust fall like dead leaves trodden underfoot\\nBy veritable artists. Earth (shut up\\nBy Adam, like a fakir in a box\\nLeft too long buried) remained stiff and dry,\\nA mere dumb corpse, till Christ the Lord came down,\\nUnlocked the doors, forced open the blank eyes,\\nAnd used his kingly chrism to straighten out\\nThe leathery tongue turned back into the throat\\nSince when, she lives, remembers, palpitates\\nIn every limb, aspires in every breath.\\nEmbraces infinite relations. Now\\nWe want no half-gods, Panomphasan Joves,\\nFauns, Naiads, Tritons, Oreads, and the rest,\\nTo take possession of a senseless world\\nTo unnatural vampire-uses. See the earth\\nThe body of our body, the green earth,\\nIndubitably human like this flesh\\nAnd these articulated veins through which\\nOur heart drives blood There s not a flower of spring\\nThat dies ere June, but vaunts itself allied\\nBy issue and symbol, by significance\\nAnd correspondence, to that spirit-world.\\nOutside the limits of our space and time,\\nWhereto we are bound. Let poets give it voice\\nWith human meanings, else they miss the thought,\\nAnd henceforth step down lower, stand confessed", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0180.jp2"}, "179": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 63\\nInstructed poorly for interpreters,\\nThrown out by an easy cowslip in the text.\\nEven so my pastoral failed it was a book\\nOf surface-pictures, pretty, cold, and false\\nWith literal transcript, the worse done, I think.\\nFor being not ill done let me set my mark\\nAgainst such doings, and do otherwise.\\nThis strikes me. If the public whom we know\\nCould catch me at such admissions, I should pass\\nFor being right modest. Yet how proud we are\\nIn daring to look down upon ourselves\\nThe critics say that epics have died out\\nWith Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods\\nI ll not believe it. I could never deem,\\nAs Payne Knight did (the mythic mountaineer\\nWho travelled higher than he was born to live,\\nAnd showed sometimes the goitre in his throat\\nDiscoursing of an image seen through fog).\\nThat Homer s heroes measured twelve feet high.\\nThey were but men his Helen s hair turned gray\\nLike any plain Miss Smith s who wears a front\\nAnd Hector s infant whimpered at a plume\\nAs yours last Friday at a turkey-cock.\\nAll actual heroes are essential men.\\nAnd all men possible heroes every age,\\nHeroic in proportions, double-faced.\\nLooks backward and before, expects a morn\\nAnd claims an epos.\\nAy but every age\\nAppears to souls who live in t (ask Carlyle)\\nMost unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours\\nThe thinkers scout it, and the poets abound\\nWho scorn to touch it with a finger-tip", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0181.jp2"}, "180": {"fulltext": "Jf^4 AURORA LEIGH,\\nA pewter age, mixed metal, silver-washed\\nAn age of scum, spooned off the richer past,\\nAn age of patches for old gaberdines.\\nAn age of mere transition, meaning naught\\nExcept that what succeeds must shame it quite\\nIf God please. That s wrong thinking, to my mind.\\nAnd wrong thoughts make poor poems.\\nEvery age,\\nThrough being beheld too close, is ill discerned\\nBy those who have not lived past it. We ll suppose\\nMount Athos carved, as Alexander schemed.\\nTo some colossal statue of a man.\\nThe peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear.\\nHad guessed as little as the browsing goats\\nOt form or feature of humanity\\nUp there, in fact, had travelled five miles off\\nOr ere the giant image broke on them.\\nFull human profile, nose and chin distinct.\\nMouth muttering rhythms of silence up the sky,\\nAnd fed at evening with the blood of suns\\nGrand torso, hand that flung perpetually\\nThe largesse of a silver river down\\nTo all the country pastures. Tis even thus\\nWith times we live in, evermore too great\\nTo be apprehended near.\\nBut poets should\\nExert a double vision should have eyes\\nTo see near things as comprehensively\\nAs if afar they took their point of sight,\\nAnd distant things as intimately deep\\nAs if they touched them. Let us strive for this.\\nI do distrust the poet who discerns\\nNo character or glory in his times,\\nAnd trundles back his soul five hundred years,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0182.jp2"}, "181": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 65\\nPast moat and drawbridge, into a castle-court,\\nTo sing oh, not of lizard or of toad\\nAlive i the ditch there, twere excusable,\\nBut of some black chief, half knight, half sheep-lifter,\\nSome beauteous dame, half chattel and half queen,\\nAs dead as must be, for the greater part.\\nThe poems made on their chivalric bones\\nAnd that s no wonder death inherits death.\\nNay, if there s room for poets in this world\\nA little overgrown (I think there is).\\nTheir sole work is to represent the age,\\nTheir age, not Charlemagne s, this live, throbbing age,\\nThat brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires.\\nAnd spends more passion, more heroic heat.\\nBetwixt the mirrors of its drawing;-rooms,\\nThan Roland with his knights at Roncesvalles.\\nTo flinch from modern varnish, coat, or flounce,\\nCry out for togas and the picturesque.\\nIs fatal, foolish, too. King Arthur s self\\nWas commonplace to Lady Guinevere\\nAnd Camelot to minstrels seemed as flat\\nAs Fleet Street to our poets.\\nNever flinch,\\nBut still, unscrupulously epic, catch\\nUpon the burning lava of a song\\nThe full-veined, heaving, double-breasted age,\\nThat, when the next shall come, the men of that\\nMay touch the impress with reverent hand, and say,\\nBehold, behold, the paps we all have sucked\\nThis bosom seems to beat still, or at least\\nIt sets ours beating this is living art.\\nWhich thus presents and thus records true life.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0183.jp2"}, "182": {"fulltext": "1 66 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWhat form is best for poems Let ma think\\nOf forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit,\\nAs sovran nature does, to make the form\\nFor otherwise we only imprison spirit\\nAnd not embody. Inward evermore\\nTo outward, so in life, and so in art,\\nWhich still is life.\\nFive acts to make a play.\\nAnd why not fifteen why not ten or seven t\\nWhat matter for the number of the leaves.\\nSupposing the tree lives and grows exact\\nThe literal unities of time and place,\\nWhen tis the essence of passion to ignore\\nBoth time and place Absurd. Keep up the fire.\\nAnd leave the generous tlames to shape themselves.\\nTis true the stage requires obsequiousness\\nTo this or that convention exit here\\nAnd enter there the points for clapping fixed,\\nLike Jacob s white-peeled rods before the rams\\nAnd all the close-curled imagery c^-pped\\nIn manner of their fleece at shearing-time.\\nForget to prick the galleries to the heart\\nPrecisely at the fourth act, culminate\\nOur five pyramidal acts with one act more.\\nWe re lost so Shakspeare s ghost could scarcely plead\\nAgainst our just damnation. Stand aside\\nWe ll muse, for comfort, that last century.\\nOn this same tragic stage on which we have failed,\\nA wigless Hamlet would have failed the same\\nAnd whosoever writes good poetry\\nLooks just to art. He does not write for you\\nOr me, for London or for Edinburgh\\nHe will not suffer the best critic known", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0184.jp2"}, "183": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 6/\\nTo step into his sunshine of free thought\\nAnd self-absorbed conception, and exact\\nAn inch-long swerving of the holy lines.\\nIf virtue done for popularity\\nDefiles like vice, can art, for praise or hire.\\nStill keep its splendor, and remain pure art\\nEschew such serfdom. What the poet writes.\\nHe writes. Mankind accepts it if it suits.\\nAnd that s success if not, the poem s passed\\nFrom hand to hand, and yet from hand to hand,\\nUntil the unborn snatch it, crying out\\nIn pity on their fathers being so dull\\nAnd that s success too.\\nI will write no plays.\\nBecause the drama, less sublime in this,\\nMakes lower appeals submits more menially\\nAdopts the standard of the public taste\\nTo chalk its height on wears a dog-chain round\\nIts regal neck, and learns to carry and fetch\\nThe fashions of the day to please the day\\nFawns close on pit and boxes, who clap hands,\\nCommending chiefly its docility\\nAnd humor in stage-tricks or else, indeed.\\nGets hissed at, howled at, stamped at like a dog.\\nOr worse, v.e ll say. For dogs, unjustly kicked.\\nYell, bite at need but if your dramatist\\n(Being wronged by some five hundred nobodies.\\nBecause their grosser brains most naturally\\nMisjudge the fineness of his subtle wit)\\nShows teeth an almond s breadth, protests the length\\nOf a modest phrase, My gentle countrymen.\\nThere s something in it haply of your fault,\\nWhy then, besides five hundred nobodies.\\nHe ll have five thousand and five thousand more", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0185.jp2"}, "184": {"fulltext": "1 68 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAgainst him, the whole pubUc, all the hoofs\\nOf King Saul s father s asses, in full drove,\\nAnd obviously deserve it. He appealed\\nTo these, and why say more if they condemn,\\nThan if they praise him Weep, my ^schylus,\\nBut low and far, upon Sicilian shores\\nFor since twas Athens (so I read the myth)\\nWho gave commission to that fatal weight\\nThe tortoise, cold and hard, to drop on thee\\nAnd crush thee, better cover thy bald head.\\nShe ll hear the softest hum of Hyblan bee\\nBefore thy loudest protestation\\nThen\\nThe risk s still worse upon the modern stage\\nI could not, for so litde, accept success\\nNor would I risk so much, in ease and calm,\\nFor manifester gains let those who prize\\nPursue them I stand off. And yet forbid\\nThat any irreverent fancy or conceit\\nShould litter in the drama s throne-room where\\nThe rulers of our art, in whose full veins\\nDynastic glories mingle, sit in strength\\nAnd do their kingly work, conceive, command,\\nAnd from the imagination s crucial heat\\nCatch up their men and women all aflame\\nFor action, all alive, and forced to prove\\nTheir life by living out heart, brain, and nerve.\\nUntil mankind makes witness, These be men\\nAs we are, and vouchsafes the greeting due\\nTo Imogen and Juliet, sweetest kin\\nOn art s side.\\nTis that, honoring to its worth\\nThe drama, I would fear to keep it down\\nTo the level of the footlights. Dies no more", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0186.jp2"}, "185": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 169\\nThe sacrificial goat, for Bacchus slain,\\nHis filmed eyes fluttered by the whirling white\\nOf choral vestures, troubled in his blood.\\nWhile tragic voices that clanged keen as swords.\\nLeapt high together with the altar-flame,\\nAnd made the blue air wink. The waxen mask.\\nWhich set the grand, still front of Themis son\\nUpon the puckered visage of a player\\nThe buskin, which he rose upon and moved.\\nAs some tall ship, first conscious of the wind,\\nSweeps slowly past the piers the mouthpiece, where\\nThe mere man s voice, with all its breaths and breaks.\\nWent sheathed in brass, and clashed on even heights\\nIts phrased thunders, these things are no more,\\nWhich once were. And concluding, which is clear.\\nThe growing drama has outgrown such toys\\nOf simulated stature, face, and speech.\\nIt also peradventure may outgrow\\nThe simulation of the painted scene.\\nBoards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,\\nAnd take for a worthier stage the soul itself.\\nIts shifting fancies and celestial lights.\\nWith all its grand orchestral silences\\nTo keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.\\nAlas I still see something to be done.\\nAnd what I do falls short of what I see.\\nThough I waste myself on doing. Long green days.\\nWorn bare of grass and sunshine long calm nights.\\nFrom W hich the silken sleeps were fretted out,\\nBe witness for me, with no amateur s\\nIrreverent haste and busy idleness\\nI set myself to art What then what s done\\nWhat s done, at last", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0187.jp2"}, "186": {"fulltext": "70 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBehold, at last, a book.\\nIf life-blood s necessary, which it is,\\n(By that blue vein a-throb on Mahomet s brow,\\nEach prophet-poet s book must show man s blood\\nIf hfe-blood s fertilizing, I wrung mine\\nOn every leaf of this, unless the drops\\nSlid heavily on one side, and left it dry.\\nThat chances often. Many a fervid man\\nWrites books as cold and flat as graveyard stones\\nFrom which the lichen s scraped and if St. Preux\\nHad written his own letters, as he might.\\nWe had never wept to think of the little mole\\nNeath Julie s drooping eyelid. Passion is\\nBut something suffered, after all.\\nWhile art\\nSets action on the top of suffering.\\nThe artist s part is both to be and do.\\nTransfixing with a special central power\\nThe flat experience of the common man.\\nAnd turning outward, with a sudden wrench,\\nHalf agony, half ecstasy, the thing\\nHe feels the inmost, never felt the less\\nBecause he sings it. Does a torch less burn\\nFor burning next reflectors of blue steel.\\nThat he should be the colder for his place\\nTwixt two incessant fires, his personal life s,\\nAnd that intense refraction which burns back\\nPerpetually against him from the round\\nOf crystal conscience he was born into,\\nIf artist-born Oh, sorrowful, great gift\\nConferred on poets, of a twofold life,\\nWhen one life has been found enough for pain\\nWe, staggering neath our burden as mere men.\\nBeing called to stand up straight as demigods,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0188.jp2"}, "187": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. I /I\\nSupport the intolerable strain and stress\\nOf the universal, and send clearly up,\\nWith voices broken by the human sob,\\nOur poems to find rhymes among the stars\\nBut soft, a poet is a v^^ord soon said,\\nA book s a thing soon written. Nay, indeed,\\nThe more the poet shall be questionable.\\nThe more unquestionably comes his book.\\nAnd this of mine well, granting to myself\\nSome passion in it, furrowing up the flats.\\nMere passion will not prove a volume worth\\nIts gall and rags even. Bubbles round a keel\\nMean naught, excepting that the vessel moves.\\nThere s more than passion goes to make a man,\\nOr book, which is a man too.\\nI am sad.\\nI wonder if Pygmalion had these doubts.\\nAnd, feeling the hard marble first relent.\\nGrow supple to the straining of his arms.\\nAnd tingle through its cold to his burning lip.\\nSupposed his senses mocked, supposed the toil\\nOf stretching past the known and seen to reach\\nThe archetypal beauty out of sight.\\nHad made his heart beat fast enough .or two.\\nAnd with his own life dazed and blinded him\\nNot so. Pygmalion loved and whoso loves\\nBelieves the impossible.\\nBut I am sad\\nI cannot thoroughly love a work of mine.\\nSince none seems worthy of my thought and hope\\nMore highly mated. He has shot them down\\nMy Phoebus Apollo, soul within my soul.\\nWho judges by the attempted what s attained\\nAnd with the silver arrow from his height", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0189.jp2"}, "188": {"fulltext": "172 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHas struck clown all my works before my face,\\nWhile I said nothing. Is there aught to say\\nI called the artist but a greatened man.\\nHe may be childless also, like a man.\\nI labored on alone. The wind and dust\\nAnd sun of the world beat blistering in my face\\nAnd hope, now- for me, now against me, dragged\\nMy spirits onward, as some fallen balloon.\\nWhich, whether caught by blossoming tree or bare.\\nIs torn alike. I sometimes touched my aim.\\nOr seemed, and generous souls cried out, Be strong.\\nTake courage now you re on our level now\\nThe next step saves you. I was flushed with praise\\nBut, pausing just a moment to draw breath,\\nI could not choose but murmur to myself,\\nIs this all all that s done and all that s gained\\nIf this, then, be success, tis dismaller\\nThan any failure.\\nO my God, my God,\\nO supreme Artist, who as sole return\\nFor all the cosmic wonder of thy work,\\nDemandest of us just a word a name.\\nMy Father thou hast knowledge, only thou,\\nHow dreary tis for women to sit still\\nOn winter nights, by solitary fires.\\nAnd hear the nations praising them far off.\\nToo far ay, praising our quick sense of love,\\nOur very heart of passionate womanhood,\\nWhich could not beat so in the verse, without\\nBeing present also in the unkissed lips.\\nAnd eyes undried, because there s none to ask\\nThe reason they grew moist.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0190.jp2"}, "189": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH, 173\\nTo sit alone\\nAnd think for comfort, how that very night\\nAffianced lovers, leaning face to face.\\nWith sweet half-listenings for each other s breath,\\nAre reading haply from a page of ours,\\nTo pause with a thrill (as if their cheeks had touched)\\nWhen such a stanza, level to their mood,\\nSeems floating their own thought out So I feel\\nFor thee, And I, for thee this poet knows\\nWhat everlasting love is how that night\\nSome father, issuing from the misty roads\\nUpon the luminous round of lamp and hearth,\\nAnd happy children, having caught up first\\nThe youngest there, until it shrink and shriek\\nTo feel the cold chin prick its dimples through\\nWith winter from the hills, may throw i the lap\\nOf the eldest (who has learnt to drop her lids\\nTo hide some sweetness newer than last year s)\\nOur book, and cry Ah, you, you care for rhymes\\nSo here be rhymes to pore on under trees.\\nWhen April comes to let you I ve been told\\nThey are not idle, as so many are.\\nBut set hearts beating pure, as well as fast.\\nTis yours, the book I ll write your name in\\nThat so you may not lose, however lost\\nIn poet s lore and charming revery.\\nThe thought of how your father thought of yoii\\nIn riding from the town.\\nTo have our books\\nAppraised by love, associated with love,\\nWhile we sit loveless is it hard, you think\\nAt least tis mournful. Fame, indeed, twas said,\\nMeans simply love. It was a man said that.\\nAnd then there s love and love the love of all", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0191.jp2"}, "190": {"fulltext": "174 AURORA LEIGH,\\n(To risk in turn a woman s paradox)\\nIs but a small thing to the love of one.\\nYou bid a hungry child be satisfied\\nWith a heritage of many cornfields nay,\\nHe says he s hungry he would rather have\\nThat little barley-cake you keep from him\\nWhile reckoning up his harvests. So with us\\n(Here, Romney, too, we fail to generalize\\nWe re hungry.\\nHungry But it s pitiful\\nTo wail like unweaned babes, and suck our thumbs.\\nBecause we re hungry. Who in all this world\\n(Wherein we are haply set to pray and fast,\\nAnd learn what good is by its opposite)\\nHas never hungered Woe to him who has found\\nThe meal enough If Ugolino s full,\\nHis teeth have crushed some foul, unnatural thing\\nFor here satiety proves penury\\nMore utterly irremediable. And since\\nWe needs must hunger, better, for man s love\\nThan God s truth better, for companions sweet\\nThan great convictions Let us bear our weights.\\nPreferring dreary hearths to desert souls.\\nWell, well they say we re envious, we who rhyme\\nBut I because I am a woman, perhaps.\\nAnd so rhyme ill am ill at envying.\\nI never envied Graham his breadth of style.\\nWhich gives you with a random smutch or two,\\n(Near-sighted critics analyze to smutch)\\nSuch delicate perspectives of full life\\nNor Belmore, for the unity of aim\\nTo which he cuts his cedarn poems, fine.\\nAs sketchers do their pencils nor Mark Gage,\\nFor that caressing color and trancing tone", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0192.jp2"}, "191": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 75\\nWhereby you re swept away, and melted in\\nThe sensual element, which, with a back wave,\\nRestores you to the level of pure souls.\\nAnd leaves you with Plotinus. None of these,\\nFor native gifts or popular applause,\\nI ve envied but for this, that when by chance\\nSays some one, There goes Belmore, a great man 1\\nHe leaves clean work behind him, and requires\\nNo sweeper-up of the chips, a girl I know.\\nWho answers nothing, save with her brown eyes.\\nSmiles unaware, as if a guardian saint\\nSmiled in her for this, too, that Gage comes home\\nAnd lays his last book s prodigal review\\nUpon his mother s knee, where, years ago.\\nHe laid his childish spelling-book, and learned\\nTo chirp, and peck the letters from her mouth.\\nAs young birds must. Well done, she murmured then\\nShe will not say it now more wonderingly.\\nAnd yet the last Well done will touch him more,\\nAs catching up to-day and yesterday\\nIn a perfect chord of love. And so, Mark Gage,\\nI envy you your mother, and you, Graham,\\nBecause you have a wife who loves you so,\\nShe half forgets, at moments, to be proud\\nOf being Graham s wife, until a friend observes,\\nThe boy here has his father s massive brow.\\nDone small in wax if we push back the curls.\\nWho loves me Dearest father, mother sweet.\\nI speak the names out sometimes by myself,\\nAnd make the silence shiver. They sound strange,\\nAs Hindostanee to an Ind-born man\\nAccustomed many years to English speech\\nOr lovely poet-words grown obsolete,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0193.jp2"}, "192": {"fulltext": "1/6 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWhich will not leave off singing. Up in heaven\\nI have my father, with my mother s face\\nB-side him in a blotch of heavenly light\\nNo more for earth s familiar, household use,\\nNo more. The best verse written by this hand\\nCan never reach them where they sit, to seem\\nWell done to t/mtt. Death quite unfellows us,\\nSets dreadful odds betwixt the live and dead,\\nAnd makes us part, as those at Babel did.\\nThrough sudden ignorance of a common tongue.\\nA living Caesar would not dare to play\\nAt bowls with such as my dead father is.\\nAnd yet this may be less so than appears.\\nThis change and separation. Sparrows five\\nFor just two farthings, and God cares for each.\\nIf God is not too great for little cares,\\nIs any creature, because gone to God\\nI ve seen some men, veracious, nowise mad.\\nWho have thought or dreamed, declared and testified.\\nThey heard the dead a-ticking like a clock\\nWhich strikes the hours of the eternities,\\nBsside them, with their natural ears, and known\\nThat human spirits feel the human way.\\nAnd hate the unreasoning awe which waves them off\\nFrom possible communion. It may be.\\nAt least, earth separates as well as heaven.\\nFor instance, I have not seen Romney Leigh\\nFull eighteen months add six, you get two years.\\nThey say he s very busy with good works,\\nHas parted Leigh Hall into almshouses.\\nHe made one day an almshouse of his heart,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0194.jp2"}, "193": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 7/\\nWhich ever since is loose upon the latch\\nFor those who pull the string. I never did.\\nIt always makes me sad to go abroad,\\nAnd now I m sadder that I went to-night\\nAmong the lights and talkers at Lord Howe s.\\nHis wife is gracious, with her glossy braids.\\nAnd even voice, and gorgeous eye-balls, calm\\nAs her other jewels. If she s somewhat cold.\\nWho wonders, when her blood has stood so long\\nIn the ducal reservoir she calls her line\\nBy no means arrogantly She s not proud\\nNot prouder than the swan is of the lake\\nHe has always swum in tis her element.\\nAnd so she takes it with a natural grace.\\nIgnoring tadpoles. She just knows, perhaps,\\nThere are who travel without outriders,\\nWhich isn t her fault. Ah, to watch her face,\\nW^hen good Lord Howe expounds his theories\\nOf social justice and equality\\nTis curious what a tender, tolerant bend\\nHer neck takes for she loves him, likes his talk,\\nSuch clever talk that dear odd Algernon\\nShe listens on, exactly as if he talked\\nSome Scandinavian myth of Lemures,\\nToo pretty to dispute, and too absurd.\\nShe s gracious to me as her husband s friend,\\nAnd would be gracious were I not a Leigh,\\nBeing used to smile just so, without her eyes,\\nOn Joseph Strangvvays, the Leeds mesmerist,\\nAnd Delia Dobbs, the lecturer from the States\\nUpon the Woman s question. Then, for him\\nI like him he s my friend. And all the rooms", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0195.jp2"}, "194": {"fulltext": "i;8 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWere full of crinkling silks that swept about\\nThe fine dust of most subtle courtesies.\\nWhat then Why, then we come home to be sad.\\nHow lovely one I love not looked to-night\\nShe s very pretty, Lady Waldemar.\\nHer maid must use both hands to twist that coil\\nOf tresses, then be careful lest the rich\\nBronze rounds should slip she missed, though, a gray haiij\\nA single one, I saw it otherwise\\nThe woman looked immortal. How they told,\\nThose alabaster shoulders and bare breasts,\\nOn which the pearls, drowned out of sight in milk,\\nWere lost, excepting for the ruby clasp.\\nThey split the amaranth velvet bodice down\\nTo the waist, or nearly, with the audacious press\\nOf full-breathed beauty. If the heart within\\nWere half as white but, if it were, perhaps\\nThe breast were closer covered, and the sight\\nLess aspectable by half, too.\\nI heard\\nThe young man with the German student s look\\nA sharp face, like a knife in a cleft stick,\\nWhich shot up straight against the parting line\\nSo equally dividing the long hair\\nSay softly tc his neighbor (thirty-five\\nAnd mediaeval), Look that way. Sir Blaise.\\nShe s Lady Waldemar, to the left, in red,\\nWhom Romney Leigh, our ablest man just now,\\nIs soon about to marry.\\nThen replied\\nSir Blaise Delorme, with quiet, priest-like voice,\\nToo used to syllable damnations round\\nTo make a natural emphasis worth while,\\nIs Leigh your ablest man the same, I think,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0196.jp2"}, "195": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1/9\\nOnce jilted by a recreant pretty maid\\nAdopted from the people Now, in change,\\nHe seems to have plucked a flower from the other side\\nOf the social hedge.\\nA flower, a flower exclaimed\\nMy German student, his own eyes full blown\\nBent on her. He was twenty, certainly.\\nSir Blaise resumed with gentle arrogance.\\nAs if he had dropped his alms into a hat\\nAnd gained the right to counsel, My young friend,\\nI doubt your ablest man s ability\\nTo get the least good or help meet for him,\\nFor Pagan phalanstery or Christian home,\\nFrom such a flowery creature.\\nBeautiful\\nMy student murmured, rapt. Mark how she stirs\\nJust waves her head, as if a flower indeed.\\nTouched far off by the vain breath of our talk.\\nAt which that bilious Grimwald (he who writes\\nFor the Renovator), who had seemed absorbed\\nUpon the table-book of autographs,\\n(I dare say mentally he crunched the bones\\nOf all those writers, wishing them alive\\nTo feel his tooth in earnest), turned short round\\nWith low carnivorous laugh, A flower, of course!\\nShe neither sews nor spins, and takes no thought\\nOf her garments falling off.\\nThe student flinched\\nSir Blaise the same then both, drawing back their chairs\\nAs if they spied black-beetles on the floor.\\nPursued their talk, without a word being thrown\\nTo the critic.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0197.jp2"}, "196": {"fulltext": "l80 AURORA LEIGH.\\nGood Sir Blaise s brow is high,\\nAnd noticeably narrow a strong wind,\\nYou fancy, might unroof him suddenly.\\nAnd blow that great top attic off his head\\nSo piled with feudal relics. You admire\\nHis nose in profile, though you miss his chin\\nBut, though you miss his chin, you seldom miss\\nHis ebon cross, worn innermostly (carved\\nFor penance by a saintly Styrian monk\\nWhose flesh was too much with him), slipping through\\nSome unaware unbuttoned casualty\\nOf the under waistcoat. With an absent air\\nSir Blaise sate fingering it, and speaking low.\\nWhile I upon the sofa heard it all.\\nMy dear young friend, if w-e could bear our eyes,\\nLike blessedest St. Lucy, on a plate.\\nThey would not trick us into choosing wives,\\nAs doublets, by the color. Otherwise\\nOur fathers chose and therefore, when they had hung\\nTheir household keys about a lady s waist,\\nThe sense of duty gave her dignity\\nShe kept her bosom holy to her babes,\\nAnd, if a moralist reproved her dress,\\nTwas, Too much starch and not, Too little lawn\\nNow, pshaw returned the other in a heat,\\nA little fretted by being called Young friend,\\nOr so I took it, for St. Lucy s sake,\\nIf she s the saint to swear by, let us leave\\nOur fathers, plagued enough about our sons\\n(He stroked his beardless chin) yes, plagued, sir, plagued\\nThe future generations lie on us\\nAs heavy as the nightmare of a seer", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0198.jp2"}, "197": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. l8r\\nOur meat and drink grow painful prophecy.\\nI ask you, have we leisure, if we liked,\\nTo hollow out our weary hands to keep\\nYour intermittent rushlight of the past\\nFrom draughts in lobbies Prejudice of sex\\nAnd marriage-law the socket drops them through\\nWhile we two speak, however may protest\\nSome over-delicate nostrils, like your own,\\nGamst odors thence arising.\\nYou are young,\\nSir Blaise objected.\\nIf I am, he said.\\nWith fire, though somewhat less so than I seem,\\nThe young run on before, and see the thing\\nThat s coming. Reverence for the young I cry.\\nIn that new church for which the world s near ripe,\\nYou ll have the younger in the elder s chair.\\nPresiding with his ivory front of hope\\nO er foreheads clawed by cruel carrion birds\\nOf life s experience.\\nPray your blessing, sir,\\nSir Blaise replied good-humoredly. I plucked\\nA silver hair this morning from my beard.\\nWhich left me your inferior. Would I were\\nEighteen, and worthy to admonish you\\nIf young men of your order run before\\nTo see such sights as sexual prejudice\\nAnd marriage-law dissolved, in plainer words,\\nA general concubinage expressed\\nIn a universal pruriency, the thing\\nIs scarce worth running fast for, and you d gain\\nBy loitering with your elders.\\nAh! he said,\\nWho, getting to the top of Pisgah-hill,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0199.jp2"}, "198": {"fulltext": "l82 AURORA LEIGH.\\nCan talk with one at bottom of the view,\\nTo make it comprehensible Why, Leigh\\nHimself, although our ablest man, I said,\\nIs scarce advanced to see as far as this\\nWhich some are. He takes up imperfectly\\nThe social question, by one handle, leaves\\nThe rest to trail. A Christian socialist\\nIs Romney Leigh, you understand.\\nNot I.\\nI disbelieve in Christian-Pagans, much\\nAs you in women-fishes. If we mix\\nTwo colors, we lose both, and make a third.\\nDistinct from either. Mark you to mistake\\nA color is the sign of a sick brain.\\nAnd mine, I thank the saints, is clear and cool\\nA neutral tint is here impossible.\\nThe church and by the church, I mean, of course,\\nThe catholic, apostolic, mother-church\\nDraws lines as plain and straight as her own wall,\\nInside of which are Christians, obviously.\\nAnd outside dogs.\\nWe thank you. Well I know\\nThe ancient mother-church would fain still bite,\\nFor all her toothless gums, as Leigh himself\\nWould fain be a Christian still, for all his wit.\\nPass that you two may settle it for me.\\nYou re slow in England. In a month I learnt\\nAt Gottingen enough philosophy\\nTo stock your English schools for fifty years\\nPass that too. Here alone, I stop you short,\\nSupposing a true man like Leigh could stand\\nUnequal in the stature of his life\\nTo the height of his opinions. Choose a wife\\nBecause of a smooth skin Not he, not he", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0200.jp2"}, "199": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 183\\nHe d rail at Venus self for creaking shoes,\\nUnless she walked his way of righteousness\\nAnd if he takes a Venus Meretrix\\n(No imputation on the lady there),\\nBe sure that, by some sleight of Christian art\\nHe has metamorphosed and converted her\\nTo a Blessed Virgin.\\nSoft Sir Blaise drew breath\\nAs if it hurt him, Soft no blasphemy,\\nI pray you\\nThe first Christians did the thing\\nWhy not the last asked he of Gottingen,\\nWith just that shade of sneering on the lip,\\nCompensates for the lagging of the beard,\\nAnd so the case is. If that fairest fair\\nIs talked of as the future wife of Leigh,\\nShe s talked of too, at least as certainly.\\nAs Leigh s disciple. You may find her name\\nOn all his missions and commissions, schools,\\nAsylums, hospitals he had her down.\\nWith other ladies whom her starry lead\\nPersuaded from their spheres, to his countr} -place\\nIn Shropshire, to the famed phalanstery\\nAt Leigh Hall, christianized from Fourier s own\\n(In which he has planted out his sapling stocks\\nOf knowledge into social nurseries).\\nAnd there they say she has tarried half a week,\\nAnd milked the cows, and churned, and pressed the curd.\\nAnd said, My sister, to the lowest drab\\nOf all the assembled castaways such girls\\nAy, sided with them at the washing-tub\\nConceive, Sir Blaise, those naked, perfect arms,\\nRound, glittering arms, plunged elbow-deep in suds\\nLike wild swans hid in lilies all a-shake.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0201.jp2"}, "200": {"fulltext": "1 84 AURORA LEIGH.\\nLord Howe came up. What, talking poetry\\nSo near the image of the unfavoring Muse\\nThat s you, Miss Leigh I ve watched you half an hour.\\nPrecisely as I watched the statue called\\nA Pallas in the Vatican. You mind\\nThe face, Sir Blaise intensely calm and sad,\\nAs wdsdom cut it off from fellowship.\\nBut that spoke louder. Not a word from you\\nAnd these two gentlemen were bold, I marked.\\nAnd unabashed by even your silence.\\nAh,\\nSaid I, my dear Lord Howe, you shall not speak\\nTo a printing woman who has lost her place\\n(The sweet safe corner of the household fire\\nBehind the heads of children) compliments.\\nAs if she were a woman. We who have dipt\\nThe curls before our eyes may see at least\\nAs plain as men do. Speak out, man to man,\\nNo compliments, beseech you.\\nFriend to friend,\\nLet that be. We are sad to-night, I saw\\nGood-night, Sir Blaise ah, Smith he has slipped awav),\\nI saw you cross the room, and staid. Miss Leigh,\\nTo keep a crowd of lion-hunters off.\\nWith faces toward your jungle. There were three\\nA spacious lady, five feet ten, and fat.\\nWho has the devil in her (and there s room)\\nFor walking to and fro upon the earth.\\nFrom Chippewa to China she requires\\nYour autograph upon a tinted leaf\\nTwixt Queen Pomare s and Emperor Soulouque s.\\nPray, give it she has energies, though fat\\nFor me I d rather see a rick on fire\\nThan such a woman angry. Then a youth", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0202.jp2"}, "201": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 185\\nFresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs,\\nAsks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe.\\nAnd adds he has an epic in twelve parts.\\nWhich, when you ve read, you ll do it for his boot\\nAll which I saved you, and absorb next week\\nBoth manuscript and man, because a lord\\nIs still more potent than a poetess\\nWith any extreme Republican. Ah, ah,\\nYou smile at last, then.\\nThank you.\\nLeave the smile.\\nI ll lose the thanks for t, ay, and throw you in\\nMy transatlantic girl, wath golden eyes.\\nThat draw you to her splendid whiteness as\\nThe pistil of a water-lily draws.\\nAdust with gold. Those girls across the sea\\nAre tyrannously pretty, and I swore\\n(She seemed to me an innocent, frank girl)\\nTo bring her to you for a woman s kiss\\nNot now, but on some other day or week\\nWe ll call it perjury I give her up.\\nNo, bring her.\\nNow, said he, you make it hard\\nTo touch such goodness with a grimy palm.\\nI thought to tease you well, and fret you cross,\\nAnd steel myself, when rightly vexed with you,\\nFor telling you a thing to tease you more.\\nOf Romney?\\nNo, no nothing worse, he cried,\\nOf Romney Leigh than what is buzzed about\\nThat he is taken in an eye-trap, too,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0203.jp2"}, "202": {"fulltext": "1 86 AURORA LEIGH.\\nLike many half as wise. The thing I mean\\nRefers to you, not him.\\nRefers to me.\\nHe echoed. Me You sound it Uke a stone\\nDropped down a dry well very listlessly\\nBy one who never thinks about the toad\\nAlive at the bottom. Presentl}^ perhaps,\\nYou ll sound your me more proudly till I shrink.\\nLord Howe s the toad, then, in this question\\nBrief,\\nWe ll take it graver. Give me sofa-room.\\nAnd quiet hearing. You know Eglinton,\\nJohn Eglinton of Eglinton in Kent\\nIs he the toad t He s rather like the snail.\\nKnown chiefly for the house upon his back\\nDivide the man and house, you kill the man\\nThat s Eglinton of Eglinton, Lord Howe.\\nHe answered grave A reputable man,\\nAn excellent landlord of the olden stamp\\nIf somewhat slack in new philanthropies.\\nWho keeps his birthdays with a tenant s dance,\\nIs hard upon them when they miss the church,\\nOr hold their children back from catechism,\\nBut not ungentle when the aged poor\\nPick sticks at hedgesides nay, I ve heard him say,\\nThe old dame has a twinge because she stoops\\nThat s punishment enough for felony.\\nO tender-hearted landlord may I take\\nMy long lease with him, when the time arrives\\nFor gathering winter-fagots", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0204.jp2"}, "203": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 187\\nHe likes art\\nBuys books and pictures of a certain kind\\nNeglects no patent duty a good son\\nTo a most obedient mother. Born to wear\\nHis father s shoes, he wears her husband s, too\\nIndeed I ve heard it s touching. Dear Lord Howe,\\nYou shall not praise jfie so against your heart\\nWhen I m at worst for praise and fagots.\\nBe\\nLess bitter with me for in short, he said,\\nI have a letter, which he urged me so\\nTo bring you I could scarcely choose but yield\\nInsisting that a new love, passing through\\nThe hand of an old friendship, caught from it\\nSome reconciling odor.\\nLove, you say\\nMy lord, I cannot love I only find\\nThe rhyme for love and that s not love, my lord.\\nTake back your letter.\\nPause. You ll read it first\\nI will not read it it is stereotyped,\\nThe same he wrote to, anybody s name,\\nAnne Blythe the actress, when she died so true\\nA duchess fainted in a private box\\nPauline the dancer, after the great /^i\\nIn which her little feet winked overhead\\nLike other fireflies, and amazed the pit\\nOr Baldinacci, when her F in alt\\nHad touched the silver tops of heaven itself\\nWith such a pungent spirit-dart, the Queen\\nLaid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms,\\nAnd sighed for joy or else (I thank your friend),", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0205.jp2"}, "204": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nAurora Leigh, when some indifferent rhymes,\\nLike those the boys sang round the holy ox\\nOn Memphis-highway, chance perhaps to set\\nOur Apis-pubUc lowing. Oh, he wants.\\nInstead of any worthy wife at home,\\nA star upon his stage of Eglinton\\nAdvise him that he is not overshrewd\\nIn being so little modest a dropped star\\nMakes bitter waters, says a Book I ve read\\nAnd there s his unread letter.\\nMy dear friend,\\nLord Howe began\\nIn haste I tore the phrase.\\nYou mean your friend of Eglinton, or me\\nI mean you, you he answered, with some fire.\\nA happy life means prudent compromise\\nThe tare runs through the farmer s garnered sheaves.\\nAnd, though the gleaner s apron holds pure wheat.\\nWe count her poorer. Tare with wheat, we cry,\\nAnd good with drawbacks. You, you love your art.\\nAnd, certain of vocation, set your soul\\nOn utterance. Only, in this world we have made\\n(They say God made it first, but if he did\\nTwas so long since, and, since, we have spoiled it so,\\nHe scarce would know it, if he looked this way.\\nFrom hells we preach of, with the flames blov/n out),\\nIn this bad, twisted, topsy-turvy world.\\nWhere all the heaviest wrongs get uppermost,\\nIn this uneven, unfostering England here,\\nWhere ledger-strokes and sword-strokes count indeed,\\nBut soul-strokes merely tell upon the flesh\\nThey strike from, it is hard to stand for art,\\nUnless some golden tripod from the sea", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0206.jp2"}, "205": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 89\\nBe fished up, by Apollo s divine chance,\\nTo throne such feet as yours, my prophetess,\\nAt Delphi. Think, the god comes down as fierce\\nAs twenty bloodhounds, shakes you, strangles you,\\nUntil the oracular shriek shall ooze in froth\\nAt best tis not all ease at worst too hard.\\nA place to stand on is a vantage gained,\\nAnd here s your tripod. To be plain, dear friend,\\nYou re poor, except in what you richly give\\nYou labor for your own bread painfully,\\nOr ere you pour our wine. For art s sake, pause.\\nI answered slow, as some wayfaring man,\\nWho feels himself at night too far from home.\\nMakes steadfast face against the bitter wind,\\nIs art so less a thing than virtue is.\\nThat artists first must cater for their ease.\\nOr ever they make issue past themselves\\nTo generous use Alas and is it so,\\nThat we who would be somewhat clean must sweep\\nOur ways, as well as walk them, and no friend\\nConfirm us nobly, Leave results to God,\\nBut you, be clean What prudent compromise\\nMakes acceptable life, you say instead,\\nYou, you, Lord Howe in things indifferent, well.\\nFor instance, compromise the wheaten bread\\nFor rye, the meat for lentils, silk for serge.\\nAnd sleep on down, if needs, for sleep on straw\\nBut there end compromise. I will not bate\\nOne artist-dream on straw or down, my lord.\\nNor pinch my liberal soul, though I be poor,\\nNor cease to love high, though I live thus low.\\nSo speaking, with less anger in my voice", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0207.jp2"}, "206": {"fulltext": "190 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThan sorrow, I rose quickly to depart\\nWhile he, thrown back upon the noble shame\\nOf such high stumbling natures, murmured words,\\nThe right words after wrong ones. Ah, the man\\nIs worthy, but so given to entertain\\nImpossible plans of superhuman life,\\nHe sets his virtues on so raised a shelf.\\nTo keep them at the grand millennial height,\\nHe has to mount a stool to get at them,\\nAnd meantime lives on quite the common way,\\nWith everybody s morals.\\nAs we passed.\\nLord Howe insisting that his friendly arm\\nShould oar me across the sparkling, brawling stream\\nWhich swept from room to room, we fell at once\\nOn Lady Waldemar. Miss Leigh, she said.\\nAnd gave me such a smile, so cold and bright.\\nAs if she tried it in a tiring glass\\nAnd liked it, all to-night I ve strained at you\\nAs babes at bawbles held up out of reach\\nBy spiteful nurses Never snatch, they say),\\nAnd there you sate, most perfectly shut in\\nBy good- Sir Blaise and clever Mister Smith,\\nAnd then our dear Lord Howe At last indeed\\nI almost snatched. I have a world to speak\\nAbout your cousin s place in Shropshire, where\\nI ve been to see his work our work, you heard\\nI went and of a letter yesterday,\\nIn which if I should read a page or two\\nYou might feel interest, though you re locked of course\\nIn literary toil. You ll like to hear\\nYour last book lies at the phalanstery,\\nAs judged innocuous for the elder girls\\nAnd younger women who still care for books.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0208.jp2"}, "207": {"fulltext": "We fell at once on Lady Waldemar. Page 190.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0209.jp2"}, "208": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0210.jp2"}, "209": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nWe all must read, you see, before we live,\\nTill slowly the ineffable light comes up.\\nAnd as it deepens drowns the written wordj]\\nSo said your cousin, while we stood and felt\\nA sunset from his favorite beech-tree seat.\\nHe might have been a poet if he would\\nBut then he saw the higher thing at once\\nAnd climbed to it. I think he looks well now,\\nHas quite got over that unfortunate\\nAh, ah I know it moved you. Tender-heart\\nYou took a liking to the wretched girl.\\nPerhaps you thought the marriage suitable.\\nWho knows A poet hankers for romance,\\nAnd so on. As for Romney Leigh, tis sure\\nHe never loved her, never. By the way,\\nYou have not heard of her Quite out of sight,\\nAnd out of saving Lost in every sense\\nShe might have gone on talking half an hour\\nAnd I stood still, and cold, and pale, I think.\\nAs a garden-statue a child pelts with snow\\nFor pretty pastime. Every now and then\\nI put in yes or no, I scarce knew why\\nThe blind man walks wherever the dog pulls.\\nAnd so I answered. Till Lord Howe broke in\\nWhat penance takes the wretch who interrupts\\nThe talk of charming women I at last\\nMust brave it. Pardon, Lady Waldemar\\nThe lady on my arm is tired, unwell,\\nAnd loyally I ve promised she shall say\\nNo harder word this evening than good-night\\nThe rest her face speaks for her. Then we went.\\nAnd I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0211.jp2"}, "210": {"fulltext": "192 AURORA LEIGH.\\nUnclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties\\nMy hair now could I but unloose my soul\\nWe are sepulchred alive in this close world,\\nAnd want more room.\\nThe charming woman there\\nThis reckoning ujd and writing down her talk\\nAffects me singularly. How she talked\\nTo pain me woman s spite. You wear steel mail\\nA woman takes a housewife from her breast,\\nAnd plucks the delicatest needle out\\nAs twere a rose, and pricks you carefully\\nNeath nails, neath eyelids, in your nostrils, say\\nA beast would roar so tortured but a man,\\nA human creature, must not, shall not, flinch.\\nNo, not for shame.\\nWhat vexes, after all.\\nIs just that such as she, with such as I,\\nKnows how to vex. Sweet Heaven she takes me up\\nAs if she had fingered me, and dog-eared me,\\nAnd spelled me by the fireside half a life.\\nShe knows my turns, my feeble points. What then\\nThe knowledge of a thing implies the thing\\nOf course, she found that in me, she saw that,\\nHer pencil underscored this for a fault,\\nAnd I, still ignorant. Shut the book up close\\nAnd crush that beetle in the leaves.\\nO heart\\nAt last we shall grow hard, too, like the rest.\\nAnd call it self-defence because we are soft.\\nAnd after all, now why should I be pained\\nThat Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouse\\nThis Lady Waldemar And, say she held\\nHer newly blossomed gladness in my face,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0212.jp2"}, "211": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 193\\nTwas natural, surely, if not generous,\\nConsidering how, when winter held her fast,\\nI helped the frost with mine, and pained her more\\nThan she pains me. Pains me But wherefore pained\\nTis clear my Cousin Romney wants a wife.\\nSo, good The man s need of the- woman, here,\\nIs greater than the woman s of the man,\\nAnd easier served for where the man discerns\\nA sex (ah, ah, the man can generalize.\\nSaid he), we see but one ideally\\nAnd really where we yearn to lose ourselves,\\nAnd melt, like white pearls, in another s wine,\\nHe seeks to double himself by what he loves,\\nAnd makes his drink more costly by our pearls.\\nAt board, at bed, at work, and holiday,\\nIt is not good for man to be alone\\nAnd that s his way of thinking, first and last,\\nAnd thus my Cousin Romney wants a wife.\\nBut then my cousin sets his dignity\\nOn personal virtue. If he understands\\nBy love, like others, self-aggrandizement.\\nIt is that he may verily be great\\nBy doing rightly and kindly. Once he thought.\\nFor charitable ends set duly forth\\nIn heaven s white judgment-book, to marry ah.\\nWe ll call her name Aurora Leigh, although\\nShe s changed since then and once, for social ends.\\nPoor Marian Erie, my sister Marian Erie,\\nMy woodland sister, sweet maid Marian,\\nWhose memory moans on in me like the wind\\nThrough ill-shut casements, making me more sad\\nThan ever I find reasons for. Alas,\\nPoor, pretty, plaintive face, embodied ghost", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0213.jp2"}, "212": {"fulltext": "194 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHe finds it easy, then, to clap thee off\\nFrom pulHng at his sleeve and book and pen,\\nHe locks thee out at night into the cold,\\nAway from butting with thy horny eyes\\nAgainst his crystal dreams, that now he s strong\\nTo love anew that Lady Waldemar\\nSucceeds my Marian\\nAfter all, why not\\nHe loved not Marian more than once he loved\\nAurora. If he loves at last that third.\\nAlbeit she prove as slippery as spilt oil\\nOn marble floors, I will not augur him\\nIll-luck for that. Good love, howe er ill-placed.\\nIs better for a man s soul in the end\\nThan if he loved ill what deserves love well, j\\nA Pagan kissing for a step of Pan\\nThe wild-goat s hoof-print on the loamy down.\\nExceeds our modern thinker who turns back\\nThe strata granite, limestone, coal, and clay,\\nConcluding coldly wdth, Here s law where s God\\nAnd then at worse, if Romney loves her not,\\nAt worst, if he s incapable of love\\n(Which may be), then, indeed, for such a man\\nIncapable of love, she s good enough\\nFor she at worst, too, is a woman still.\\nAnd loves him as the sort of woman can.\\nMy loose long hair began to burn and creep.\\nAlive to the very ends, about my knees\\nI swept it backward, as the wind sweeps flame,\\nWith the passion of my hands. Ah, Romney laughed\\nOne day (how full the memories come up\\nYour Florence fireflies live on in your hair,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0214.jp2"}, "213": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 195\\nHe said, it gleams so. Well, I wrung them out.\\nMy fireflies made a knot as hard as life\\nOf those loose, soft, impracticable curls.\\nAnd then sat down and thought She shall not tbnk\\nHer thought of me, and drew my desk, and wrote.\\nDear Lady Waldemar, I could not speak\\nWith people round me, nor can sleep to-night,\\nAnd not speak, after the great news I heard\\nOf you and of my cousin. May you be\\nMost happy, and the good he meant the world\\nReplenish his own life Say what I say.\\nAnd let my word be sweeter for your mouth,\\nAs you 2ixeyou I only Aurora Leigh.\\nThat s quiet, guarded though she hold it up\\nAgainst the light, she ll not see through it more\\nThan lies there to be seen. So much for pride\\nAnd now for peace a little. Let me stop\\nAll writing back Sweet thanks, my sweetest friend.\\nYou ve made more joyful my great joy itself.\\nNo, that s too simple she would twist it thus,\\nMy joy would still be as sweet as thyme in drawers.\\nHowever shut up in the dark and dry\\nBut violets aired and dewed by love like yours\\nOutsmell all thyme we keep that in our clothes.\\nBut drop the other down our bosoms till\\nThey smell like Ah I see her writing back\\nJust so. She ll make a nosegay of her words,\\nAnd tie it with blue ribbons at the end\\nTo suit a poet. Pshaw\\nAnd then we ll have\\nThe call to church the broken, sad, bad dream\\nDreamed out at last the marriage-vow complete", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0215.jp2"}, "214": {"fulltext": "196 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWith the marriage-breakfast praying in white gloves,\\nDrawn off in haste for drinking pagan-toasts\\nIn somewhat stronger wine than any sipped\\nBy gods since Bacchus had his way with grapes.\\nA postscript stops all that and rescues me.\\nYou need not write. I have been overworked,\\nAnd think of leaving London, England even,\\nAnd hastening to get nearer to the sun,\\nWhere men sleep better. So, adieu I fold\\nAnd seal and now I m out of all the coil\\nI breathe now, I spring upward like a branch\\nThe ten-years schoolboy with a crooked stick\\nMay pull down to his level in search of nuts,\\nBut cannot hold a moment. How we twang\\nBack on the blue sky, and assert our height,\\nWhile he stares after Now, the wonder seems\\nThat I could wrong myself by such a doubt.\\nWe poets always have uneasy hearts,\\nBecause our hearts, large-rounded as the globe,\\nCan turn but one side to the sun at once.\\nWe are used to dip our artist hands in gall\\nAnd potash, trying potentialities\\nOf alternated color, till at last\\nWe get confused, and wonder for our skin\\nHow nature tinged it first. Well, here s the true\\nGood flesh-color I recognize my hand,\\nWhich Romney Leigh may clasp as just a friend s,\\nAnd keep his clean.\\nAnd now, my Italy.\\nAlas if we could ride with naked souls.\\nAnd make no noise, and pay no price at all,\\nI would have seen thee sooner, Italy\\nFor still I have heard thee crying through my life.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0216.jp2"}, "215": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. ^97\\nThou piercing silence of ecstatic graves,\\nMen call that name.\\nBut even a witch to-day\\nMust melt down golden pieces in the nard,\\nWherewith to anoint her broomstick ere she rides\\nAnd poets evermore are scant of gold,\\nAnd if they find a piece behind the door.\\nIt turns by sunset to a withered leaf.\\nThe Devil himself scarce trusts his patented\\nGold-making art to any who make rhymes.\\nBut culls his Faustus from philosophers.\\nAnd not from poets. Leave my Job, said God\\nAnd so the Devil leaves him without pence.\\nAnd poverty proves plainly special grace.\\nIn these new, just, administrative times\\nMen clamor for an order of merit why\\nHere s black bread on the table, and no wine\\nAt least I am a poet in being poor.\\nThank God I wonder if the manuscript\\nOf my long poem, if twere sold outright.\\nWould fetch enough to buy me shoes to go\\nAfoot (thrown in, the necessary patch\\nFor the other side the Alps) It cannot be.\\nI fear that I must sell this residue\\nOf my father s books, although the Elzevirs\\nHave fly-leaves over-written by his hand\\nIn faded notes as thick and fine and brown\\nAs cobwebs on a tawny monument\\nOf the old Greeks conferenda hcec cum his\\nCorrupte citat lege pothh,\\nAnd so on, in the scholar s regal way\\nOf giving judgment on the parts of speech.\\nAs if he sate on all twelve thrones uppiled,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0217.jp2"}, "216": {"fulltext": "1 98 AURORA LEIGH.\\nArraigning Israel. Ay, but books and notes\\nMust go together. And this Proclus, too,\\nIn these dear quaint contracted Grecian type\\nFantastically crumpled, like his thoughts,\\nWhich would not seem too plain you go round twice\\nFor one step forward, then you take it back,\\nBecause you re somewhat giddy there s the rule\\nFor Proclus. Ah, I stained this middle leaf\\nWith pressing in t my Florence irisbell.\\nLong stalk and all. My father chided me\\nFor that stain of blue blood. I recollect\\nThe peevish turn his voice took, Silly girls\\nWho plant their flowers in our philosophy\\nTo make it fine, and only spoil the book.\\nNo more of it, Aurora. Yes no more.\\nAh, blame of love, that s sweeter than all praise\\nOf those who love not Tis so lost to me,\\nI cannot, in such beggared life, afford\\nTo lose my Proclus not for Florence even.\\nThe kissing Judas, Wolff, shall go instead,\\nWho builds us such a royal book as this\\nTo honor a chief poet, folio-built,\\nAnd writes above, The house of Nobody\\nWho floats in cream as rich as any sucked\\nFrom Juno s breasts, the broad Homeric lines,\\nAnd while with their spondaic prodigious mouths\\nThey lap the lucent margins as babe-gods,\\nProclaims them bastards. Wolff s an atheist\\nAnd if the Iliad fell out, as he says.\\nBy mere fortuitous concourse of old songs,\\nConclude as much, too, for the universe.\\nThat Wolff, those Platos sweep the upper shelves", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0218.jp2"}, "217": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 1 99\\nAs clean as this, and so I am almost rich,\\nWhich means, not forced to think of being poor\\nIn sight of ends. To-morrow no delay.\\nI ll wait in Paris till good Carrington\\nDispose of such, and, having chaffered for\\nMy book s price with the publisher, direct\\nAll proceeds to me. Just a line to ask\\nHis help.\\nAnd now I come, my Italy,\\nMy own hills Are you ware of me, my hills,\\nHow I burn toward you do you feel to-night\\nThe urgency and yearning of my soul.\\nAs sleeping mothers feel the sucking babe,\\nAnd smile Nay, not so much as when in heat\\nVain lightnings catch at your inviolate tops\\nAnd tremble, while ye are steadfast. Still ye go\\nYour own determined, calm, indifferent way\\nToward sunrise, shade by shade, and light by light,\\nOf all the grand progression naught left out.\\nAs if God verily made you for yourselves.\\nAnd would not interrupt your life with ours,\\nSIXTH BOOK.\\nThe English have a scornful insular way\\nOf calling the French light. The levity\\nIs in the judgment only, which yet stands\\nFor, say a foolish thing but oft enough\\n(And here s the secret of a hundred creeds.\\nMen get opinions as boys learn to spell,/\\nBy reiteration chiefly), the same thing", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0219.jp2"}, "218": {"fulltext": "200 AURORA LEIGH.\\nShall pass at last for absolutely wise,\\nAnd not with fools exclusively. And so\\nWe say the French are light, as if we said\\nThe cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk\\nSay, rather, cats are milked, and milch-cows mew\\nFor what is lightness but inconsequence.\\nVague fluctuation twixt effect and cause.\\nCompelled by neither Is a bullet light.\\nThat dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eye\\nWinks and the heart beats one, to flatten itself\\nTo a wafer on the white speck on a wall\\nA hundred paces off Even so direct,\\nSo sternly undivertible of aim.\\nIs this French people.\\nAll idealists.\\nToo absolute and earnest, with them all\\nThe idea of a knife cuts real flesh\\nAnd still, devouring the safe interval\\nWhich nature placed between the thought and act\\nWith those too fiery and impatient souls.\\nThey threaten conflagration to the world.\\nAnd rush with most unscrupulous logic on\\nImpossible practice. Set your orators\\nTo blow upon them with loud, windy mouths.\\nThrough w^atchw ord phrases, jest, or sentiment.\\nWhich drive our burly brutal English mobs,\\nLike so much chaff, whichever way they blow,\\nThis light French people will not thus be driven.\\nThey turn indeed but then they turn upon\\nSome central pivot of their thought and choice,\\nAnd veer out by the force of holding fast.\\nThat s hard to understand, for Englishmen\\nUnused to abstract questions, and untrained\\nTo trace the involutions, valve by valve.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0220.jp2"}, "219": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 20I\\nIn each orbed bulb-root of a general truth\\nAnd mark what subtly fine integument\\nDivides opposed compartments. Freedom s\\nComes concrete to us, to be understood,\\nFixed in a feudal form incarnately\\nTo suit our ways of thought and reverence\\nThe special form, with us, being still the thing.\\nWith us, I say, though I m of Italy\\nBy mother s birth and grave, by father s grave\\nAnd memory, let it-be, a poet s heart\\nCan swell to a pair of nationalities,\\nHowever ill-lodged in a woman s breast.\\nAnd so I am strong to love this noble France,\\nThis poet of the nations, who dreams on\\nAnd wails on (while the household goes to wreck)\\nForever, after some ideal good.\\nSome equal poise of sex, some unvowed love\\nInviolate, some spontaneous brotherhood.\\nSome wealth that leaves none poor and finds none tired.\\nSome freedom of the many that respects\\nThe wisdom of the few. Heroic dreams\\nSublime to dream so natural to wake\\nAnd sad to use such lofty scaffoldings,\\nErected for the building of a church.\\nTo build, instead, a brothel or a prison.\\nMay God save France\\nAnd if at last she sighs\\nHer great soul up into a great man s face,\\nTo flush his temples out so gloriously\\nThat few dare carp at Caesar for being bald,\\nWhat then This Caesar represents, not reigns.\\nAnd is no despot, though twice absolute\\nThis head has all the people for a heart", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0221.jp2"}, "220": {"fulltext": "202 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThis purple s lined with the democracy,\\nNow let him see to it for a rent within\\nWould leave irreparable rags without.\\nA serious riddle find such anywhere\\nExcept in France, and, when tis found in France,\\nBe sure to read it rightly. So, I mused\\nUp and down, up and down, the terraced streets,\\nThe glittering boulevards, the white colonnades.\\nOf fair fantastic Paris, who wears trees\\nLike plumes, as if man made them, spire and tower,\\nAs if they had grown by nature, tossing up\\nHer fountains in the sunshine of the squares.\\nAs if in beauty s game she tossed the dice.\\nOr blew the silver down-balls of her dreams\\nTo sow futurity with seeds of thought.\\nAnd count the passage of her festive hours.\\nThe city swims in verdure, beautiful\\nAs Venice on the waters, the sea-swan.\\nWhat bosky gardens dropped in close-walled courts\\nLike plums in ladies laps who start and laugh\\nWhat miles of streets that run on after trees.\\nStill carrying all the necessary shops.\\nThose open caskets with the jewels seen\\nAnd trade is art, and art s philosophy,\\nIn Paris. There s a silk, for instance, there.\\nAs worth an artist s study for the folds,\\nAs that bronze opposite nay, the bronze has faults\\nArt s here too artful, conscious as a maid\\nWho leans to mark her shadow on the wall\\nUntil she lose a vantage in her step.\\nYet art walks forward, and knows where to walk\\nThe artists also are idealists,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0222.jp2"}, "221": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 203\\nToo absolute for nature, logical\\nTo austerity in the application of\\nThe special theory not a soul content\\nTo paint a crooked pollard and an ass,\\nAs the English will, because they find it so,\\nAnd like it somehow. There the old Tuileries\\nIs pulling its high cap down on its eyes.\\nConfounded, conscience-stricken, and amazed\\nBy the apparition of a new fair face\\nIn those devouring mirrors. Through the grate\\nWithin the gardens, what a heap of babes.\\nSwept up like leaves beneath the chestnut-trees\\nFrom every street and alley of the town.\\nBy ghosts, perhaps, that blow too bleak this way\\nA-looking for their heads dear, pretty babes,\\nI wish them luck to have their ball-play out\\nBefore the next change. Here the air is thronged\\nWith statues poised upon their columns fine.\\nAs if to stand a moment were a feat.\\nAgainst that blue What squares what breathing-room\\nFor a nation that runs fast, ay, runs against\\nThe dentist s teeth at the corner in pale rows.\\nWhich grin at progress, in an epigram\\nI walked the day out, listening to the chink\\nOf the first Napoleon s bones in his second grave,\\nBy victories guarded neath the golden dom\\nTha caps all Paris like a bubble. Shall\\nThese dry bones live thought Louis Philippe once.\\nAnd lived to know. Herein is argument\\nFor kings and politicians, but still more\\nFor poets, who bear buckets to the well\\nOf ampler draught.\\nThese crowds are very good", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0223.jp2"}, "222": {"fulltext": "204 AURORA LEIGH.\\nFor meditation (when we are very strong),\\nThough love of beauty makes us timorous,\\nAnd draws us backward from the coarse town-sights\\nTo count the daisies upon dappled fields,\\nAnd hear the streams bleat on among the hills\\nIn innocent and indolent repose\\nAVhile still with silken elegiac thoughts\\nWe wind out from us the distracting world\\nAnd die into the chr}-salis of a man,\\nAnd leave the best that may, .0 come of us.\\nIn some brown moth. I would be bold, and bear.\\nTo look into the swarthiest face of things.\\nFor God s sake who has made them.\\nSix days work\\nThe last day shutting twixt its dawn and eve\\nThe whole work bettered of the previous five\\nSince God collected and resumed in man\\nThe firmaments, the strata, and the lights,\\nFish, fowl, and beast, and insect, all their trains\\nOf various life caught back upon his arm.\\nReorganized, and constituted man.\\nThe microcosm, the adding-up of works\\nWithin whose fluttering nostrils, then, at last\\nConsummating himself the Maker sighed,\\nAs some strong winner at the foot-race sighs\\nTouching the goal.\\nHumanity is great\\nAnd if I would not rather pore upon\\nAn ounce of common, ugly, human dust.\\nAn artisan s palm or a peasant s brow,\\nUnsmooth, ignoble, save to me and God,\\nThan track old Nilus to his silver roots.\\nOr wait on all the changes of the moon\\nAmong the mountain-peaks of Thessaly", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0224.jp2"}, "223": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 205\\n(Until her magic crystal round itself\\nFor many a witch to see in) set it down\\nAs weakness, strength by no means. How is this,\\nThat men of science, osteologists\\nAnd surgeons, beat some poets in respect\\nFor nature? count naught common or unclean,\\nSpend raptures upon perfect specimens\\nOf indurated veins, distorted joints,\\nOr beautiful new cases of curved spine,\\nWhile we, we are shocked at nature s falling off,\\nWe dare to shrink back from her warts and blains.\\nWe will not, when she sneezes, look at her,\\nNot even to say, God bless her That s our wrong\\nFor that, she will not trust us often with\\nHer larger sense of beauty and desire,\\nBut tethers us to a lily or a rose.\\nAnd bids us diet on the dew inside,\\nLeft ignorant that the hungry beggar-boy\\n(Who stares unseen against our absent eyes.\\nAnd wonders at the gods that we must be,\\nTo pass so careless for the oranges\\nBears yet a breastful of a fellow-world\\nTo this world, undisparaged, undespoiled.\\nAnd (while we scorn him for a flower or two,\\nAs being, Heaven help us, less poetical)\\nContains himself both flowers and firmaments\\nAnd surging seas and aspectable stars,\\nAnd all that we would push him out of sight\\nIn order to see nearer. Let us pray\\nGod s grace to keep God s image in repute,\\nThat so the poet and philanthropist\\n(Even I and Romney) may stand side by side,\\nBecause we both stand face to face with men,\\nContemplating the people in the rough,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0225.jp2"}, "224": {"fulltext": "206 AURORA LEIGH.\\nYet each so follow a vocation, his\\nAnd mine.\\nI walked on, musing with myself\\nOn life and art, and whether after all\\nA larger metaphysics might not help\\nOur physics, a completer poetry\\nAdjust our daily life and vulgar wants\\nMore fully than the special outside plans,\\nPhalansteries, material institutes.\\nThe civil conscriptions, and lay monasteries\\nPreferred by -modern thinkers, as they thought\\nThe bread of man indeed made all his life.\\nAnd washing seven times in the People s Baths\\nWere sovereign for a people s leprosy.\\nStill leaving out the essential prophet s word\\nThat comes in power. On which we thunder down,\\nWe prophets, poets, Virtue s in the word/\\nThe maker burnt the darkness up with his,\\nTo inaugurate the use of vocal life\\nAnd plant a poet s word even deep enough\\nIn any man s breast, looking presently\\nFor offshoots, you have done more for the man\\nThan if you dressed him in a broadcloth coat.\\nAnd warmed his Sunday pottage at your fire.\\nYet Romney leaves me.\\nGod what face is that\\nO Romney, O Marian\\nWalking on the quays.\\nAnd pulling thoughts to pieces leisurely,\\nAs if I caught at grasses in a field.\\nAnd bit them slow between my absent lips.\\nAnd shred them with my hands\\nWhat face is that\\nWhat a face, what a look, what a likeness Full on mine", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0226.jp2"}, "225": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 20/\\nThe sudden blow of it came down, till all\\nMy blood swam, my eyes dazzled, then I sprang\\nIt was as if a meditative man\\nWere dreaming out a summer afternoon.\\nAnd watching gnats a-prick upon a pond,\\nWhen something floats up suddenly, out there,\\nTurns over a dead face, known once alive\\nSo old, so new it would be dreadful now\\nTo lose the sight, and keep the doubt of this\\nHe plunges ha he has lost it in the splash.\\nI plunged I tore the crowd up, either side,\\nAnd rushed on, forward, forward, after her.\\nHer whom\\nA woman sauntered slow in front.\\nMunching an apple she left off amazed\\nAs if I had snatched it that s not she, at least.\\nA man walked arm-linked with a lady veiled,\\nBoth heads dropped closer than the need of talk\\nThey started he forgot her with his face,\\nAnd she, herself, and clung to him as if\\nMy look were fatal. Such a stream of folk,\\nAnd all with cares and business of their own\\nI ran the whole quay down against their eyes\\nNo Marian nowhere Marian. Almost, now,\\nI could call Marian, Marian with the shriek\\nOf desperate creatures calling for the dead.\\nWhere is she was she, was she anywhere\\nI stood still, breathless, gazing, straining out\\nIn every uncertain distance, till at last\\nA gentleman, abstracted as myself.\\nCame full against me, then resolved the clash\\nIn voluble excuses, obviously", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0227.jp2"}, "226": {"fulltext": "2o8 AURORA LEIGH.\\nSome learned member of the Institute\\nUpon his way there, walking, for his health,\\nWhile meditating on the last Discourse\\nPinching the empty air twixt finger and thumb.\\nFrom which the snuff being ousted by that shock\\nDefiled his snow-white waistcoat, duly pricked\\nAt the button-hole with honorable red\\nMadam, your pardon, there he swerved from me\\nA metre, as confounded as he had heard\\nThat Dumas would be chosen to fill up\\nThe next chair vacant, by his men us.\\nSince when was genius found respectable\\nIt passes in its place, indeed, which means\\nThe seventh floor back, or else the hospital.\\nRevolving pistols are ingenious things\\nBut prudent men (academicians are)\\nScarce keep them in the cupboard next the prunes.\\nAnd so, abandoned to a bitter mirth,\\nI loitered to my inn. O world, O world,\\nO jurists, rhymers, dreamers, what you please,\\nWe play a weary game of hide-and-seek\\nWe shape a figure of our fantasy,\\nCall nothing something, and run after it\\nAnd lose it, lose ourselves, too, in the search,\\nTill clash against us comes a somebody\\nWho also has lost something and is lost,\\nPhilosopher against philanthropist,\\nAcademician against poet, man\\nAs^ainst woman, against the living, the dead\\nThen home with a bad headache and worse jest.\\nTo change the water for my heliotropes\\nAnd yellow roses. Paris has such flowers,\\nBut England also. Twas a yellow rose,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0228.jp2"}, "227": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 209\\nBy that south window of the little house,\\nMy Cousin Romney gathered with his hand\\nOn all my birthdays for me, save the last\\nAnd then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,\\nFor roses to stay after.\\nNow, my maps.\\nI must not linger here from Italy\\nTill the last nightingale is tired of song.\\nAnd the last firefly dies off in the maize.\\nMy soul s in haste to leap into the sun.\\nAnd scorch and seethe itself to a liner mood.\\nWhich here in this chill north is apt to stand\\nToo stiffly in former moulds.\\nThat face persists.\\nIt floats up, it turns over in my mind\\nAs like to Marian as one dead is like\\nThe same alive. In very deed a face.\\nAnd not a fancy, though it vanished so\\nThe small fair face between the darks of hair\\nI used to liken, when I saw her first.\\nTo a point of moonlit water down a well\\nThe low brow, the frank space between the eyes.\\nWhich always had the brown pathetic look\\nOf a dumb creature, who had been beaten once.\\nAnd never since was easy with the world.\\nAh, ah now I remember perfectly\\nThose eyes to-day how overlarge they seemed\\nAs if some patient passionate despair\\n(Like a coal dropt and forgot on tapestry,\\nWhich slowly burns a widening circle out)\\nHad burnt them larger, larger. And those eyes,\\nTo-day, I do remember, saw me too.\\nAs I saw them, with conscious lids astrain\\nIn recognition. Now, a fantasy.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0229.jp2"}, "228": {"fulltext": "2IO AURORA LEIGH.\\nA simple shade or image of the brain,\\nIs merely passive, does not retroact,\\nIs seen, but sees not.\\nTwas a real face.\\nPerhaps a real Marian.\\nWhich being so,\\nI ought to write to Romney, Marian s here\\nBe comforted for Marian.\\nMy pen fell\\nMy hands struck sharp together, as hands do\\nWhich hold at nothing. Can I write to hii7i\\nA half-truth can I keep my own soul blind\\nTo the other half the worse What are our souls,\\nIf still, to run on straight a sober pace,\\nNor start at every pebble or dead leaf,\\nThey must wear blinkers, ignore facts, suppress\\nSix-tenths of the road Confront the truth, my soul\\nAnd, oh as truly as that was Marian s face.\\nThe arms of that same Marian clasped a thing\\nNot hid so well beneath the scanty shawl,\\nI cannot name it now for what it was.\\nA child. Small business has a castaway,\\nLike Marian, with that crown of prosperous wives,\\nAt which the gentlest she grows arrogant,\\nAnd says, My child. Who finds an emerald ring\\nOn a beggar s middle finger, and requires\\nMore testimony to convict a thief\\nA child s too costly for so mere a wretch\\nShe filched it somewhere and it means with her.\\nInstead of honor, blessing, merely shame.\\nI cannot write to Romney, Here she is\\nHere s Marian found I ll set you on her track.\\nI saw her here in Paris and her child.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0230.jp2"}, "229": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 211\\nShe put away your love two years ago,\\nBut, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then\\nAnd now that you ve forgot her utterly,\\nAs any last year s annual, in whose place\\nYou ve planted a thick flowering evergreen,\\nI choose, being kind, to write and tell you this\\nTo make you wholly easy, she s not dead.\\nBut only damned.\\nStop there I go too fast\\nI m cruel like the rest, in haste to take\\nThe first stir in the arras for a rat,\\nAnd set my barking, biting thoughts upon t.\\nA child what then Suppose a neighbor s sick,\\nAnd asked her, Marian, carry out my child\\nIn this spring air, I punish her for that\\nOr say, the child should hold her round the neck\\nFor good child reasons, that he liked it so.\\nAnd would not leave her, she had winning ways,\\nI brand her, therefore, that she took the child 1\\nNot so.\\nI wdll not wTite to Romney Leigh,\\nFor now he s happy, and she may, indeed.\\nBe guilty, and the knowledge of her fault\\nWould draggle his smooth time. But I, whose days\\nAre not so fine they cannot bear the rain,\\nAnd who, moreover, having seen her face,\\nMust see it again will see it, by my hopes\\nOf one day seeing heaven, too. The police\\nShall track her, hound her, ferret their own soil\\nWe ll dig this Paris to its catacombs\\nBut certainly we ll find her, have her out.\\nAnd save her, if she will or not, child\\nOr no child, if a child, then one to save", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0231.jp2"}, "230": {"fulltext": "212 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe long weeks passed on without consequence.\\nAs easy find a footstep on the sand\\nThe morning after spring-tide, as the trace\\nOf Marian s feet between the incessant surfs\\nOf this Uve flood. She may have moved this way\\nBut so the star-fish does, and crosses out\\nThe dent of her small shoe. The foiled police\\nRenounced me. Could they find a girl and child,\\nNo other signalment but girl and child\\nNo data shown but noticeable eyes.\\nAnd hair in masses, low upon the brow.\\nAs if it were an iron crown, and pressed\\nFriends heighten, and suppose they specify\\nWhy, girls with hair and eyes are everywhere\\nIn Paris they had turned me up in vain,\\nNo Marian Erie indeed, but certainly\\nMathildes, Justines, Victoires or, if I sought\\nThe English, Betsies, Saras, by the score.\\nThey might as well go out into the fields\\nTo find a speckled bean that s somehow specked,\\nAnd somewhere in the pod. They left me so.\\nShall leave Marian have I dreamed a dream\\nI thank God I have found her I must say\\nThank God for finding her, although tis true\\nI find the world more sad and wicked for t.\\nBut she\\nI ll write about her j^resently.\\nMy hand s a-tremble, as I had just caught up\\nMy heart to write with in the place of it.\\nAt least you d take these letters to be writ\\nAt sea, in storm wait now\\nA simple chance\\nDid all. I could not sleep last night, and, tired", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0232.jp2"}, "231": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 213\\nOf turning on my pillow and harder thoughts,\\nWent out at early morning, when the air\\nIs delicate with some last starry touch.\\nTo wander through the market-place of flowers\\n(The prettiest haunt in Paris), and make sure\\nAt worst that there were roses in the world.\\nSo wandering, musing, with the artist s eye,\\nThat keeps the shade-side of the thing it loves.\\nHalf-absent, whole observing, while the crowd\\nOf young, vivacious, and black-braided heads\\nDipped, quick as finches in a blossomed tree,\\nAmong the nosegays, cheapening this and that\\nIn such a cheerful twitter of rapid speech,\\nMy heart leapt in me, startled by a voice\\nThat slowly, faintly, with long breaths that marked\\nThe interval between the wish and word.\\nInquired in stranger s French, Would that be much,\\nThat branch of flowering mountain-gorse So much\\nToo much for me, then turning the face round\\nSo close upon me that I felt the sigh\\nIt turned with.\\nMarian, Marian face to face\\nMarian I find you. Shall I let you go 1\\nI held her two slight wrists with both my haii is\\nAh, Marian, Marian, can I let you go\\nShe fluttered from me like a cyclamen\\nAs white, which, taken in a sudden wind,\\nBeats on against the palisade. Let pass,\\nShe said at last. I will not, I replied\\nI lost my sister Marian many days.\\nAnd sought her ever in my walks and prayers,\\nAnd now I find her do we throw away\\nThe bread we worked and prayed for crumble it\\nAnd drop it to do even so by thee", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0233.jp2"}, "232": {"fulltext": "214 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWhom still I ve hungered after more than bread,\\nMy sister Marian Can I hurt thee, dear\\nThen why distrust me Never tremble so.\\nCome with me, rather, where we ll talk and live,\\nAnd none shall vex us. I ve a home for you\\nAnd me, and no one else.\\nShe shook her head.\\nA home for you and me and no one else\\n111 suits one of us I prefer to such\\nA roof of grass on which a flower might spring,\\nLess costly to me than the cheapest here\\nAnd yet I could not at this hour afford\\nA like home even. That you offer yours\\nI thank you. You are as good as heaven itself\\nAs good as one I knew before Farewell\\nI loosed her hands. In his name no farewell\\n(She stood as if I held her.) For his sake,\\nFor his sake, Romney s by the good he meant,\\nAy, always by the love he pressed for once,\\nAnd by the grief, reproach, abandonment,\\nHe took in change\\nHe, Romney who grieved him\\nWho had the heart for t what reproach touched hi?7i\\nBe merciful speak quickly.\\nTherefore come,\\nI answered with authority. I think\\nWe dare to speak such things and name such names\\nIn the open squares of Paris.\\nNot a word\\nShe said, but in a gentle, humbled way\\n(As one who had forgot herself in grief)\\nTurned round, and followed closely where I went,\\nAs if I led her by a narrow plank", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0234.jp2"}, "233": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 21$\\nAcross devouring waters, step by step\\nAnd so in silence we walked on a mile.\\nAnd then she stopped her face was white as wax.\\nWe go much farther\\nYou are ill, I asked,\\nOr tired\\nShe looked the whiter for her smile.\\nThere s one at home, she said, has need of me\\nBy this time and I must not let him wait.\\nNot even, I asked, to hear of Romney Leigh\\nNot even, she said, to hear of Mister Leigh.\\nIn that case, I resumed, I go with you.\\nAnd we can talk the same thing there as here.\\nNone waits for me I have my day to spend.\\nHer lips moved in spasm without a sound\\nBut then she spoke. It shall be as you please,\\nAnd better so tis shorter seen than told\\nAnd, though you will not find me worth your pains,\\nThat, even, may be worth some pains to know\\nFor one as good as you are.\\nThen she led\\nThe way and I, as by a narrow plank\\nAcross the devouring waters, followed her.\\nStepping by her footsteps, breathing by her breath,\\nAnd holding her with eyes that would not slip\\nAnd so, without a word, we walked a mile.\\nAnd so another mile, without a word.\\nUntil the peopled streets being all dismissed,\\nHouse rows and groups all scattered like a flock,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0235.jp2"}, "234": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe market-gardens thickened, and the long\\nWhite walls beyond, like spiders outside threads,\\nStretched, feeling blindly toward the country-fields\\nThrough half-built habitations and half-dug\\nFoundations, intervals of trenchant chalk\\nThat bit betwixt the grassy, uneven turfs\\nWhere goats (vine-tendrils trailing from their mouths)\\nStood perched on edges of the cellarage\\nWhich should be, staring as about to leap\\nTo find their coming Bacchus. All the place\\nSeemed less a cultivation than a waste.\\nMen work here only, scarce begin to live\\nAll s sad, the country struggling with the town,\\nLike an untamed hawk upon a strong man s fist.\\nThat beats its wings and tries to get away,\\nAnd cannot choose be satisfied so soon\\nTo hop through court-yards with its right foot tied.\\nThe vintage plains and pastoral hills in sight.\\nWe stopped beside a house too high and slim\\nTo stand there by itself, and waiting till\\nFive others, two on this side, three on that,\\nShould grow up from the sullen second floor,\\nThey pause at now, to build it to a row.\\nThe upper windows partly were unglazed\\nMeantime, a meager, unripe house: a line\\nOf rigid poplars elbowed it behind\\nAnd just in front, beyond the lime and bricks\\nThat wronged the grass between it and the road,\\nA great acacia with its slender trunk.\\nAnd overpoise of multitudinous leaves\\n(In which a hundred fields might spill their dew\\nAnd intense verdure, yet find room enough).\\nStood reconciling all the place with green.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0236.jp2"}, "235": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 217\\nI followed up the stair upon her step.\\nShe hurried upward, shot across a face,\\nA woman s, on the landing, How now, now\\nIs no one to have holidays but you\\nYou said an hour, and stay three hours, I think,\\nAnd Julie waiting for your betters here\\nWhy, if he had waked, he might have waked, for me.\\nJust murmuring an excusing word, she passed\\nAnd shut the rest out with the chamber-door.\\nMyself shut in beside her.\\nTwas a room\\nScarce larger than a grave, and near as bare,\\nTwo stools, a pallet-bed. I saw the room\\nA mouse could find no sort of shelter in t\\nMuch less a greater secret curtainless,\\nThe window fixed you with its torturing eye.\\nDefying you to take a step apart.\\nIf, peradventure, you would hide a thing.\\nI saw the whole room, I and Marian there\\nAlone.\\nAlone She threw her bonnet off.\\nThen, sighing as twere sighing the last time.\\nApproached the bed, and drew a shawl away\\nYou could not peel a fruit you fear to bruise\\nMore calmly and more carefully than so,\\nNor would you find within, a rosier flushed\\nPomegranate\\nThere he lay upon his back,\\nThe yearling creature, warm and moist with life\\nTo the bottom of his dimples, to the ends\\nOf the lovely tumbled curls about his face\\nFor since he had been covered overmuch\\nTo keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks\\nWere hot and scarlet as the first live rose", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0237.jp2"}, "236": {"fulltext": "2l8 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe shepherd s heart-blood ebbed away into\\nThe faster for his love. And love was here\\nAs instant in the pretty baby-mouth,\\nShut close, as if for dreaming that it sucked\\nThe little naked feet, drawn up the way\\nOf nestled birdlings everything so soft\\nAnd tender, to the tiny holdfast hands,\\nWhich, closing on a finger into sleep.\\nHad kept the mould oft.\\nWhile we stood there dumb\\nFor oh, that it should take such innocence\\nTo prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb,\\nThe light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,\\nAnd staring out at us with all their blue,\\nAs half perplexed between the angelhood\\nHe had been away to visit in his sleep,\\nAnd our most mortal presence, gradually\\nHe saw his mother s face, accepting it\\nIn change for heaven itself with such a smile\\nAs might have well been learnt there, never moved.\\nBut smiled on in a drowse of ecstasy.\\nSo happy (half with her and half with heaven)\\nHe could not have the trouble to be stirred,\\nBut smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said\\nAs red and still indeed as any rose\\nThat blows in all the silence of its leaves,\\nContent, in blowing, to fulfil its life.\\nShe leaned above him (drinking him as wine)\\nIn that extremity of love twill pass\\nFor agony or rapture, seeing that love\\nIncludes the whole of nature, rounding it\\nTo love no more, since more can never be\\nThan just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0238.jp2"}, "237": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 219\\nAnd drowning in the transport of the sight,\\nHer whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes,\\nOne gaze she stood then, slowly as he smiled,\\nShe smiled, too, slowly, smiling unaware.\\nAnd drawing from his countenance to hers\\nA fainter red, as if she watched a flame.\\nAnd stood in it aglow. How beautiful\\nSaid she.\\nI answered, trying to be cold.\\n(Must sin have compensation, was my thought,\\nAs if it were a holy thing like grief\\nAnd is a woman to be fooled aside\\nFrom putting vice down, with that woman s toy,\\nA baby?) Ay the child is well enough,\\nI answered. If his mother s arms are clean.\\nThey need be glad, of course, in clasping such\\nBut, if not, I would rather lay my hand,\\nWere I she, on God s brazen altar-bars\\nRed-hot with burning sacrificial lambs.\\nThan touch the sacred curls of such a child.\\nShe plunged her fingers in his clustering locks\\nAs one who would not be afraid of fire\\nAnd then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,\\nMy lamb, my lamb although through such as thou\\nThe most unclean got courage, and approached\\nTo God, once, now they cannot, even with men,\\nFind grace enough for pity and gentle words.\\nMy Marian, I made answer, grave and sad,\\nThe priest who stole a lamb to offer him\\nWas still a thief. And if a woman steals\\n(Through God s own barrier-hedges of true love,\\nWhich fence out license in securing love)", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0239.jp2"}, "238": {"fulltext": "220 AURORA LEIGH.\\nA child like this, that smiles so in her face,\\nShe is no mother, but a kidnapper,\\nAnd he s a dismal orphan, not a son,\\nWhom all her kisses cannot feed so full\\nHe will not miss hereafter a pure home\\nTo live in, a pure heart to lean against,\\nA pure good mother s name and memory\\nTo hope by when the world grows thick and bad,\\nAnd he feels out for virtue.\\nOh she smiled\\nWith bitter patience, the child takes his chance\\nNot much worse off in being fatherless,\\nThan I was, fathered. He will say, belike.\\nHis mother was the saddest creature born\\nHe ll say his mother lived so contrary\\nTo joy, that even the kindest, seeing her.\\nGrew sometimes almost cruel he ll not say\\nShe flew contrarious in the face of God\\nWith bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child\\nMy flower of earth, my only flower on earth.\\nMy sweet, my beauty Up she snatched the child.\\nAnd breaking on him in a storm of tears.\\nDrew out her long sobs from their shivering roots.\\nUntil he took it for a game, and stretched\\nHis feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings.\\nAnd crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh.\\nMine, mine she said. I have as sure a right\\nAs any glad, proud mother in the world.\\nWho sets her darling down to cut his teeth\\nUpon her church-ring. If she talks of law,\\nI talk of law I claim my mother-dues\\nBy law, the law which now is paramount\\nThe common law, by which the poor and weak\\nAre trodden under foot by vicious men,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0240.jp2"}, "239": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 221\\nAnd loathed forever after by the good.\\nLet pass I did not filch I found the child.\\nYou found him, Marian\\nAy, I found him where\\nI found my curse, in the gutter with my shame\\nWhat have you, any of you, to say to that,\\nWho all are happy, and sit safe and high.\\nAnd never spoke before to arraign my right\\nTo grief itself What, what, being beaten down\\nBy hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch.\\nHalf-dead, whole mangled, when a girl at last\\nBreathes, sees and finds there, bedded in her flesh.\\nBecause of the extremity of the shock.\\nSome coin of price and when a good man comes\\n(That s God the best men are not quite as good)\\nAnd says, I dropped the coin there take it, you.\\nAnd keep it, it shall pay you for the loss,\\nYou all put up your finger See the thief\\nObserve what precious thing she has come to filch\\nHow bad those girls are Oh, my flower, my pet,\\nI dare forget I have you in my arms.\\nAnd fly off to be angry with the world.\\nAnd fright you, hurt you with my tempers, till\\nYou double up your lip Why, that indeed\\nIs bad a naughty mother\\nYou mistake,\\nI interrupted. If I loved you not,\\nI should not, Marian, certainly be here.\\nAlas she said, you are so very good\\nAnd yet I wish, indeed, you had never come\\nTo make me sob until I vex the child.\\nIt is not wholesome for these pleasure-plats", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0241.jp2"}, "240": {"fulltext": "222 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo be so early watered by our brine.\\nAnd then who knows he may not Hke me now\\nAs well, perhaps, as ere he saw me fret:\\nOne s ugly fretting. He has eyes the same\\nAs angels, but he cannot see as deep\\nAnd so I ve kept forever in his sight\\nA sort of smile to please him, as you place\\nA green thing from the garden in a cup\\nTo make believe it grows there. Look, my sweet,\\nMy cowslip-ball we ve done with that cross face,\\nAnd here s the face come back you used to like.\\nAh, ah he laughs he likes me. Ah Miss Leigh,\\nYou re great and pure but were you purer still,\\nAs if you had walked, we ll say no otherwhere\\nThan up and down the New Jerusalem,\\nAnd held your trailing lutestring up yourself\\nFrom brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some\\nSmall speck as little as a needle-prick.\\nWhite stitched on white, the child would keep to me,\\nWould choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,\\nAnd though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,\\nAs we do when God says it s time to die\\nAnd bids us ga up higher. Leave us, then\\nWe two are happy. Does he push me oft?\\nHe s satisfied with me, as I with him.\\nSo soft to one, so hard to others Nay,\\nI cried, more angry that she melted me,\\nWe make henceforth a cushion of our faults\\nTo sit and practise easy virtues on\\nI thought a child was given to sanctify\\nA woman, set her in the sight of all\\nThe clear-eyed heavens, a chosen minister\\nTo do their business, and lead spirits up", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0242.jp2"}, "241": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 223\\nThe difficult blue heights. A woman lives\\nNot bettered, quickened toward the truth and good\\nThough being a mother Then she s none, although\\nShe damps her baby s cheeks by kissing them,\\nAs we kill roses.\\nKill O Christ she said,\\nAnd turned her wild, sad face from side to side\\nWith most despairing wonder in it. What,\\nWhat have you in your souls against me then,\\nAll of you Am I wicked, do you think\\nGod knows me, trusts me with the child but you,\\nYou think me really wicked\\nComplaisant,\\nI answered softly, to a wrong you ve done.\\nBecause of certain profits, which is wrong\\nBeyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left\\nThe pure place and the noble heart to take\\nThe hand of a seducer.\\nWhom whose hand\\nI took the hand of\\nSpringing up erect,\\nAnd lifting up the child at full arm s-length.\\nAs if to bear him like an oriflamme\\nUnconquerable to armies of reproach,\\nBy him-^ she said, my child s head and its curls,\\nBy these blue eyes no woman born could dare\\nA perjury on, I make my mother s oath,\\nThat if I left that heart to lighten it.\\nThe blood of mine was still, except for grief\\nNo cleaner maid than I was took a step\\nTo a sadder end, no matron-mother now\\nLooks backward to her early maidenhood\\nThrough chaster pulses. I speak steadily\\nAnd if I lie so if, being fouled in will", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0243.jp2"}, "242": {"fulltext": "224 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd paltered with in soul by devil s lust,\\nI dared to bid this angel take my part\\nWould God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven.\\nNor strike me dumb with thunder Yet I speak\\nHe clears me therefore. What, seduced s your word\\nDo wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France\\nDo eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws,\\nSeduce it into carrion So with me.\\nI was not ever, as you say, seduced,\\nBut simply murdered.\\nThere she paused, and sighed.\\nWith such a sigh as drops from agony\\nTo exhaustion, sighin^: while she let the babe\\nSlide down upon her bosom from her arms,\\nAnd all her face s light fell after him\\nLike a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank,\\nAnd sate upon the bedside with the child.\\nBut I, convicted, broken utterly.\\nWith woman s passion clung about her waist.\\nAnd kissed her hair and eyes, I have been wrong,\\nSweet Marian (weeping in a tender rage),\\nSweet, holy Marian And now, Marian, now,\\nI ll use your oath, although my lips are hard.\\nAnd by the child, my Marian, by the child,\\nI swear his mother shall be innocent\\nBefore my conscience, as in the open Book\\nOf Him who reads for judgment. Innocent,\\nMy sister Let the night be ne er so dark.\\nThe moon is surely somewhere in the sky\\nSo surely is your whiteness to be found\\nThrough all dark facts. But pardon, pardon me,\\nAnd smile a little, Marian, for the child.\\nIf not for me, my sister.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0244.jp2"}, "243": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe poor lip\\nJust motioned for the smile, and let it go\\nAnd then, with scarce a stirring of the mouth,\\nAs if a statue spoke that could not breathe,\\nBut spoke on calm between its marble lips,\\nI m glad, I m very glad, you clear me so.\\nI should be sorry that you set me down\\nWith harlots, or with even a better name\\nWhich misbecomes his mother. For the rest,\\nI am not on a level with your love,\\nNor ever was, you know, but now am worse.\\nBecause that world of yours has dealt with me\\nAs when the hard sea bites and chews a stone,\\nAnd changes the first form of it. I ve marked\\nA shore of pebbles bitten to one shape\\nFrom all the various life of madrepores\\nAnd so that little stone called Marian Erie,\\nPicked up and dropped by you and another friend.\\nWas ground and tortured by the incessant sea.\\nAnd bruised from what she was, changed death s a\\nchange,\\nAnd she, I said, was murdered Marian s dead.\\nWhat can you do with people M-hen they are dead,\\nBut, if you are pious, sing a hymn and go,\\nOr, if you are tender, heave a sigh and go.\\nBut go by all means, and permit the grass\\nTo keep its green feud up twixt them and you\\nThen leave me, let me rest. I m dead, I say.\\nAnd if, to save the child from death as well.\\nThe mother in me has survived the rest,\\nWhy, that s God s miracle you must not tax,\\nI m not less dead for that I m nothing more\\nBut just a mother. Only for the child\\nI m warm, and cold, and hungry, and afraid,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0245.jp2"}, "244": {"fulltext": "226 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd smell the flowers a little, and see the sun,\\nAnd speak still, and am silent, just for him\\nI pray you therefore to mistake me not,\\nAnd treat me haply as I were alive\\nFor, though you ran a pin into my soul,\\nI think it would not hurt nor trouble me.\\nHere s proof, dear lady, in the market-place\\nBut now, you promised me to say a word\\nAbout a friend, who once, long years ago,\\nTook God s place toward me, when he leans and loves.\\nAnd does not thunder whom at last I left.\\nAs all of us leave God. You thought perhaps\\nI seemed to care for hearing of that friend\\nNow judge me We have sate here half an hour\\nAnd talked together of the child and me.\\nAnd I not asked as much as What s the thing\\nYou had to tell me of the friend the friend\\nHe s sad, I think you said, he s sick, perhaps\\nTis naught to Marion if he s sad or sick.\\nAnother would have crawled beside your foot.\\nAnd prayed your words out. Why, a beast, a dog,\\nA starved cat, if he had fed it once with milk.\\nWould show less hardness. But I m dead, you see.\\nAnd that explains it.\\nPoor, poor thing, she spoke\\nAnd shook her head, as white and calm as frost\\nOn days too cold for raining any more,\\nBut still with such a face, so much alive,\\nI could not choose but take it on my arm,\\nAnd stroke the placid patience of its cheeks,\\nThen told my story out, of Romney Leigh,\\nHow, having lost her, sought her, missed her still.\\nHe, broken-hearted for himself and her,\\nHad drawn the curtains of the world awhile", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0246.jp2"}, "245": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 22/\\nAs if he had done with morning. There I stopped\\nFor when she gasped, and pressed me with her eyes,\\nAnd now how is it with him tell me now,\\nI felt the shame of compensated grief,\\nAnd chose my words with scruple slowly stepped\\nUpon the slippery stones set here and there\\nAcross the sliding water. Certainly,\\nAs evening empties morning into night.\\nAnother morning takes the evening up\\nWith healthful, providential interchange\\nAnd though he thought still of her\\nYes, she knew,\\nShe understood she had supposed, indeed.\\nThat as one stops a hole upon a flute,\\nAt which a new note comes and shapes the tune,\\nExcluding her would bring a worthier in.\\nAnd, long ere this, that Lady Waldemar\\nHe loved so\\nLoved I started loved her so\\nNow tell me\\nI will tell you, she replied\\nBut since we re taking oaths, you ll promise first\\nThat he in England, he, shall never learn\\n\u00e2\u0080\u00a2In what a dreadful trap his creature here,\\nRound whose unworthy neck he had meant to tie\\nThe honorable ribbon of his name.\\nFell unaware, and came to butchery\\nBecause, I know him, as he takes to heart\\nThe grief of every stranger, he s not like\\nTo banish mine as far as I should choose\\nIn wishing him most happy. Now he leaves\\nTo think of me, perverse, who went my way.\\nUnkind, and left him but if once he knew\\nAh, then, the sharp nail of my cruel wrong", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0247.jp2"}, "246": {"fulltext": "228 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWould fasten me forever in his siglit,\\nLike some poor curious bird, through each spread wing\\nNailed high up over a fierce hunter s fire,\\nTo spoil the dinner of all tender folk\\nCome in by chance. Nay, since your Marian s dead,\\nYou shall not hang her up, but dig a hole.\\nAnd bury her in silence ring no bells.\\nI answered gayly, though my whole voice wept,\\nWe ll ring the joy-bells, not the funeral-bells.\\nBecause we have her back, dead or alive.\\nShe never answered that, but shook her head\\nThen low and calm, as one who, safe in heaven,\\nShall tell a story of his lower life.\\nUnmoved by shame or anger, so she spoke.\\nShe told me she had loved upon her knees,\\nAs others pray, more perfectly absorbed\\nIn the act and inspiration. She felt his\\nFor just his uses, not her own at all.\\nHis stool to sit on or put up his foot\\nHis cup, to fill with wine or vinegar,\\nWhichever drink might please him at the chance,\\nFor that should please her always let him write\\nHis name upon her it seemed natural\\nIt was most precious, standing on his shelf,\\nTo wait until he chose to lift his hand.\\nWell, well, I saw her then, and must have seen\\nHow bright her life went floating on her love,\\nLike wicks the housewives send afloat on oil\\nWhich feeds them to a flame that lasts the night.\\nTo do good seemed so much his business,\\nThat having done it she was fain to think", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0248.jp2"}, "247": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 229\\nMust fill up his capacity for joy.\\nAt first she never mooted with herself\\nIf he was happy, since he made her so\\nOr if he loved her, being so much beloved.\\nWho thinks of asking if the sun is light.\\nObserving that it lightens who so bold,\\nTo question God of his felicity\\nStill less. And thus she took for granted first\\nWhat, first of all, she should have put to proof.\\nAnd sinned against him so, but only so.\\nWhat could you hope, she said, of such as she\\nYou take a kid you like, and turn it out\\nIn some fair garden though the creature s fond\\nAnd gentle, it will leap upon the beds.\\nAnd break your tulips, bite your tender trees\\nThe wonder would be if such innocence\\nSpoiled less. A garden is no place for kids.\\nAnd by degrees, when he who had chosen her\\nBrought in his courteous and benignant friends\\nTo spend their goodness on her, which she took\\nSo very gladly, as a part of his,\\nBy slow degrees it broke on her slow sense.\\nThat she, too, in that Eden of delight\\nWas out of place, and, like the silly kid.\\nStill did most mischief where she meant most love.\\nA thought enough to make a woman mad\\n(No beast in this but she may well go mad).\\nThat saying I am thine to love and use\\nMay blow the plague in her protesting breath\\nTo the very man for whom she claims to die\\nThat, clinging round his neck, she pulls him down\\nAnd drowns him and that, lavishing her soul,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0249.jp2"}, "248": {"fulltext": "230 AURORA LEIGH.\\nShe hales perdition on him. So, being mad,\\nSaid Marian\\nAh \\\\vho stirred such thoughts, you ask\\nWhose fault it was that she should have such thoughts\\nNone s fault, none s fault. The light comes, and we see\\nBut if it were not truly for our eyes,\\nThere would be nothing seen for all the light\\nAnd so with Marian. If she saw at last,\\nThe sense was in her Lady Waldemar\\nHad spoken all in vain else.\\nO my heart,\\nO prophet in my heart I cried aloud.\\nThen Lady Waldemar spoke\\nDid she speak\\nMused Marian softly, or did she only sign\\nOr did she put a word into her face\\nAnd look, and so impress you with the word\\nOr leave it in the foldings of her gown.\\nLike rosemary smells a moment will shake out\\nWhen no one s conscious Who shall say, or guess\\nOne thing alone was certain, from the day\\nThe gracious lady paid a visit first.\\nShe, Marian, saw things different, felt distrust\\nOf all that sheltering roof of circumstance\\nHer hopes were building into with clay nests\\nHer heart was restless, pacing up and down,\\nAnd fluttering, like dumb creatures before storms,\\nNot knowing wherefore she was ill at ease.\\nAnd still the lady came, said Marian Erie,\\nMuch oftener than he knew it, Mister Leigh.\\nShe bade me never tell him she had come.\\nShe liked to love me better than he knew\\nSo very kind was Lady Waldemar.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0250.jp2"}, "249": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 23 1\\nAnd every time she brought with her more Hght,\\nAnd every hght made sorrow clearer Well,\\nAh, well we cannot give her blame for that\\nTwould be the same thing if an angel came,\\nWhose right should prove our wrong. And every time\\nThe lady came she looked more beautiful,\\nAnd spoke more like a flute among green trees,\\nUntil at last, as one, whose heart being sad\\nOn hearing lovely music, suddenly\\nDissolves in weeping, I brake out in tears\\nBefore her, asked her counsel, Had I erred\\nIn being too happy would she set me straight\\nFor she, being wise and good, and born above\\nThe flats I had never climbed from, could perceive\\nIf such as I might grow upon the hills.\\nAnd whether such poor herb sufficed to grow\\nFor Romney Leigh to break his fast upon t\\nOr would he pine on such, or haply starve\\nShe wrapt me in her generous arms at once,\\nAnd let me dream a moment how it feels\\nTo have a real mother, like some girls\\nBut, when I looked, her face was younger ay,\\nYouth s too bright not to be a litde hard.\\nAnd beauty keeps itself still uppermost.\\nThat s true Though Lady Waldemar was kind.\\nShe hurt me, hurt, as if the morning-sun\\nShould smite us on the eyelids when we sleep.\\nAnd wake us up with headache. Ay, and soon\\nWas light enough to make my heart ache, too.\\nShe told me truths I asked for, twas my fault,\\nThat Romney could not love me, if he would.\\nAs men call loving there are bloods that flow\\nTogether, like some rivers, and not mix,\\nThrough contraries of nature. He, indeed,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0251.jp2"}, "250": {"fulltext": "232 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWas set to wed me, to espouse my class,\\nAct out a rash opinion and, once wed.\\nSo just a man and gentle could not choose\\nBut make my life as smooth as marriage-ring.\\nBespeak me mildly, keep me a cheerful house,\\nWith servants, brooches, all the flowers I liked.\\nAnd pretty dresses, silk the whole year round\\nAt which I stopped her, This for me. And now\\nFor him She hesitated, truth grew hard\\nShe owned Twas plain a man like Romney Leigh\\nRequired a wife more level to himself.\\nIf day by day he had to bend his height\\nTo pick up sympathies, opinions, thoughts.\\nAnd interchange the common talk of life,\\nWhich helps a man to live, as well as talk,\\nHis days were heavily taxed. Who buys a staff\\nTo fit the hand, that reaches but the knee\\nHe d feel it bitter to be forced to miss\\nThe perfect joy of married, suited pairs.\\nWho, bursting through the separating hedge\\nOf personal dues with that sweet eglantine\\nOf equal love, keep saying, so we think.\\nIt strikes us, that s our fancy. When I asked\\nIf earnest will, devoted love, employed\\nIn youth like mine, would fail to raise me up.\\nAs two strong arms will always raise a child\\nTo a fruit hung overhead, she sighed and sighed\\nThat could not be, she feared. You take a pink,\\nYou dig about its roots, and water it,\\nAnd so improve it to a garden-pink,\\nBut will not change it to a heliotrope\\nThe kind remains. And then the harder truth,\\nThis Romney Leigh, so rash to leap a pale.\\nSo bold for conscience, quick for martyrdom.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0252.jp2"}, "251": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 233\\nWould suffer steadily and never flinch,\\nBut suffer surely and keenly, when his class\\nTurned shoulder on him for a shameful match,\\nAnd set him up as ninepin in their talk\\nTo bowl him down with jestings. There she paused,\\nAnd when I used the pause in doubting that\\nWe wronged him, after all, in what we feared\\nSuppose such things could never touch him more\\nIn his high conscience (if the things should be)\\nThan, when the queen sits in an upper room.\\nThe horses in the street can spatter her\\nA moment, hope came but the lady closed\\nThat door, and nicked the lock, and shut it out,\\nObserving wisely, that the tender heart\\nWhich made him over-soft to a lower class\\nWould scarcely fail to make him sensitive\\nTo a higher, how they thought, and what they felt.\\nAlas, alas said Marian, rocking slow\\nThe pretty baby who was near asleep.\\nThe eyelids creeping over the blue balls,\\nShe made it clear, too clear I saw the whole.\\nAnd yet who knows if I had seen my way\\nStraight out of it by looking, though twas clear,\\nUnless the generous lady, ware of this.\\nHad set her own house all a-fire for me\\nTo light me forwards Leaning on my face\\nHer heavy agate eyes, which crushed my will,\\nShe told me tenderly (as when men come\\nTo a bedside to tell people they must die),\\nShe knew of knowledge, ay, of knowledge knew.\\nThat Romney Leigh had loved her formerly.\\nAnd she loved him^ she might say, now the chance\\nWas past. But that, of course, he never guessed,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0253.jp2"}, "252": {"fulltext": "234 AURORA LEIGH.\\nFor something came between them, something thin\\nAs a cobweb, catching every fly of doubt\\nTo hold it buzzing at the window-pane,\\nAnd help to dim the daylight. Ah, man s pride\\nOr woman s, which is greatest most averse\\nTo brushing cobwebs Well, but she and he\\nRemained fast friends it seemed not more than so,\\nBecause he had bound his hands and could not stir\\nAn honorable man, if somewhat rash\\nAnd she not even for Romney would she spill\\nA blot, as little even as a tear\\nUpon his marriage-contract, not to gain\\nA better joy for two than came by that\\nFor, though I stood between her heart and heaven.\\nShe loved me wholly.\\nDid I laugh or curse\\nI think I sat there silent, hearing all.\\nAy, hearing double, Marian s tale, at once.\\nAnd Romney s marriage-vow, keep to thee.\\nWhich means that woman-serpent. Is it time\\nFor church now\\nLady Waldemar spoke more,\\nContinued Marian but as when a soul\\nWill pass out through the sweetness of a song\\nBeyond it, voyaging the uphill road,\\nEven so mine wandered from the things I heard\\nTo those I suffered. It was afterward\\nI shaped the resolution to the act.\\nFor many hours we talked. What need to talk\\nThe fate was clear and close it touched my eyes\\nBut still the generous lady tried to keep\\nThe case afloat, and would not let it go,\\nAnd argued, struggled upon Marian s side,\\nWhich was not Romney s, though she little knew", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0254.jp2"}, "253": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 235\\nWhat ugly monster would take up the end,\u00e2\u0080\u0094\\nWhat griping death within the drowning death\\nWas read}/ to complete my sum of death.\\nI thought, perhaps he s sliding now the ring\\nUpon that woman s finger\\nShe went on\\nThe lady, failing to prevail her way,\\nUpgathered my torn wishes from the ground,\\nAnd pierced them with her strong benevolence\\nAnd as I thought I could breath freer air\\nAway from England, going without pause,\\nWithout farewell, just breaking with a jerk\\nThe blossomed offshoot from my thorny life,\\nShe promised kindly to provide the means.\\nWith instant passage to the colonies.\\nAnd full protection, would commit me straight\\nTo one who had once been her waiting-maid\\nAnd had the customs of the world, intent\\nOn changing England for Australia\\nHerself, to carry out her fortune so.\\nFor which I thanked the Lady Waldemar,\\nAs men upon their deathbeds thank last friends\\nWho lay the pillow straight it is not much,\\nAnd yet tis all of which they are capable,\\nThis lying smoothly in a bed to die.\\nAnd so, twas fixed and so, from day to day,\\nThe woman named came in to visit me.\\nJust then the girl stopped speaking, sate erect.\\nAnd stared at me as if I had been a ghost\\n(Perhaps I looked r,s white as any ghost).\\nWith large-eyed horror. Does God make, she said\\nAll sorts of creatures really, do you think", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0255.jp2"}, "254": {"fulltext": "236 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOr is it that the Devil slavers them\\nSo excellently, that we come to doubt\\nWho s stronger, he who makes, or he who mars\\nI never liked the woman s face, or voice.\\nOr ways it made me blush to look at her\\nIt made me. tremble if she touched my hand;\\nAnd when she spoke a fondling word, I shrank\\nAs if one hated me who had power to hurt\\nAnd, every time she came, my veins ran cold,\\nAs somebody were walking on my grave.\\nAt last I spoke to Lady Waldemar\\nCould such a one be good to trust I asked.\\nWhereat the lady stroked my cheek and laughed\\nHer silver laugh (one must be born to laugh\\nTo put such music in it), Foolish girl.\\nYour scattered wits are gathering wool beyond\\nThe sheep-walk reaches leave the thing to me.\\nAnd therefore, half in trust, and half in scorn\\nThat I had heart still for another fear\\nIn such a safe despair, I left the thing.\\nThe rest is short. I was obedient\\nI wrote my letter, which delivered him\\nFrom Marian to his own prosperities.\\nAnd followed that bad guide. The lady hush,\\nI never blame the lady. Ladies who\\nSit high, however willing to look down.\\nWill scarce see lower than their dainty feet;\\nAnd Lady Waldemar saw less than I,\\nWith what a Devil s daughter I went forth\\nAlong the swine s road, down the precipice.\\nIn such a curl of hell-foam caught and choked,\\nNo shriek of soul in anguish could pierce through\\nTo fetch some help. They say there s help in heaven", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0256.jp2"}, "255": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 237\\nFor all such cries. But if one cries from hell\\nWhat then the heavens are deaf upon that side.\\nA woman hear me, let me make it plain\\nA woman not a monster both her breasts\\nMade right to suckle babes she took me off,\\nA woman also, young and ignorant.\\nAnd heavy with my grief, my two poor eyes\\nNear washed away with weeping, till the trees,\\nThe blessed unaccustomed trees and fields\\nRan either side the train like stranger dogs\\nUnworthy of any notice, took me off\\nSo dull, so blind, so only half alive.\\nNot seeing by what road, nor by what ship,\\nNor toward what place, nor to what end of all.\\nMen carry a corpse thus, past the doorway, past\\nThe garden-gate, the children s play-ground, up\\nThe green lane, then they leave it in the pit,\\nTo sleep and lind corruption, cheek to cheek\\nWith him who stinks since Friday.\\nBut suppose\\nTo go down with one s soul into the grave.\\nTo go down half dead, half alive, I say.\\nAnd wake up with corruption cheek to cheek\\nWith him who stmks since Friday There it is.\\nAnd that s the horror oft, Miss Leigh.\\nYou feel\\nYou understand no, do not look at me,\\nBut understand. The blank, bhnd, weary way\\nWhich led, where er it led, away at least\\nThe shifted ship to Sydney, or to France,\\nStill bound, wherever else, to another land\\nThe swooning sickness on the dismal sea.\\nThe foreign shore, the shameful house, the night,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0257.jp2"}, "256": {"fulltext": "238 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe feeble blood, the heavy-headed grief\\nNo need to bring their damnable drugged cup,\\nAnd yet they brought it. Hell s so prodigal\\nOf Devil s gifts, hunts liberally in packs.\\nWill kill no poor small creature of the wilds\\nBut fifty red wide throats must smoke at it.\\nAs HIS at me when waking up at last\\nI told you that I waked up in the grave.\\nEnough so it is plain enough so. True,\\nWe wretches cannot tell out all our wrong\\nWithout offence to decent happy folk.\\nI know that we must scrupulously hint\\nWith half-words, delicate reserves, the thing\\nWhich no one scrupled we should feel in full.\\nLfet pass the rest, then only leave my oath\\nUpon this sleeping child, man s violence,\\nNot man s seduction, made me what I am.\\nAs lost as I told him I should be lost.\\nWhen mothers fail us, can we help ourselves\\nThat s fatal And you call it being lost.\\nThat down came next day s noon, and caught me there\\nHalf gibbering and half raving on the floor.\\nAnd wondering what had happened up in heaven.\\nThat suns should dare to shine when God himself\\nWas certainly abolished.\\nI was mad.\\nHow many weeks I know not, many weeks.\\nI think they let me go when I was mad\\nThey feared my eyes, and loosed me, as boys might\\nA mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down\\nI went, by road and village, over tracts\\nOf open foreign country, large and strange.\\nCrossed everywhere by long, thin poplar-lines", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0258.jp2"}, "257": {"fulltext": "And there I sate, one evening by the road,\\n1, Marian Erie. Page 239.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0259.jp2"}, "258": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0260.jp2"}, "259": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 239\\nLike fingers of some ghastly skeleton hand\\nThrough sunlight and through moonlight evermore\\nPushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,\\nAnd resolute to get me, slow and sure\\nWhile every roadside Christ upon his cross\\nHung reddening through his gory wounds at me,\\nAnd shook his nails in anger, and came down\\nTo follow a mile after, wading up\\nThe low vines and green wheat, crying, Take the girl\\nShe s noiiC of mine from henceforth. Then I knew\\n(But this is something dimmer than the rest)\\nThe charitable peasants gave me bread,\\nAnd leave to sleep in straw; and twice they tied,\\nAt parting, Mary s image round my neck.\\nHow heavy it seemed as heavy as a stone\\nA woman has been strangled with less weight\\nI threw it in a ditch to keep it clean,\\nAnd ease my breath a little, when none looked\\nI did not need such safeguards brutal men\\nStopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seen\\nMy face, I must have had an awful look.\\nAnd so I lived the weeks passed on I lived.\\nTwas living my old tramp-life o er again,\\nBut this time in a dream, and hunted round\\nBy some prodigious dream-fear at my back.\\nWhich ended yet my brain cleared presently\\nAnd there I sate, one evening, by the road,\\nI, Marian Erie, myself, alone, undone,\\nFacing a sunset low upon the flats\\nAs if it were the finish of all time.\\nThe great red stone upon my sepulchre,\\nWhich angels were too weak to roll away.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0261.jp2"}, "260": {"fulltext": "240 AURORA LEIGH.\\nSEVENTH BOOK.\\nThe woman s motive shall we daub ourselves\\nWith finding roots for nettles tis soft clay,\\nAnd easily explored. She had the means,\\nThe moneys, by the lady s liberal grace,\\nIn trust for that Australian scheme and me.\\nWhich so, that she might clutch with both her hands,\\nAnd chink to her naughty uses undisturbed.\\nShe served me (after all it was not strange\\nTwas only what my mother would have done)\\nA motherly, right damnable good turn.\\nWell, after. There are nettles everywhere\\nBut smooth green grasses are more common sn^\\\\\\nThe blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.\\nA miller s wife at Clichy took me in.\\nAnd spent her pity on me, made me calm,\\nAnd merely very reasonably sad.\\nShe found me a ser\\\\^ant s place in Paris, where\\nI tried to take the cast-off life again.\\nAnd stood as quiet as a beaten ass,\\nWho, having fallen through overloads, stands up\\nTo let them charge him with another pack.\\nA few months so. My mistress, young and light.\\nWas easy with me, less for kindness than\\nBecause she led, herself, an easy tim.e\\nBetwixt her lover and her looking-glass.\\nScarce knowing which way she was praised the most.\\nShe felt so pretty and so pleased all day.\\nShe could not take the trouble to be cross.\\nBut sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0262.jp2"}, "261": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 24\\nWould tap me softly with her slender foot,\\nStill restless with the last night s dancing in t,\\nAnd say, Fie, pale-face Are you English girls\\nAll ^rrave and silent mass-book still, and Lent\\nAnd first-communion pallor on your cheeks.\\nWorn past the time for t Little fool, be gay\\nAt which she vanished, like a fairy, through\\nA gap of silver laughter.\\nCame an hour\\nWhen all went otherwise. She did not speak.\\nBut clinched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes\\nAs if a viper with a pair of tongs,\\nToo far for any touch, yet near enough\\nTo view the writhing creature, then at last,\\nStand still there, in the holy Virgin s name,\\nThou Marian thou rt no reputable girl,\\nAlthough sufficient dull for twenty saints\\nI think thou mock st me and my house, she said\\nConfess thou lt be a mother in a month,\\nThou mask of saintship.\\nCould I answer her\\nThe light broke in so. It meant that, then thafi\\nI had not thought of that, in all my thoughts.\\nThrough all the cold numb aching of my brow.\\nThrough all the heaving of impatient life\\nW1-iich threw me on death at intervals through all\\nThe upbreak of the fountains of my heart\\nThe rains had swelled too large. It could mean that^\\nDid God make mothers out of victims, then.\\nAnd set such pure amens to hideous deeds\\nWhy not He overblows an ugly grave\\nWith violets which blossom in the spring.\\nAnd could be a mother in a month\\nI hope it was not wicked to be glad.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0263.jp2"}, "262": {"fulltext": "24.2 AURORA LEIGH.\\nI lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed\\nTo heaven, not her until it tore my throat.\\nConfess, confess What was there to confess,\\nExcept man s cruelty, except my wrong\\nExcept this anguish, or this ecstasy\\nThis shame or glory The light woman there\\nWas small to take it in an acorn-cup\\nWould take the sea in sooner.\\nGood she cried\\nUnmarried and a mother, and she laughs\\nThese unchaste girls are always impudent.\\nGet out, intriguer Leave my house and trot\\nI wonder you should look me in the face.\\nWith such a filthy secret.\\nThen I rolled\\nMy scanty bundle up, and went my way.\\nWashed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot.\\nWith blind, hysteric passion, staggering forth\\nBeyond those doors. Twas natural, of course.\\nShe should not ask me where I meant to sleep\\nI might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,\\nLike others of my sort the bed was laid\\nFor us. But any woman, womanly.\\nHad thought of him who should be in a month,\\nThe sinless babe that should be in a month.\\nAnd if by chance he might be warmer housed\\nThan underneath such dreary dripping eaves.\\nI broke on Marian there. Yet she herself\\nA wife, I think, had scandals of her own,\\nA lover not her husband.\\nAy, she said\\nBut gold and meal are measured otherwise\\nI learnt so much at school, said Marian Earle.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0264.jp2"}, "263": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 243\\nO crooked world, I cried, ridiculous,\\nIf not so lamentable Tis the way\\nWith these light women of a thrifty vice,\\nMy Marian, always hard upon the rent\\nIn any sister s virtue while they keep\\nTheir own so darned and patched with perfidy,\\nThat, though a rag itself, it looks as well\\nAcross a street, in balcony or coach,\\nAs any perfect stuff might. For my part,\\nI d rather take the wind-side of the stews\\nThan touch such women with my finger-end\\nThey top the poor street-walker by their lie.\\nAnd look the better for being so much worse\\nThe Devil s most devilish when respectable.\\nBut you, dear, and your story.\\nAll the rest\\nIs here, she said, and signed upon the child.\\nI found a mistress-seamstress who was kind,\\nAnd let me sew in peace among her girls.\\nAnd what w^as better than to draw the threads\\nAll day and half the night for him and him\\nAnd so I lived for him, and so he lives\\nAnd so I know, by this time, God lives too.\\nShe smiled beyond the sun, and ended so,\\nAnd all my soul rose up to take her part\\nAgainst the world s successes, virtues, fames.\\nCome with me, sweetest sister, I returned,\\nAnd sit within my house and do me good\\nFrom henceforth, thou and thine ye are my own\\nFrom henceforth. I am lonely in the world.\\nAnd thou art lonely, and the child is half\\nAn orphan. Come and henceforth thou and I,\\nBeing still together, will not miss a friend,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0265.jp2"}, "264": {"fulltext": "244 AURORA LEIGH.\\nNor he a father, since two mothers shall\\nMake that up to him. I am journeying south,\\nAnd in my Tuscan home I ll find a niche\\nAnd set thee there, my saint, the child and thee.\\nAnd burn the lights of love before thy face,\\nAnd ever at thy sweet look cross myself\\nFrom mixing with the world s prosperities\\nThat so, in gravity and holy calm,\\nWe two may live on toward the truer life.\\nShe looked me in the face and answered not.\\nNor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks.\\nBut took the sleeping child, and held it out\\nTo meet my kiss, as if requiting me\\nAnd trusting me at once. And thus, at once,\\nI carried him and her to wdiere I live\\nShe s there now, in the little room, asleep,\\nI hear the soft child-breathing through the door\\nAnd all three of us, at to-morrow s break.\\nPass onward, homeward, to our Italy.\\nRomney Leigh I have your debts to pay.\\nAnd I ll be just and pay them.\\nBut yourself\\nTo pay your debts is scarcely difficult\\nTo buy your life is nearly impossible.\\nBeing sold away to Lamia. My head aches\\n1 cannot see my road along this dark\\nNor can I creep and grope, as fits the dark,\\nFor these foot-catching robes of womanhood\\nA man might walk a little But I he loves\\nThe Lamia-woman, and I write to him\\nWhat stops his marriage, and destroys his peace,\\nOr what perhaps shall simply trouble him.\\nUntil she only need to touch his sleeve", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0266.jp2"}, "265": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 245\\nWith just a finger s tremulous white flame,\\nSaying, Ah, Aurora Leigh a pretty tale,\\nA very pretty poet can guess\\nThe motive, then, to catch his eyes in hers\\nAnd vow she does not wonder, and they two\\nTo break in laughter, as the sea along\\nA melancholy coast, and float up higher,\\nIn such a laugh, their fatal weeds of love\\nAy, fatal, ay. And who shall answer me\\nFate has not hurried tides, and if to-night\\nMy letter would not be a night too late.\\nAn arrow shot into a man that s dead.\\nTo prove a vain intention Would I show\\nThe new wife vile to make the husband mad\\nNo, Lamia shut the shutters, bar the doors\\nFrom every glimmer on thy serpent-skin\\nI will not let thy hideous secret out\\nTo agonize the man I love I mean\\nThe friend I love as friends love.\\nIt is strange\\nTo-day, while Marian told her story like\\nTo absorb most listeners, how I listened chief\\nTo a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy s,\\nNor God s in wrath but one that mixed with mine\\nLong years ago among the garden-trees,\\nAnd said to me, to 7ne, too, Be my wife,\\nAurora. It is strange with what a swell\\nOf yearning passion, as a snow of ghosts\\nMight beat against the impervious door of heaven,\\nI thought, Now, if I had been a woman, such\\nAs God made women, to save men by love.\\nBy just my love I might have saved this man,\\nAnd made a nobler poem for the world\\nThan all I have failed in. But I failed besides", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0267.jp2"}, "266": {"fulltext": "246 AURORA LEIGH.\\nIn this and now he s lost through me alone\\nAnd, by my only fault, his empty house\\nSucks in at this same hour a wind from hell\\nTo keejD his hearth cold, make his casements creak\\nForever to the tune of plague and sin\\nO Romney, O my Romne}^ O my friend\\nMy cousin and friend my helper, when I would\\nMy love, that might be mine\\nWhy, how one weeps\\nWhen one s too weary Were a witness by,\\nHe d say some folly that I loved the man,\\nWho knows and make me laugh again for scorn.\\nAt strongest, women are as weak in flesh,\\nAs men, at weakest, vilest, are in soul\\nSo hard for women to keep pace with men\\nAs well give up at once, sit down at once.\\nAnd weep as I do. Tears, tears why we weep\\nTis worth inquiry That we ve shamed a life.\\nOr lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps\\nBy no means. Simply that we ve walked too far.\\nOr talked too much, or felt the wind i the east\\nAnd so we weep, as if both body and soul\\nBroke up in water this way.\\nPoor mixed rags,\\nForsooth, we re made of, like those other dolls\\nThat lean with pretty faces into fairs.\\nIt seems as if I had a man in me,\\nDespising such a woman.\\nYet, indeed.\\nTo see a wrong or suffering moves us all\\nTo undo it, though we should undo ourselves\\nAy, all the more that we undo ourselves\\nThat s womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved.\\nA natural movement, therefore, on my part,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0268.jp2"}, "267": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 247\\nTo fill the chair up of my cousin s wife,\\nAnd save him from a Devil s company\\nWe re all so, made so: tis our woman s trade\\nTo suffer torment for another s ease.\\nThe world s male chivalry has perished out\\nBut women are knights-errant to the last\\nAnd if Cervantes had been Shakspeare too,\\nHe had made his Don a Donna.\\nSo it clears,\\nAnd so we rain our skies blue.\\nPut away\\nThis weakness. If, as I have just now said,\\nA man s within me, let him act himself.\\nIgnoring the poor conscious trouble of blood\\nThat s called the woman merely. I will write\\nPlain words to England, if too late, too late\\nIf ill-accounted, then accounted ill\\nWe ll trust the heavens with somethins:.\\nDear Lord Howe,\\nYou ll find a story on another leaf\\nOf Marian Erie, what noble friend of yours\\nShe trusted once, through what flagitious means.\\nTo what disastrous ends the story s true.\\nI found her wandering on the Paris quays,\\nA babe upon her breast, unnatural.\\nUnseasonable outcast on such snow,\\nUnthawed to this time. I will tax in this\\nYour friendship, friend, if that convicted she\\nBe not his wife yet, to denounce the facts\\nTo himself, but otherwise to let them pass\\nOn tiptoe like escaping murderers.\\nAnd tell my cousin merely Marian lives,\\nIs found, and finds her home with such a friend.\\nMyself, Aurora. Which good news, She s found,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0269.jp2"}, "268": {"fulltext": "248 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWill help to make him merry in his love\\nI send it, tell him, for my marriage gift,\\nAs good as orange-water for the nerves,\\nOr perfumed gloves for headache, though aware\\nThat he, except of love, is scarcely sick\\nI mean the new love this time since last year.\\nSuch quick forgetting on the part of men\\nIs any shrewder trick upon the cards\\nTo enrich them Pray instruct me how tis done.\\nFirst, clubs and, while you look at clubs, tis spades\\nThat s prodigy. The lightning strikes a man,\\nAnd, when we think to find him dead and charred\\nWhy, there he is on a sudden playing pipes\\nBeneath the splintered elm-tree Crime and shame.\\nAnd all their hoggery, trample your smooth world,\\nNor leave more footmarks than Apollo s kine.\\nWhose hoofs were muffled by the thieving god\\nIn tamarisk-leaves and myrtle. I m so sad.\\nSo weary and sad to-night, I m somewhat sour,\\nForo-ive me. To be blue and shrew at once\\nExceeds all toleration except yours\\nBut yours, I know, is infinite. Farewell\\nTo-morrow we take train for Italy.\\nSpeak gently of me to your gracious wife,\\nAs one, however far, shall yet be near\\nIn loving wishes to your house.\\nI sign.\\nAnd now I loose my heart upon a page.\\nThis\\nLady Waldemar, I m very glad\\nI never liked you which you knew so well\\nYou spared me, in your turn, to like me much.\\nYour liking surely had done worse for me\\nThan has your loathing, though the last appears", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0270.jp2"}, "269": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 249\\nSufficiently unscrupulous to hurt,\\nAnd not afraid of judgment. Now there s space\\nBetween our faces, I stand off, as if\\nI judged a stranger s portrait, and pronounced\\nIndifferently the type was good or bad.\\nWhat matter to me the lines are false\\nI ask you. Did I ever ink my lips\\nBy drawing your name through them as a friend s\\nOr touch your hands as lovers do Thank God,\\nI never did And since you re proved so vile.\\nAy, vile, I say, we ll show it presently,\\nI m not obliged to nurse my friend in you,\\nOr wash out my own blots in counting yours.\\nOr even excuse myself to honest souls\\nWho seek to press my lip, or clasp my palm,\\nAlas, but Lady Waldemar came first\\nTis true, by this time you may near me so\\nThat you re my cousin s wife. You ve gambled deep\\nAs Lucifer, and won the morning-star\\nIn that case and the noble house of Leigh\\nMust henceforth with its good roof shelter you.\\nI cannot speak and burn you up between\\nThose rafters, I who am born a Leigh; nor speak\\nAnd pierce your breast through Romney s, I who live\\nHis friend and cousin so you re safe. You two\\nMust grow together like the tares and wheat\\nTill God s great fire. But make the best of time.\\nAnd hide this letter let it speak no more\\nThan I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erie,\\nAnd set her own love digging its own grave\\nWithin her green hope s pretty garden-ground,\\nAy, sent her forth with some one of your sort\\nTo a wicked house in France, from which she fled", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0271.jp2"}, "270": {"fulltext": "250 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWith curses in her eyes and ears and throat,\\nHer whole soul choked with curses, mad, in short,\\nAnd madly scouring up and down for weeks\\nThe foreign hedgeless country, lone and lost,\\nSo innocent, male fiends might slink within\\nRemote hell-corners seeing her so defiled.\\nBut you, you are a woman, and more bold.\\nTo do you justice, you d not shrink to face\\nWe ll say, the unfledged life in the other room.\\nWhich, treading down God s corn, you trod in sight\\nOf all the dogs in reach of all the guns,\\nAy, Marian s babe, her poor unfathered child.\\nHer yearling babe you d face him when he wakes\\nAnd opens up his wonderful blue eyes\\nYou d meet them, and not wink perhaps, nor fear\\nGod s triumph in them and. supreme revenge\\nWhen righting his creation s balance scale\\n(You pulled as low as Tophet) to the top\\nOf most celestial innocence. For me.\\nWho am not as bold, I own those infant eyes\\nHave set me praying.\\nWhile they look at heaven,\\nNo need of protestation in my words\\nAgainst the place you ve made them let them look.\\nThey ll do your business with the heavens, be sure\\nI spare you common curses.\\nPonder this\\nIf haply you re the wife of Romney Leigh,\\n(For which inheritance beyond your birth\\nYou sold that poisonous porridge called your soul)\\nI charge you be his faithful and true wife\\nKeep warm his hearth, and clean his board, and, when\\nHe speaks, be quick with your obedience", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0272.jp2"}, "271": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 251\\nStill grind your paltry wants and low desires\\nTo dust beneath his heel, though, even thus.\\nThe ground must hurt him it was writ of old,\\nYe shall not yoke together ox and ass,\\nThe nobler and ignobler. Ay but you\\nShall do your part as well as such ill things\\nCan do aught good. You shall not vex him, mark,\\nYou shall not vex him, jar him when he s sad,\\nOr cross him when he s eager. Understand,\\nTo trick him with apparent sympathies.\\nNor let him see thee in the face too near.\\nAnd unlearn thy sweet seeming. Pay the price\\nOf lies by being constrained to lie on still\\nTis easy for thy sort a million more\\nWill scarcely damn thee deeper.\\nDoing which\\nYou are very safe from Marian and myself\\nWe ll breathe as softly as the infant here,\\nAnd stir no dangerous embers. Fail a point,\\nAnd show our Romney wounded, ill content,\\nTormented in his home, we open mouth.\\nAnd such a noise will follow, the last trump s\\nWill scarcely seem more dreadful, even to you\\nYou ll have no pipers after Romney will\\n(I know him) push you forth as none of his,\\nAll other men declaring it well done\\nWhile women, even the worst, your like, will draw\\nTheir skirts back, not to brush you in the street\\nAnd so I warn you. I m Aurora Leigh.\\nThe letter written, I felt satisfied.\\nThe ashes smouldering in me were thrown out\\nBy handfuls from me I had writ my heart,\\nAnd wept my tears, and now was cool and calm", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0273.jp2"}, "272": {"fulltext": "252 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd, going straightway to the neighboring room\\nI lifted up the curtains of the bed\\nWhere Marian Erie the babe upon her arm\\nBoth faces leaned together like a pair\\nOf folded innocents self-complete,\\nEach smiling from the other smiled and slept.\\nThere seemed no sin, no shame, no wrath, no grief.\\nI felt she, too, had spoken words that night.\\nBut softer certainly, and said to God,\\nWho laughs in heaven perhaps that such as I\\nShould make ado for such as she. Defiled\\nI wrote defiled I thought her Stoop,\\nStoop lower, Aurora get the angels leave\\nTo creep in somewhere, humbly on your knees,\\nWithin this round of sequestration white\\nIn which they have wrapt earth s foundlings, heaven s elect\\nThe next day we took train to Italy,\\nAnd fled on southward in the roar of steam.\\nThe marriage-bells of Romney must be loud\\nTo sound so clear through all. I was not well,\\nAnd truly, though the truth is like a jest,\\nI could not choose but fancy, half the way,\\nI stood alone i the belfry, fifty bells,\\nOf naked iron, mad with merriment\\n(As one who laughs and cannot stop himself),\\nAll clanking at me, in me, over me.\\nUntil I shrieked a shriek I could not hear.\\nAnd swooned with noise, but still, along my swoon,\\nWas ware the baffled changes backward rang.\\nPrepared at each emerging sense to beat\\nAnd crash it out with clangor. I was weak\\nI struggled for the posture of my soul\\nIn upright consciousness of place and time,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0274.jp2"}, "273": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 253\\nBut evermore, twixt waking and asleep,\\nSlipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marian s eyes\\nA moment (it is very good for strength\\nTo know that some one needs you to be strong),\\nAnd so recovered what I call myself,\\nFor that time.\\nI just knew it when we swept\\nAbove the old roofs of Dijon. Lyons dropped\\nA spark into the night, half trodden out.\\nUnseen. But presently the winding Rhone\\nWashed out the moonlight large along his banks\\nWhich strained their yielding curves out clear and clean\\nTo hold it, shadow of town and castle blurred\\nUpon the hurrying river. Such an air\\nBlew thence upon the forehead, half an air\\nAnd half a water that I leaned and looked.\\nThen, turning back to Marian, smiled to mark\\nThat she looked only on her child, who slept.\\nHis face toward the moon, too.\\nSo we passed\\nThe liberal open country and the close.\\nAnd shot through tunnels, like a lightning-wedge\\nBy great Thor-hammers driven through the rock.\\nWhich, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits.\\nAnd lets it in at once the train swept in\\nAthrob with effort, trembling with resolve.\\nThe fierce denouncing whistle wailing on.\\nAnd dying off, smothered in the shuddering dark\\nWhile we self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressed\\nAs other Titans, underneath the pile\\nAnd nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last,\\nTo catch the dawn afloat upon the land.\\nHills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywiiere,\\nNot crampt in their foundations, pushing wide", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0275.jp2"}, "274": {"fulltext": "254 AURORA LEIGH.\\nRich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn\\n(As if they entertained i the name of France),\\nWhile down their straining sides streamed manifest\\nA soil as red as Charlemagne s nightly blood,\\nTo consecrate the verdure. Some one said,\\nMarseilles And lo, the city of Marseilles,\\nWith all her ships behind her, and beyond.\\nThe cimiter of ever-shining sea\\nFor right-hand use, bared blue against the sky\\nThat night we spent between the purple heaven\\nAnd purple water. I think Marian slept\\nBut I, as a dog a-watch for his master s foot,\\nWho cannot; sleep or eat before he hears,\\nI sate upon the deck, and watched the night,\\nAnd listened through the stars for Italy.\\nThose marriage-bells I spoke of sounded far,\\nAs some child s go-cart in the street beneath\\nTo a dying man who will not pass the da)^.\\nAnd knows it, holding by a hand he loves.\\nI, too, sate quiet, satisfied with death.\\nSate silent. I could hear my own soul speak.\\nAnd had my friend for Nature comes sometimes,\\nAnd says, I am ambassador for God.\\nI felt the wind soft from the land of souls\\nThe old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,\\nOne straining past another along the shore,\\nThe way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts\\nAthirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas.\\nAnd stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak.\\nThey stood. I watched, beyond that Tyrian belt\\nOf intense sea betwixt them and the ship,\\nDown all their sides the misty olive-woods\\nDissolving in the weak cono^enial moon.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0276.jp2"}, "275": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 255\\nAnd still disclosing some brown convent-tower,\\nThat seems as if it grew from some brown rock,\\nOr many a little lighted village, dropt\\nLike a fallen star upon so high a point\\nYou w^onder what can keep it in its place\\nFrom sliding headlong with the waterfalls\\nWhich powder all the myrtle and orange groves\\nWith spray of silver. Thus my Italy\\nWas stealing on us. Genoa broke with day\\nThe Doria s long pale palace striking out,\\nFrom green hills in advance of the white town,\\nA marble finger dominant to ships,\\nSeen glimmering through the uncertain gray of dawn.\\nAnd then I did not think, My Italy\\nI thought, My father Oh, my father s house,\\nWithout his presence Places are too much.\\nOr else too little, for immortal man,\\nToo little, when love s May o ergrows the ground\\nToo much, when that luxuriant robe of green\\nIs rustling to our ankles in dead leaves.\\nTis only good to be or here or there.\\nBecause we had a dream on such a stone,\\nOr this or that but once being wholly waked.\\nAnd come back to the stone without the dream,\\nWe trip upon t, alas and hurt ourselves\\nOr else it falls on us, and grinds us flat,\\nThe heaviest gravestone on this burying earth.\\nBut, while I stood and mused, a quiet touch\\nFell light upon my arm, and, turning round,\\nA pair of moistened eyes convicted mine.\\nWhat, Marian is the babe astir so soon\\nHe sleeps, she answered. I have crept up thrice,\\nAnd seen you sitting, standing, still at watch.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0277.jp2"}, "276": {"fulltext": "256 AURORA LEIGH.\\nI thought it did you good till now but now\\nBut now, I said, you leave the child alone.\\nAnd you re alone, she answered; and she looked\\nAs if I, too, were something. Sweet the help\\nOf one we have helped Thanks, Marian, for such help.\\nI found a house at Florence on the hill\\nOf Bellosguardo. Tis a tower which keeps\\nA post of double observation o er\\nThat valley of Arno (holding as a hand\\nThe outspread city) straight toward Fiesole\\nAnd Mount Morello and the setting sun,\\nThe Vallombrosan mountains opposite,\\nWhich sunrise fills as full as crystal cups\\nTurned red to the brim because their wine is red.\\nNo sun could die, nor yet be born, unseen\\nBy dwellers at my villa. Morn and eve\\nWere magnified before us in the pure\\nIllimitable space and pause of sky,\\nIntense as angels garments blanched with God,\\nLess blue than radiant. From the outer wall\\nOf the garden drops the mystic floating gray\\nOf olive-trees (with interruptions green\\nFrom maize and vine), until tis caught and torn\\nUpon the abrupt black line of cypresses\\nWhich signs the way to Florence. Beautiful\\nThe city lies along the ample vale.\\nCathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street,\\nThe river trailing like a silver cord\\nThrough all, and curling loosely, both before\\nAnd after, over the whole stretch of land\\nSown whitely up and down its opposite slopes\\nWith farms and villas.\\nMany weeks had passed,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0278.jp2"}, "277": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 257\\nNo word was granted. Last, a letter came\\nFrom Vincent Carrington, My dear Miss Leigh,\\nYou ve been as silent as a poet should,\\nWhen any other man is sure to speak.\\nIf sick, if vexed, if dumb, a silver piece\\nWill split a man s tongue, straight he speaks, and says,\\n^Received that check, But you I send you funds\\nTo Paris, and you make no sign at all.\\nRemember, I m responsible, and wait\\nA sign of you. Miss Leigh.\\nMeantime your book\\nIs eloquent as if you were not dumb\\nAnd common critics, ordinarily deaf\\nTo such fine meanings, and, like deaf men, loath\\nTo seem deaf, answering chance-wise, yes or no,\\nIt must be, or It must not (most pronounced\\nWhen least convinced), pronounce for once aright;\\nYou d think they really heard, and so they do\\nThe burr of three or four who really hear\\nAnd praise your book aright fame s smallest trump\\nIs a great ear-trumpet for the deaf as posts,\\nNo other being effective. Fear not, friend\\nWe think here you have written a good book,\\nAnd you, a woman It was in you yes,\\nI felt twas in you yet I doubted half\\nIf that od-force of German Reichenbach,\\nWhich still from female finger-tips burns blue,\\nCould strike out as our masculine white-heats\\nTo quicken a man. Forgive me. All my heart\\nIs quick with yours since, just a fortnight since,\\nI read your book and loved it.\\nWill you love\\nMy wife, too Here s my secret I might keep\\nA month more from you but I yield it up", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0279.jp2"}, "278": {"fulltext": "258 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBecause I know you ll write the sooner for t\\nMost women (of your height even) counting love\\nLife s only serious business. Who s my wife\\nThat shall be in a month you ask nor guess\\nRemember what a pair of topaz eyes\\nYou once detected, turned against the wall,\\nThat morning in my London painting-room\\nThe face half-sketched, and slurred the eyes alone\\nBut you you caught them up with yours, and said,\\nKate Ward s eyes surely. Now I own the truth\\nI had thrown them there to keep them safe from Jove,\\nThey would so naughtily find out their way\\nTo both the heads of both my Danaes,\\nWhere just it made me mad to look at them.\\nSuch eyes I could not paint or think of eyes\\nBut those, and so I flung them into paint.\\nAnd turned them to the wall s care. Ay, but now\\nI ve let them out, my Kate s. I ve painted her\\n(I change my style, and leave mythologies).\\nThe whole sweet face it looks upon my soul\\nLike a face on water, to beget itself.\\nA half-length portrait, in a hanging cloak\\nLike one you wore once tis a little frayed,\\nI pressed too for the nude, harmonious arm\\nBut she, she d have her way, and have her cloak\\nShe said she could be like you only so,\\nAnd would not miss the fortune. Ah, my friend.\\nYou ll write and say she shall not miss your love\\nThrough meeting mine in faith, she would not change.\\nShe has your books by heart more than my words.\\nAnd quotes you up against me till I m pushed\\nWhere, three months since, her eyes were nay, in fact.\\nNaught satisfied her but to make me paint\\nYour last book folded in her dimpled hands,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0280.jp2"}, "279": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 259\\nInstead of my brown palette, as I wished,\\nAnd, grant me, the presentment had been newer\\nShe d grant me nothing. I compounded for\\nThe naming of the wedding-day next month,\\nAnd gladly too. Tis pretty to remark\\nHow women can love women of your sort,\\nAnd tie their hearts with love-knots to your feet,\\nGrow insolent about you against men.\\nAnd put us down by putting up the lip.\\nAs if a man there are such, let us own.\\nWho write not ill remains a man, poor wretch,\\nWhile you Write weaker than Aurora Leigh,\\nAnd there ll be women who believe of you\\n(Besides my Kate) that if you walked on sand\\nYou would not leave a footprint.\\nAre you put\\nTo wonder by my marriage, Hke poor Leigh\\nKate Ward he said. Kate Ward he said anew.\\nI thought he said, and stopped, I did not think\\nAnd then he dropped to silence.\\nAh, he s changed.\\nI had not seen him, you re aware, for long,\\nBut went, of course. I have not touched on this\\nThrough all this letter, conscious of your heart,\\nAnd writing lightlier for the heavy fact,\\nAs clocks are voluble with lead.\\nHow poor\\nTo say I m sorry dear Leigh, dearest Leigh\\nIn those old days of Shropshire, pardon me,\\nWhen he and you fought many a field of gold\\nOn what you should do, or you should not do,\\nMake bread, or verses (it just came to that),\\nI thought you d one day draw a silken peace", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0281.jp2"}, "280": {"fulltext": "26o AURORA LEIGH.\\nThrough a golden ring. I thought so foolishly,\\nThe event proved for you went more opposite\\nTo each other, month by month, and year by year,\\nUntil this happened. God knows best, we say,\\nBut hoarsely. When the fever took him first.\\nJust after I had writ to you in France,\\nThey tell me Lady Waldemar mixed drinks,\\nAnd counted grains, like any salaried nurse,\\nExcepting that she wept too. Then Lord Howe,\\nYou re right about Lord Howe, Lord Howe s a trump\\nAnd yet, with such in his hand, a man like Leigh\\nMay lose as ke does. There s an end to all,\\nYes, even this letter, though this second sheet\\nMay find you doubtful. Write a word for Kate\\nShe reads my letters always, like a wife,\\nAnd if she sees her name I ll see her smile\\nAnd share the luck. So, bless you, friend of two I\\nI will not ask you what your feeling is\\nAt Florence with my pictures. I can hear\\nYour heart a-flutter over the snow-hills\\nAnd just to pace the Pitti with you once,\\nI d give a half -hour of to-morrow s walk\\nWith Kate I think so. Vincent Carrington.\\nThe noon was hot the air scorched like the sun,\\nAnd was shut out. The closed persiani threw\\nTheir long-scored shadows on my villa-floor.\\nAnd interlined the golden atmosphere\\nStraight, still, across the pictures on the wall.\\nThe statuette on the console (of young Love\\nAnd Psyche made one marble by a kiss),\\nThe low couch where I leaned, the table near.\\nThe vase of lilies Marian pulled last night\\n(Each green leaf and each white leaf ruled in black", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0282.jp2"}, "281": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 261\\nAs if for writing some new text of fate),\\nAnd the open letter rested on my knee\\nBut there the lines swerved, trembled, though I sate\\nUntroubled, plainly, reading it again\\nAnd three times. Well, he s married that is clear.\\nNo wonder that he s married, nor, much more,\\nThat Vincent s therefore sorry. Why, of course\\nThe lady nursed him when he was not well,\\nMixed drinks unless nepenthe was the drink\\nTwas scarce worth telling. But a man in love\\nWill see the whole sex in his mistress hood,\\nThe prettier for its lining of fair rose,\\nAlthough he catches back and says at last,\\nI m sorry. Sorr}^ Lady Waldemar\\nAt prettiest, under the said hood, preserved\\nFrom such a light as I could hold to her face\\nTo flare its ugly wrinkles out to shame.\\nIs scarce a wife for Romney, as friends judge,\\nAurora Leigh, or Vincent Carrington\\nThat s plain. And if he s conscious of my heart\\nIt may be natural, though the phrase is strong\\n(One s apt to use strong phrases, being in love)\\nAnd even that stuff of fields of gold, gold rings,\\nAnd what he thought, poor Vincent what he thought,\\nMay never mean enough to ruffle me.\\nWhy, this room stifles. Better burn than choke\\nBest have air, air, although it comes with fire\\nThrow open the blinds and windows to the noon.\\nAnd take a blister on my brow instead\\nOf this dead weight best perfectly be stunned\\nBy those insufferable cicale, sick\\nAnd hoarse with rapture of the summer heat.\\nThat sing, like poets, till their hearts break, sing\\nTill men say, It s too tedious.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0283.jp2"}, "282": {"fulltext": "262\\nAURORA LEIGH.\\nBooks succeed,\\nAnd lives fail. Do I feel it so at last\\nKate loves a worn-out cloak for being like mine,\\nWhile I live self-despised for being myself,\\nAnd yearn toward some one else, who yearns away\\nFrom what he is, in his turn. Strain a step\\nForever, yet gain no step Are we such\\nWe cannot, with our admirations even,\\nOur tiptoe aspirations, touch a thing\\nThat s higher than we Is all a dismal flat,\\nAnd God alone above each, as the sun\\nO er level lagunes, to make them shine and stink,\\nLaying stress upon us with immediate flame.\\nWhile we respond with our miasmal fog.\\nAnd call it mounting higher because we grow\\nMore highly fatal\\nTush, Aurora Leigh\\nYou wear your sackcloth looped in Caesar s way,\\nAnd brag your failings as mankind s. Be still.\\nThere is what s higher, in this very world.\\nThan you can live, or catch at. Stand aside\\nAnd look at others, instance little Kate.\\nShe ll make a perfect wife for Carrington.\\nShe always has been looking round the earth\\nFor something good and green to alight upon\\nAnd nestle into, with those soft-winged eyes.\\nSubsiding now beneath his manly hand,\\nTwixt trembling lids of inexpressive joy.\\nI will not scorn her, after all, too much.\\nThat so much she should love me. A wise man\\nCan pluck a leaf, and find a lecture in t\\nAnd I too God has made me, I ve a heart\\nThat s capable of worship, love, and loss", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0284.jp2"}, "283": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 263\\nWe say the same of Shakspeare s. I ll be meek\\nAnd learn to reverence, even this poor myself.\\nThe book, too pass it. A good book, says he,\\nAnd you a woman. I had laughed at that\\nBut long since. I m a woman, it is true\\nAlas, and woe to us, when we feel it most\\nThen least care have we for the crowns and goals\\nAnd compliments on writing our good books.\\nThe book has some truth in it, I believe\\nAnd truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.\\nI know we talk our Phaedons to the end.\\nThrough all the dismal faces that we make,\\nO er-wrinkled with dishonoring agony\\nFrom decomposing drugs. I have written truth.\\nAnd I a woman, feebly, partially.\\nInaptly in presentation, Romney 11 add,\\nBecause a woman. For the truth itself.\\nThat s neither man s nor woman s, but just God s;\\nNone else has reason to be proud of truth\\nHimself will see it sifted, disinthralled.\\nAnd kept upon the height and in the light.\\nAs far as and no farther than tis truth\\nFor now he has left of\u00c2\u00a5 calling firmaments\\nAnd strata, flowers and creatures, very good,\\nHe says it still of truth, which is his own.\\nTruth, so far, in my book, the truth which draws\\nThrough all things upwards, that a twofold world\\nMust go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things\\nAnd spiritual, who separates those two\\nIn art, in morals, or the social drift.\\nTears up the bond of nature, and brings death.\\nPaints futile pictures, writes unreal verse.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0285.jp2"}, "284": {"fulltext": "264 AURORA LEIGH.\\nLeads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,\\nIs wrong, in short, at all points. We divide\\nThis apple of life, and cut it through the pips\\nThe perfect round which fitted Venus hand\\nHas perished as utterly as if we ate\\nBoth halves. Without the spiritual, observe,\\nThe natural s impossible, no form.\\nNo motion without sensuous, spiritual\\nIs inappreciable, no beauty or power.\\nAnd in this twofold sphere the twofold man\\n(For still the artist is intensely a man)\\nHolds firmly by the natural to reach\\nThe spiritual beyond it, fixes still\\nThe type with mortal vision to pierce through,\\nWith eyes immortal to the antetype\\nSome call the ideal, better called the real,\\nAnd certain to be called so presently.\\nWhen things shall have their names. Look long enough\\nOn any peasant s face here, coarse and lined,\\nYou ll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay,\\nAs perfect-featured as he yearns at Rome\\nFrom marble pale with beauty then persist.\\nAnd if your apprehension s competent.\\nYou ll find some fairer angel at his back,\\nAs much exceeding him as he the boor.\\nAnd pushing him with empyreal disdain\\nForever out of sight. Ay, Carrington\\nIs glad of such a creed an artist must,\\nWho paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone\\nWith just his hand, and finds it suddenly\\nApiece with and conterminous to his soul.\\nWhy else do these things move him, leaf, or stone\\nThe bird s not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot.\\nNor yet the horse before a quarry agraze", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0286.jp2"}, "285": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 26[\\nBut man, the twofold creature, apprehends\\nThe twofold manner, in and outwardly,\\nAnd nothing in the world comes single to him,\\nA mere itself, cup, column, or candlestick,\\nAll patterns of what shall be in the Mount\\nThe whole temporal show related royally.\\nAnd built up to eterne significance\\nThrough the open arms of God. There s notliing great\\nNor small, has said a poet of our day,\\nWhose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve,\\nAnd not be thrown out by the matin s bell\\nAnd truly, I reiterate. Nothing s small 1\\nNo lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee.\\nBut finds some coupling with the spinning stars\\nNo pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere\\nNo chaffinch, but implies the cherubim\\nAnd (glancing on my own thin, veine d wrist)\\nIn such a little tremor of the blood\\nThe whole strong clamor of a vehement soul\\nDoth utter itself distinct. Earth s crammed with heaven.\\nAnd every common bush afire with God\\nBut only he who sees takes off his shoes.\\nThe rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,\\nAnd daub their natural faces unaware\\nMore and more from the first similitude.\\nTruth, so far, in my book a truth which draws\\nFrom all things upward. I, Aurora, still\\nHave felt it hound me through the wastes of life\\nAs Jove did lo and until that hand\\nShall overtake me wholly, and on my head\\nLay down its large unfluctuating peace,\\nThe feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down.\\nIt must be. Art s the witness of what is", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0287.jp2"}, "286": {"fulltext": "266 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBehind this show. If this world s show were all,\\nThen imitation would be all in art.\\nThere Jove s hand gripes us for we stand here, we,\\nIf genuine artists, witnessing for God s\\nComplete, consummate, undivided work;\\nThat every natural flower which grows on earth\\nImplies a flower upon the spiritual side.\\nSubstantial, archetypal, all aglow\\nWith blossoming causes, not so far away.\\nBut we whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared\\nMay catch at something of the bloom and breath,\\nToo vaguely apprehended, though, indeed.\\nStill apprehended, consciously or not.\\nAnd still transferred to picture, music, verse,\\nFor thrilling audient and beholding souls\\nBy signs and touches which are known to souls.\\nHow known, they know not why, they cannot find\\nSo straight call out on genius, say, A man\\nProduced this, when much rather they should say,\\nTis insight, and he saw this.\\nThus is art\\nSelf-magnified in magnifying a truth\\nWhich, fully recognized, would change the world,\\nAnd shift its morals. If a man could feel,\\nNot one day, in the artist s ecstasy,\\nBut every day, feast, fast, or working day,\\nThe spiritual significance burn through\\nThe hieroglyphic of material shows.\\nHenceforward he would paint the globe with wings,\\nAnd reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree.\\nAnd even his very body as a man\\nWhich now he counts so vile, that all the towns\\nMake offal of their daughters for its use\\nOn summer-nights, when God is sad in heaven", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0288.jp2"}, "287": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 267\\nTo think what goes on in his recreant world\\nHe made quite other while that moon he made\\nTo shine there, at the first love s covenant,\\nShines still, convictive as a marriage-ring\\nBefore adulterous eyes.\\nHow sure it is,\\nThat, if we say a true word, instantly\\nWe feel tis God s, not ours, and pass it on,\\nLike bread at sacrament we taste and pass\\nNor handle for a moment, as indeed\\nWe dared to set up any claim to such\\nAnd I my poem let my readers talk.\\nI m closer to it, I can speak as well\\nI ll say, with Romney, that the book is weak,\\nThe range uneven, the points of sight obscure,\\nThe music interrupted.\\nLet us go.\\nThe end of woman (or of man, I think)\\nIs not a book. Alas, the best of books\\nIs but a word in art, which soon grows cramped.\\nStiff, dubious-statured, with the weight of years,\\nAnd drops an accent or digamma down\\nSome cranny of unfathomable time.\\nBeyond the critic s reaching. Art itself.\\nWe ve called the larger life, must feel the soul\\nLive past it. For more s felt than is perceived,\\nAnd more s perceived than can be interpreted,\\nAnd love strikes higher with his lambent flame\\nThan art can pile the fagots.\\nIs it so\\nWhen Jove s hand meets us with composing touch,\\nAnd when at last we are hushed and satisfied.\\nThen lo does not call it truth, but love\\nWell, well my father was an Englishman", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0289.jp2"}, "288": {"fulltext": "268 AURORA LEIGH.\\nMy mother s blood in ine is not so strong\\nThat I should bear this stress of Tuscan noon,\\nAnd keep my wits. The town there seems to seethe\\nIn this Medsean boil-pot of the sun,\\nAnd all the patient hills are bubbling round\\nAs if a prick would leave them flat. Does heaven\\nKeep far off, not to set us in a blaze t\\nNot so; let drag your fiery fringes, heaven,\\nAnd burn us up to quiet. Ah we know\\nToo much here not to know what s best for peace\\nWe have too much light here, not to want more fire\\nTo purify and end us. We talk, talk.\\nConclude upon divine philosophies,\\nAnd get the thanks of men for hopeful books\\nWhereat we take our own life up, and pshaw\\nUnless we piece it with another s life\\n(A yard of silk to carry out our lawn),\\nAs well suppose my little handkerchief\\nWould cover Samminiato, church and all,\\nIf out I threw it past the cypresses,\\nAs, in this ragged, narrow life of mine,\\nContain my own conclusions.\\nBut at least\\nWe ll shut up the persiani, and sit down.\\nAnd when my head s done aching, in the cool,\\nWrite just a word to Kate and Carrington.\\nMay joy be with them she has chosen well.\\nAnd he not ill.\\nI should be glad, I think.\\nExcept for Romney. Had he married Kate,\\nI surely, surely, should be very glad.\\nThis Florence sits upon me easily,\\nWith native air and tongue. My graves are calm.\\nAnd do not too much hurt me. Marian s good,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0290.jp2"}, "289": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 269\\nGentle, and loving, lets me hold the child,\\nOr drags him up the hill to find me flowers\\nAnd fill these vases ere I m quite awake,\\nMy grandiose red tulips, which grow wild\\nOr Dante s purple lilies, which he blew\\nTo a larger bubble with his prophet breath\\nOr one of those tall flowering reeds that stand\\nIn Arno like* a sheaf of sceptres left\\nBy some remote dynasty of dead gods\\nTo suck the stream for ages, and get green.\\nAnd blossom wheresoe er a hand divine\\nHad warmed the place with ichor. Such I find\\nAt early morning laid across my bed,\\nAnd wake up pelted with a childish laugh\\nWhich even Marian s low precipitous Hush\\nHas vainly interposed to put away\\nWhile I, with shut eyes, smile and motion for\\nThe dewy kiss that s ever sure to come\\nFrom mouth and cheeks, the whole child s face at once\\nDissolved on mine, as if a nosegay burst\\nIts string with the weight of roses overblown.\\nAnd dropt upon me. Surely I should be glad.\\nThe little creature almost loves me now,\\nAnd calls my name Alola, stripping off\\nThe rs like thorns, to make it smooth enough\\nTo take between his dainty, milk-fed lips.\\nGod love him I should certainly be glad.\\nExcept, God help me that I m sorrowful\\nBecause of Romney.\\nRomney, Romney W^ell,\\nThis grows absurd, too like a tune that runs\\nr the head, and forces all things in the world\\nWind, rain, the creaking gnat or stuttering fly\\nTo sing itself, and vex you yet perhaps", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0291.jp2"}, "290": {"fulltext": "270 AURORA LEIGH.\\nA paltry tune you never fairly liked,\\nSome I d be a butterfly, or C est I amour.\\nWe re made so, not such tyrants to ourselves,\\nBut still we are slaves to nature. Some of us\\nAre turned, too, overmuch like some poor verse\\nWith a trick of ritournelle the same thing goes\\nAnd comes back ever.\\nVincent Carrmgton\\nIs sorr} and I m sorry but he s strong\\nTo mount from sorrow to his heaven of love.\\nAnd when he says at moments, Poor, poor Leigh,\\nWho ll never call his own so true a heart.\\nSo fair a face even, he must quickly lose\\nThe pain of pity in the blush he makes\\nBy his very pitying eyes. The snow, for him.\\nHas fallen in May, and finds the whole earth warm,\\nAnd melts at the first touch of the green grass.\\nBut Romney, he has chosen, after all.\\nI think he had as excellent a sun\\nTo see by as most others and perhaps\\nHas scarce seen really worse than some of us.\\nWhen all s said. Let him pass. I m not too much\\nA woman, not to be a man for once,\\nAnd bury all my dead like Alaric,\\nDepositing the treasures of my soul\\nIn this drained water-course, then letting flow\\nThe river of life again with commerce-ships,\\nAnd pleasure-barges full of silks and songs.\\nBlow, winds, and help us.\\nAh, we mock ourselves\\nWith talking of the winds perhaps as much\\nWith other resolutions. How it weighs.\\nThis hot, sick air and how I covet here", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0292.jp2"}, "291": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 271\\nThe dead s provision on the river couch,\\nWith silver curtains drawn on tinkhng rings\\nOr else their rest in quiet crypts, laid by\\nFrom heat and noise, from those cicale, say,\\nAnd this more vexing heart-beat\\nSo it is.\\nWe covet for the soul the body s part,\\nTo die and rot. Even so, Aurora, ends\\nOur aspiration who bespoke our place\\nSo far in the east. The occidental flats\\nHad fed us fatter, therefore we have climbed\\nWhere herbage ends we want the beast s part now,\\nAnd tire of the angel s Men define a man.\\nThe creature who stands front-ward to the stars,\\nThe creature who looks inward to himself.\\nThe tool-wright, laughing creature. Tis enough\\nWe ll say, instead, the inconsequent creature, man.\\nFor that s his specialty. What creature else\\nConceives the circle, and then walks the square\\nLoves things proved bad, and leaves a thing proved good\\nYou think the bee makes honey half a year.\\nTo loathe the comb in winter, and desire\\nThe little ant s food rather But a man\\nNote men they are but women, after all,\\nAs women are but Auroras there are men\\nBorn tender, apt to pale at a trodden worm.\\nWho paint for pastime, in their favorite dream.\\nSpruce auto-vestments flowered with crocus flames\\nThere are, too, who believe in hell, and lie\\nThere are, too, who believe in heaven, and fear\\nThere are, who waste their souls in working out\\nLife s problem on these sands betwixt two tides.\\nConcluding, Give us the oyster s part, in death.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0293.jp2"}, "292": {"fulltext": "272 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAlas, long-suffering and most patient God,\\nThou needst be surelier God to bear with us\\nThan even to have made us thou aspire, aspire\\nFrom henceforth for me thou who hast thyself\\nEndured this fleshhood, knowing how as a soaked\\nAnd sucking vesture it can drag us down,\\nAnd choke us in the melancholy deep.\\nSustain me, that with thee I walk these waves,\\nResisting breathe me upward, thou in me\\nAspiring, who art the way, the truth, the life,\\nThat no truth henceforth seem indifferent.\\nNo way to truth laborious, and no life,\\nNot even this life I live, intolerable\\nThe days went by. I took up the old days,\\nWith all their Tuscan pleasures worn and spoiled,\\nLike some lost book we dropt in the long grass\\nOn such a happy summer afternoon.\\nWhen last we read it with a loving friend,\\nAnd find in autumn, when the friend is gone.\\nThe grass cut short, the weather changed, too late,\\nAnd stare at, as at something wonderful.\\nFor sorrow, thinking how two hands before\\nHad held up what is left to only one.\\nAnd how we smiled when such a vehement nail\\nImpressed the tiny dint here which presents\\nThis verse in fire forever. Tenderly\\nAnd mournfully I lived. I knew the birds\\nAnd insects, which looked fathered by the flowers\\nAnd emulous of their hues I recognized\\nThe moths, with that great overpoise of wings\\nWhich make a mystery of them how at all\\nThey can stop flying butterflies, that bear\\nUpon their blue wings such red embers round.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0294.jp2"}, "293": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 273\\nThey seem to scorch the blue air into holes\\nEach flight they take and fireflies that suspire\\nIn short soft lapses of transported flame\\nAcross the tinkling dark, while overhead\\nThe constant and inviolable stars\\nOutburn those lights-of-love melodious owls\\n(If music had but one note and was sad,\\nTwould sound just so), and all the silent swirl\\nOf bats that seem to follow in the air\\nSome grand circumference of a shadowy dome\\nTo which we are blind and then the nightingales,\\nWhich pluck our heart across a garden-wall\\n(When walking in the town), and carry it\\nSo high into the bowery almond-trees\\nWe tremble and are afraid, and feel as if\\nThe golden flood of moonlight unaware\\nDissolved the pillars of the steady earth\\nAnd made it less substantial. And I knew\\nThe harmless opal snakes, the large-mouthed frogs\\n(Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams),\\nAnd lizards, the green lightnings of the M all,\\nWhich, if you sit down quiet, nor sigh loud,\\nWill flatter you, and take you for a stone.\\nAnd flash familiarly about your feet\\nWith such prodigious eyes in such small heads\\nI knew them (though they had somewhat dwindled from\\nMy childish imagery), and kept in mind\\nHow last I sate among them equally.\\nIn fellowship and mateship, as a child\\nFeels equal still toward insect, beast, and bird.\\nBefore the Adam in him has foregone\\nAll privilege of Eden, making friends\\nAnd talk with such a bird or such a goat,\\nAnd buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cage", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0295.jp2"}, "294": {"fulltext": "274 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo let out the caged cricket on a tree,\\nSaying, Oh, my dear grillino, were you cramped\\nAnd are you happy with the ilex-leaves\\nAnd do you love me who have let you go\\nSay_y^i in singing, and I ll understand.\\nBut now the creatures all seemed farther off,\\nNo longer mine, nor like me, only there^\\nA gulf between us. I could yearn, indeed,\\nLike other rich men, for a drop of dew\\nTo cool this heat, a drop of the early dew,\\nThe irrecoverable child-innocence\\n(Before the heart took fire and withered life)\\nWhen childhood might pair equally with birds\\nBut now .the birds were grown too proud for us,\\nAlas the very sun forbids the dew.\\nAnd I I had come back to an empty nest.\\nWhich every bird s too wise for. How I heard\\nMy father s step on that deserted ground,\\nHis voice along that silence, as he told\\nThe names of bird and insect, tree and flower.\\nAnd all the presentations of the stars\\nAcross Valdarno, interposing still\\nMy child, my child. When fathers say, My child,\\nTis easier to conceive the universe.\\nAnd life s transitions down the steps of law.\\nI rode once to the little mountain-house\\nAs fast as if to find my father there\\nBut when in sight oft, within fifty yards,\\nI dropped my horse s bridle on his neck.\\nAnd paused upon his flank. The house s front\\nWas cased with lingots of ripe Indian corn", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0296.jp2"}, "295": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 275\\nIn tessellated order and device\\nOf golden patterns, not a stone of wall\\nUncovered, not an inch of room to grow\\nA vine-leaf. The old porch had disappeared,\\nAnd rio-ht in the open doorway sate a girl\\nAt plaiting straws, her black hair strained away\\nTo a scarlet kerchief caught beneath her chin\\nIn Tuscan fashion, her full ebon eyes.\\nWhich looked too heavy to be lifted so,\\nStill dropt and lifted toward the mulberry-tree.\\nOn which the lads were busy with their staves\\nIn shout and laughter, stripping every bough,\\nAs bare as winter, of those summer leaves\\nMy father had not changed for all the silk\\nIn which the ugly silkworms hide themselves.\\nEnough. My horse recoiled before my heart.\\nI turned the rein abruptly. Back we went\\nAs fast, to Florence.\\nThat was trial enough\\nOf graves. I would not visit, if I could,\\nMy father s, or my mother s any more.\\nTo see if stone-cutter or lichen beat\\nSo early in the race, or throw my flowers,\\nWhich could not outsmell heaven, or sweeten earth.\\nThey live too far above, that I should look\\nSo far below to find them let me think\\nThat rather they are visiting my grave,\\nCalled life here (undeveloped yet to life).\\nAnd that they drop upon me now and then,\\nFor token or for solace, some small weed\\nLeast odorous of the growths of paradise,\\nTo spare such pungent scents as kill with joy.\\nMy old Assunta, too, was dead, was dead.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0297.jp2"}, "296": {"fulltext": "2 6 AURORA LEIGH.\\nO land of all men s past for me alone\\nIt would not mix its tenses. I was past,\\nIt seemed, like others, only not in heaven\\nAnd many a Tuscan eve I wandered down\\nThe cypress alley like a restless ghost\\nThat tries its feeble, ineffectual breath\\nUpon its own charred funeral-brands put out\\nToo soon, where black and stiff stood up the trees\\nAgainst the broad vermilion of the skies.\\nSuch skies all clouds abolished in a sweep\\nOf God s skirt, with a dazzle to ghosts and men,\\nAs down I went, saluting on the bridge\\nThe hem of such before twas caught away\\nBeyond the peaks of Lucca. Underneath\\nThe river, just escaping from the weight\\nOf that intolerable glory, ran\\nIn acquiescent shadow murmurously\\nWhile up beside it streamed the festa-folk\\nWith fellow-murmurs from their feet and fans\\nAnd issimo and iiio and sweet poise\\nOf vowels in their pleasant, scandalous talk\\nReturning from the grand-duke s dairy-farm\\nBefore the trees grew dangerous at eight\\n(For trust no tree by moonlight, Tuscans say),\\nTo eat their ice at Donay s tenderly,\\nEach lovely lady close to a cavalier\\nWho holds her dear fan while she feeds her smile\\nOn meditative spoonfuls of vanilla.\\nAnd listens to his hot-breathed vows of love,\\nEnough to thaw her cream, and scorch his beard.\\nTwas little matter. I could pass them by\\nIndifferently, not fearing to be known.\\nNo danger of being wrecked upon a friend,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0298.jp2"}, "297": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 277\\nAnd forced to take an iceberg for an isle\\nTlie very English here must wait and learn\\nTo hang the cobweb of their gossip out\\nTo catch a fly. I m happy. It s sublime,\\nThis perfect solitude of foreign lands\\nTo be as if you had not been till then,\\nAnd were then, simply that you chose to be\\nTo spring up, not be brought forth from the ground,\\nLike grasshoppers at Athens, and skip thrice\\nBefore a woman makes a pounce on you\\nAnd plants you in her hair possess, yourself,\\nA new world all alive with creatures new,\\nNew sun, new moon, new flowers, new people ah.\\nAnd be possessed by none of them no right\\nIn one to call your name, inquire your where,\\nOr what you think of Mister Someone s book,\\nOr Mister Other s marriage or decease.\\nOr how s the headache which you had last week,\\nOr why you look so pale still, since it s gone.\\nSuch most surprising riddance of one s life\\nComes next one s death tis disembodiment\\nWithout the pang. I marvel people choose\\nTo stand stock-still, like fakirs, till the moss\\nGrows on them and they cry out, self-admired,\\nHow verdant and how virtuous Well, I m glad,\\nOr should be, if grown foreign to myself\\nAs surely as to others.\\nMusing so,\\nI walked the narrow, unrecognizing streets,\\nWhere many a palace-front peers gloomily\\nThrough stony visors iron-barred (prepared\\nAlike, should foe or lover pass that way.\\nFor guest or victim), and came wandering out\\nUpon the churches with mild open doors", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0299.jp2"}, "298": {"fulltext": "2/8 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd plaintive wail of vespers, where a few,\\nThose chiefly women, sprinkled round in blots\\nUpon the dusky pavement, knelt and prayed\\nToward the altar s silver-glory. Oft a ray\\n(I liked to sit and watch) would tremble out,\\nJust touch some face more lifted, more in need\\n(Of course a woman s), while I dreamed a tale\\nTo fit its fortunes. There was one who looked\\nAs if the earth had suddenly grown too large\\nFor such a little humpbacked thing as she\\nThe pitiful black kerchief round her neck\\nSole proof she had had a mother. One, again,\\nLooked sick for love, seemed praying some soft saint\\nTo put more virtue in the new, fine scarf\\nShe spent a fortnight s meals on yesterday,\\nThat cruel Gigi might return his eyes\\nFrom Giuliana. There was one, so old,\\nSo old, to kneel grew easier than to stand\\nSo solitary, she accepts at last\\nOur Lady for her gossip, and frets on\\nAgainst the sinful world which goes its rounds,\\nIn marrying and being married, just the same\\nAs when twas almost good and had the right\\n(Her Gian alive and she herself eighteen),\\nAnd yet, now even, if Madonna willed.\\nShe d win a tern in Thursday s lottery.\\nAnd better all things. Did she dream for naught,\\nThat, boiling cabbage for the fast-day s soup,\\nIt smelt like blessed entrails such a dream\\nFor naught t would sweetest Mary cheat her so,\\nAnd lose that certain candle, straight and white\\nAs any fair grand-duchess in her teens,\\nWhich otherwise should flare here in a week\\nBenigna sis, thou beauteous Queen of heaven", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0300.jp2"}, "299": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 279\\nI sate there, musing, and imagining\\nSuch utterance from such faces, poor blind souls\\nThat writhe toward heaven along the Devil s trail\\nWho knows, I thought, but he may stretch his hand\\nAnd pick them up Tis written in the Book\\nHe heareth the young ravens when they cry,\\nAnd yet they cry for carrion. O my God\\nAnd we who make excuses for the rest,\\nWe do it in our measure. Then I knelt.\\nAnd dropped my head upon the pavement, too,\\nAnd prayed since I was foolish in desire\\nLike other creatures, craving offal-food\\nThat he would stop his ears to what I said.\\nAnd only listen to the run and beat\\nOf this poor, passionate, helpless blood\\nAnd then\\nI lay, and spoke not but he heard in heaven.\\nSo many Tuscan evenings passed the same.\\nI could not lose a sunset on the bridge.\\nAnd would not miss a vigil in the church.\\nAnd liked to mingle with the out-door crowd,\\nSo strange and gay, and ignorant of my face\\nFor men you know are not as good as trees.\\nAnd only once, at the Santissima,\\nI almost chanced upon a man I knew.\\nSir Blaise Delorme. He saw me certainly,\\nAnd somewhat hurried, as he crossed himself,\\nThe smoothness of the action then half bowed,\\nBut only half, and merely to my shade,\\nI slipped so quick behind the porphyry plinth.\\nAnd left him dubious if twas really I,\\nOr peradventure Satan s usual trick\\nTo keep a mounting saint uncanonized.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0301.jp2"}, "300": {"fulltext": "280 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBut he was safe for that time, and I, too\\nThe argent angels in the altar-flare\\nAbsorbed his soul next moment. The good man\\nIn England we were scarce acquaintances,\\nThat here in Florence he should keep my thought\\nBeyond the image on his eye, which came\\nAnd went and yet his thought disturbed my life\\nFor after that I oftener sat at home\\nOn evenings, watching how they fined themselves\\nWith gradual conscience to a perfect night.\\nUntil the moon, diminished to a curve.\\nLay out there like a sickle for His hand\\nWho Cometh down at last to reap the earth.\\nAt such times ended seemed my trade of verse\\nI feared to jingle bells upon my robe\\nBefore the four-faced silent cherubim.\\nWith God so near me, could I sing of God\\nI did not write, nor read, nor even think.\\nBut sate absorbed amid the quickening glooms.\\nMost like some passive broken lump of salt\\nDropt in by chance to a bowl of oenomel.\\nTo spoil the drink a little, and lose itself,\\nDissolving slowly, slowly, until lost.\\nEIGHTH BOOK.\\nOne eve it happened, when I sate alone,\\nAlone, upon the terrace of my tower,\\nA book upon my knees to counterfeit\\nThe reading that I never read at all.\\nWhile Marian, in the garden down below,\\nKnelt by the fountain I could just hear thrill", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0302.jp2"}, "301": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 28 1\\nThe drowsy silence of the exhausted day,\\nAnd peeled a new fig from that purple heap\\nIn the grass beside her, turning out the red\\nTo feed her eager child, who sucked at it\\nWith vehement lips across a gap of air,\\nAs he stood opposite, face and curls aflame\\nWith that last sun-ray, crying, Give me, give\\nAnd stamping with imperious baby-feet,\\n(We re all born princes) something startled me,\\nThe laugh of sad and innocent souls that breaks\\nAbruptly, as if frightened at itself.\\nTwas Marian laughed. I saw her glance above\\nIn sudden shame that I should hear her laugh,\\nAnd straightway dropped my eyes upon my book.\\nAnd knew, the first time, twas Boccaccio s tale,\\nThe falcon s, of the lover who for love\\nDestroyed the best that loved him. Some of us\\nDo it still, and then we sit, and laugh no more.\\nLaugh yoii^ sweet Marian, you ve the right to laugh,\\nSince God himself is for you, and a child.\\nFor me there s somewhat else, and so I sigh.\\nThe heavens were making room to hold the night,\\nThe sevenfold heavens unfolding all their gates\\nTo let the stars out slowly (prophesied\\nIn close-approaching advent, not discerned),\\nWhile still the cue-owls from the cypresses\\nOf the Poggio called and counted every pulse\\nOf the skyey palpitation. Gradually\\nThe purple and transparent shadows slow\\nHad filled up the whole valley to the brim,\\nAnd flooded all the city, which you saw\\nAs some drowned city in some enchanted sea,\\nCut off from nature, drawing you who gaze,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0303.jp2"}, "302": {"fulltext": "282 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWith passionate desire, to leap and plunge,\\nAnd find a sea-king with a voice of waves.\\nAnd treacherous soft eyes, and slippery locks\\nYou cannot kiss but you shall bring away\\nTheir salt upon your lips. The duomo-bell\\nStrikes ten, as if it struck ten fathoms down,\\nSo deep, and twenty churches answer it\\nThe same, with twenty various instances.\\nSome gaslights trembled along squares and streets\\nThe Pitti s palace-front is drawn in fire\\nAnd, past the quays, Maria Novella Place,\\nIn which the mystic obelisks stand up\\nTriangular, pyramidal, each based\\nUpon its fore-square brazen tortoises.\\nTo guard that fair church, Buonarroti s Bride,\\nThat stares out from her large, blind dial-eyes\\n(Her quadrant and armillary dials, black\\nWith rhythms of many suns and moons), in vain\\nInquiry for so rich a soul as his.\\nMethinks I have plunged, I see it all so clear\\nAnd O my heart the sea-king\\nIn my ears\\nThe sound of waters. There he stood, my king\\nI felt him, rather than beheld him. Up\\nI rose, as if he were my king indeed.\\nAnd then sate down, in trouble at myself,\\nAnd struggling for my woman s empery.\\nTis pitiful but women are so made\\nWe ll die for you, perhaps, tis probable\\nBut we ll not spare you an inch of our full height\\nWe ll have our whole just stature, five feet four,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0304.jp2"}, "303": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 283\\nThough laid out in our coffins pitiful.\\nYou, Romney Lady Waldemar is here\\nHe answered in a voice which was not his.\\nI have her letter you shall read it soon.\\nBut first I must be heard a little, I\\nWho have waited long and travelled far for that.\\nAlthough you thought to have shut a tedious book,\\nAnd farewell. Ah, you dog-eared such a page,\\nAnd here you find me.\\nDid he touch my hand.\\nOr but my sleeve I trembled, hand and foot\\nHe must have touched me. Will you sit I asked,\\nAnd motioned to a chair but down he sate,\\nA little slowly, as a man in doubt.\\nUpon the couch beside me, couch and chair\\nBeing wheeled upon the terrace.\\nYou are come,\\nMy Cousin Romney This is wonderful.\\nBut all is wonder on such summer-nights\\nAnd nothing should surprise us any more,\\nWho see that miracle of stars. Behold.\\nI signed above, where all the stars were out,\\nAs if an urgent heat had started there\\nA secret writing from a sombre page,\\nA blank last moment, crowded suddenly\\nWith hurrying splendors.\\nThen you do not know\\nHe murmured.\\nYes, I know, I said, I know.\\nI had the news from Vincent Carrington.\\nAnd yet I did not think you d leave the work\\nIn England for so much even, though of course", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0305.jp2"}, "304": {"fulltext": "284 AURORA LEIGH.\\nYou ll make a work-day of your holiday,\\nAnd turn it to our Tuscan people s use,\\nWho much need helping, since the Austrian boar\\n(So bold to cross the Alp at Lombardy,\\nAnd dash his brute front unabashed against\\nThe steep snow-bosses of that shield of God\\nWho soon shall rise in wrath, and shake it clear)\\nCame hither also, raking up our grape\\nAnd olive gardens with his tyrannous tusk.\\nAnd rolling on our maize with all his swine.\\nYou had the news from Vincent Carrington,\\nHe echoed, picking up the phrase beyond,\\nAs if he knew the rest was merely talk\\nTo fill a gap and keep out a strong wind\\nYou had, then, Vincent s personal news\\nHis own,\\nI answered. All that ruined world of yours\\nSeems crumbling into marriage. Carrington\\nHas chosen wisely.\\nDo you take it so\\nHe cried, and is it possible at last\\nHe paused there, and then, inward to himself,\\nToo much at last, too late yet certainly\\n(And there his voice swayed as an Alpine plank\\nThat feels a passionate torrent underneath)\\nThe knowledge, had I known it first or last.\\nCould scarce have changed the actual case for me^\\nAnd best for her at this time.\\nNay, I thought.\\nHe loves Kate Ward, it seems, now, like a man.\\nBecause he has married Lady Waldemar\\nAh, Vincent s letter said how Leigh was moved\\nTo hear that Vincent was betrothed to Kate.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0306.jp2"}, "305": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 285\\nWith what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells\\nIn this world Then I spoke, I did not think,\\nMy cousin, you had ever known Kate Ward.\\nIn fact I never knew her. Tis enough\\nThat Vincent did, and therefore chose his wife\\nFor other reasons than those topaz eyes\\nWe ve heard of. Not to undervalue them,\\nFor all that. One takes up the world with eyes.\\nIncluding Romney Leigh, I thought again,\\nAlbeit he knows them only by repute.\\nHow vile must all men be, since he s a man\\nHis deep, pathetic voice, as if he guessed\\nI did not surely love him, took the word\\nYou never got a letter from Lord Howe\\nA month back, dear Aurora\\nNone, I said.\\nI felt it was so, he replied. Yet, strange\\nSir Blaise Delorme has passed through Florence\\nAy,\\nBy chance I saw him in Our Lady s Church,\\n(I saw him, mark you but he saw not me)\\nClean-washed in holy-water from the count\\nOf things terrestrial, letters and the rest\\nHe had crossed us out together with his sins.\\nAy, strange but only strange that good Lord Howe\\nPreferred him to the pof^t because of pauls,\\nFor me, I m sworn to never trust a man\\nAt least with letters.\\nThere were facts to tell,\\nTo smooth with 63^6 and accent. How supposed\\nWell, well, no matter there was dubious need", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0307.jp2"}, "306": {"fulltext": "286\\nAURORA LEIGH.\\nYou heard the news from Vincent Carrin^ton.\\nAnd yet perhaps you had been startled less\\nTo see me, dear Aurora, if you had read\\nThat letter.\\nNow he sets me down as vexed.\\nI think I ve draped myself in woman s pride\\nTo a perfect purpose. Oh, I m vexed, it seems\\nMy friend Lord Howe deputes his friend Sir Blaise\\nTo break, as softly as a sparrow s ^gg\\nThat lets a bird out tenderly, the news\\nOf Romney s marriage to a certain saint,\\nTo smooth with eye and accejit, indicate\\nHis possible presence. Excellently well\\nYou ve played your part, my Lady Waldemar,\\nAs I ve played mine.\\nDear Romney, I began,\\nYou did not use of old to be so like\\nA Greek king coming from a taken Troy\\nTwas needful that precursors spread your path\\nWith three-piled carpets to receive your foot.\\nAnd dull the sound oft. For myself, be sure,\\nAlthough it frankly grinds the gravel here,\\nI still can bear it. Yet I m sorry, too.\\nTo lose this famous letter, which Sir Blaise\\nHas twisted to a lighter absently\\nTo fire some holy taper. Dear Lord Howe\\nWrites letters good for all things but to lose\\nAnd many a flower of London gossipry\\nHas dropt wherever such a stem broke off.\\nOf course I feel that, lonely among my vines.\\nWhere nothing s talked of, save the blight again,\\nAnd no more Chianti Still the letter s use\\nAs preparation Did I start indeed\\nLast night I started at a cockchafer,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0308.jp2"}, "307": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 287\\nAnd shook a half-hour after. Have you learnt\\nNo more of women, spite of privilege,\\nThan still to take account too seriously\\nOf such weak flutterings Why, we like it, sir\\nWe get our powers and our effects that way.\\nThe trees stand stiff and still at time of frost,\\nIf no wind tears them but let summer come.\\nWhen trees are happy, and a breath avails\\nTo set them trembling through a million leaves\\nIn luxury of emotion. Something less\\nIt takes to move a woman let her start\\nAnd shake at pleasure, nor conclude at yours,\\nThe winter s bitter, but the summer s green.\\nHe answered, Be the summer ever green\\nWith you, Aurora though you sweep your sex\\nWith somewhat bitter gusts from where you live\\nAbove them, whirling downward from your heights\\nYour very own pine-cones, in a grand disdain\\nOf the lowland burrs with which you scatter them.\\nSo high and cold to others and yourself,\\nA little less to Romney were unjust,\\nAnd thus, I would not have you. Let it pass\\nI feel content so. You can bear, indeed.\\nMy sudden step beside you but for me,\\nTwould move me sore to hear your softened voice,\\nAurora s voice, if softened unaware\\nIn pity of what I am.\\nAh, friend I thought.\\nAs husband of the Lady Waldemar\\nYou re granted very sorely pitiable\\nAnd yet Aurora Leigh must guard her voice\\nFrom softening in the pity of your case.\\nAs if from lie or license. Certainly", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0309.jp2"}, "308": {"fulltext": "288 AURORA LEIGH.\\nWe ll soak up all the slush and soil of life\\nWith softened voices, ere we come to you.\\nAt which I interrupted my own thought,\\nAnd spoke out calmly. Let us ponder, friend.\\nWhate er our state, we must have made it first\\nAnd though the thing displease us, ay, perhaps\\nDisplease us warrantably, never doubt\\nThat other states, thought possible once, and then\\nRejected by the instinct of our lives.\\nIf then adopted, had displeased us more\\nThan this in which the choice, the will, the love,\\nHas stamped the honor of a patent act\\nFrom henceforth. What we choose may not be good\\nBut that we choose it proves it good for us\\nPotentially, fantastically, now\\nOr last year, rather than a thing we saw.\\nAnd saw no need for choosing. Moths will burn\\nTheir wings, which proves that light is good for moths,\\nWho else had flown not where they agonize.\\nAy, light is good, he echoed, and there paused\\nAnd then abruptly Marian. Marian s well\\nI bowed my head, but found no word. Twas hard\\nTo speak of he?- to Lady Waldemar s\\nNew husband. How much did he know, at last\\nHow much how little He would take no sign,\\nBut straight repeated, Marian. Is she well\\nShe s well, I answered.\\nShe was there in sight\\nAn hour back but the night had drawn her home,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0310.jp2"}, "309": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 289\\nWhere still I heard her in an upper room,\\nHer low voice singing to the child in bed,\\nWho, restless with the summer-heat and play,\\nAnd slumber snatched at noon, was long sometimes\\nIn falling off, and took a score of songs\\nAnd mother hushes ere she saw him sound.\\nShe s well, I answered.\\nHere he asked.\\nYes, here.\\nHe stopped and sighed. That shall be presently\\nBut now this must be. I have words to say,\\nAnd would be alone to say them, I with you,\\nAnd no third troubling.\\nSpeak, then, I returned,\\nShe will not vex you.\\nAt which, suddenly\\nHe turned his face upon me with its smile.\\nAs if to crush me. I have read your book,\\nAurora.\\nYou have read it, I replied,\\nAnd I have writ it \u00e2\u0080\u0094we have done with it.\\nAnd now the rest\\nThe rest is like the first,\\nHe answered, for the book is in my heart.\\nLives in me, wakes in me, and dreams in me\\nMy daily bread tastes of it and my wine\\nWhich has no smack of it, I pour it out.\\nIt seems unnatural drinking.\\nBitterly\\nI took the word up Never waste your wine.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0311.jp2"}, "310": {"fulltext": "290 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe book lived in me ere it lived in you\\nI know it closer than another does,\\nAnd how it s foolish, feeble, and afraid.\\nAnd all unworthy so much compliment.\\nBeseech you, keep your wine, and, when you drink,\\nStill wish some happier fortune to a friend\\nThan even to have written a far better book.\\nHe answered gently That is consequent.\\nThe poet looks beyond the book he has made,\\nOr else he had not made it. If a man\\nCould make a man he d henceforth be a god\\nIn feeling what a little thing is man\\nIt is not my case. And this special book,\\nI did not make it, to make light of it\\nIt stands above my knowledge, draws me up\\nTis high to me. It may be that the book\\nIs not so high, but I so low, instead\\nStill high to me. I mean no compliment\\nI will not say there are not, young or old,\\nMale wTiters, ay, or female, let it pass.\\nWho ll write us richer and completer books.\\nA man may love a woman perfectly.\\nAnd yet by no means ignorantly maintain\\nA thousand women have not larger eyes\\nEnough that she alone has looked at him\\nWith eyes that, large or small, have won his soul\\nAnd so, this book, Aurora, so, your book.\\nAlas I answered, is it so, indeed\\nAnd then was silent.\\nIs it so, indeed,\\nHe echoed, that alas is all your word\\nI said, I m thinking of a far-off June,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0312.jp2"}, "311": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 2 ci\\nWhen you and I, upon my birthday, once,\\nDiscoursed of life and art, with both untried.\\nI m thinking, Romney, how twas morning then.\\nAnd now tis night.\\nAnd now, he said, tis night.\\nI m thinking, I resumed, tis somewhat sad,\\nThat if I had known that morning in the dew.\\nMy Cousin Romney would have said such words\\nOn such a night at close of many years.\\nIn speaking of a future book of mine.\\nIt would have pleased me better as a hope\\nThan as an actual grace it can at all\\nThat s sad, I m thinking.\\nAy, he said, tis night.\\nAnd there, I added lightly, are the stars\\nAnd here we ll talk of stars, and not of books.\\nYou have the stars, he murmured, it is well\\nBe like them. Shine, Aurora, on my dark.\\nThough high and cold, and only like a star.\\nAnd for this short night only, you who keep\\nThe same Aurora of the bright June day\\nThat withered up the flowers before my face.\\nAnd turned me from the garden evermore,\\nBecause I was not worthy. Oh, deserved.\\nDeserved that I, who verily had not learnt\\nGod s lesson half, attaining as a dunce\\nTo obliterate good words with fractious thumbs,\\nAnd cheat myself of the context, should push\\nAside, with male ferocious impudence,\\nThe world s Aurora, who had conned her part", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0313.jp2"}, "312": {"fulltext": "292 AURORA LEIGH.\\nOn the other side the leaf ignore her so,\\nBecause she was a woman and a queen,\\nAnd had no beard to bristle through her song,\\nMy teacher, who has taught me with a book.\\nMy Miriam, whose sweet mouth, when nearly drowned,\\nI still heard singing on the shore Deserved,\\nThat here I should look up unto the stars.\\nAnd miss the. glory.\\nCan I understand 1\\nI broke in. You speak wildly, Romney Leigh,\\nOr I hear wildly. In that morning-time\\nWe recollect, the roses were too red.\\nThe trees too green, reproach too natural\\nIf one should see not what the other saw\\nAnd now it s night, remember we have shades\\nIn place of colors we are now grown cold\\nAnd old, my Cousin Romney. Pardon me,\\nI m very happy that you like my book,\\nAnd very sorry that I quoted back\\nA ten-years birthday. Twas so mad a thing\\nIn any woman, I scarce marvel much\\nYou took it for a venturous piece of spite.\\nProvoking such excuses as indeed\\nI cannot call you slack in.\\nUnderstand,\\nHe answered sadly, something, if but so.\\nThis night is softer than an English day,\\nAnd men may well come hither when they re sick,\\nTo draw in easier breath from larger air.\\nTis thus with me I come to you to you.\\nMy Italy of women, just to breathe\\nMy soul out once before you, ere I go,\\nAs humble as God makes me at the last,\\n(I thank him) quite out of the way of men,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0314.jp2"}, "313": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 293\\nAnd yours, Aurora, like a punished child.\\nHis cheeks all blurred with tears and naughtiness,\\nTo silence in a corner. I am come\\nTo speak, beloved\\nWisely, Cousin Leigh,\\nAnd worthily of us both.\\nYes, worthily\\nFor this time I must speak out, and confess\\nThat I, so truculent in assumption once,\\nSo absolute in dogma, proud in aim,\\nAnd fierce in expectation^ I, who felt\\nThe whole world tugging at my skirts for help,\\nAs if no other man than I could pull,\\nNor woman, but I led her by the hand,\\nNor cloth hold, but 1 had it in my coat,\\nDo know myself to-night for what I was\\nOn that June day, Aurora. Poor bright day.\\nWhich meant the best a woman and a rose,\\nAnd which I smote upon the cheek with words.\\nUntil it turned and rent me. Young you were,\\nThat birthday, poet but you talked the right\\nWhile I I built up follies, like a wall.\\nTo intercept the sunshine and your face.\\nYour face that s worse.\\nSpeak wisely, Cousin Leigh.\\nYes, wisely, dear Aurora, though too late,\\nBut then, not wisely. I was heavy then,\\nAnd stupid, and distracted with the cries\\nOf tortured prisoners in the pohshed brass\\nOf that Phalarian bull, society,\\nWhich seems to bellow bravely like ten bulls,\\nBut, if you listen, moans and cries instead\\nDespairingly, like victims tossed and gored", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0315.jp2"}, "314": {"fulltext": "294 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd trampled by their hoofs. I heard the cries\\nToo close I could not hear the angels lift\\nA fold of rustling air, nor what they said\\nTo help my pity. I beheld the world\\nAs one great famishing carnivorous mouth,\\nA huge, deserted, callow, blind bird thing,\\nWith piteous open beak that hurt my heart,\\nTill down upon the filthy ground I dropped.\\nAnd tore the violets up to get the worms.\\nWorms, worms, was all my cry an open mouth,\\nA gross want, bread to fill it to the lips,\\nNo more. That poor men narrowed their demands\\nTo such an end was virtue, I supposed.\\nAdjudicating that to see it so\\nWas reason. Oh, I did not push the case\\nUp higher, and ponder how it answers when\\nThe rich take up the same cry for themselves,\\nProfessing equally, An open mouth\\nA gross need, food to fill us, and no more.\\nWhy, that s so far from virtue, only vice\\nCan find excuse for t that makes libertines,\\nAnd slurs our cruel streets from end to end\\nWith eighty thousand women in one smile,\\nWho only smile at night beneath the gas.\\nThe body s satisfaction, and no more.\\nIs used for argument against the soul s.\\nHere too the want, here too, implies the right.\\nHow dark I stood that morning in the sun,\\nMy best Aurora (though I saw your eyes)\\nWhen first you told me oh, I recollect\\nThe sound, and how you lifted your small hand,\\nAnd how your white dress and your burnished curls\\nWent greatening round you in the still, blue air,\\nAs if an inspiration from within", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0316.jp2"}, "315": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 295\\nHad blown them all out when you spoke the words,\\nEven these, You will not compass your poor ends\\nOf barley-feedmg and material ease\\nWithout the poet s individualism\\nTo work your universal. It takes a soul\\nTo move a body it takes a high-souled man\\nTo move the masses even to a cleaner sty\\nIt takes the ideal to blow an inch inside\\nllie dust of the actual and your Fouriers failed,\\nBecause not poets enough to un4erstand\\nThat life develops from within. I say\\nYour words I could say other words of yours\\nFor none of all your words will let me go,\\nLike sweet verbena, which, being brushed against,\\nWill hold us three hours after by the smell,\\nIn spite of long walks upon windy hills.\\nBut these words dealt in sharper perfume these\\nWere ever on me, stinging through my dreams,\\nAnd saying themselves forever o er my acts\\nLike some unhappy verdict. That I failed\\nIs certain. Sty or no sty, to contrive\\nThe swine s propulsion toward the precipice\\nProved easy and plain. I subtly organized\\nAnd ordered, built the cards up high and higher,\\nTill, some one breathing, all fell flat again\\nIn setting right society s wide wrong.\\nMere life s so fatal So I failed indeed\\nOnce, twice, and oftener, hearing through the rents\\nOf obstinate purpose, still those words of yours,\\nYou will not compass your poor ends, not you\\nBut harder than you said them every time\\nStill farther from your voice, until they came\\nTo overcrow me with triumphant scorn.\\nWhich vexed me to resistance. Set down this", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0317.jp2"}, "316": {"fulltext": "296 AURORA LEIGH.\\nFor condemnation. I was guilty here\\nI stood upon my deed, and fought my doubt,\\nAs men will, for I doubted, till at last\\nMy deed gave way beneath me suddenly,\\nAnd left me what I am. The curtain dropped,\\nMy part quite ended, all the foot-lights quenched.\\nMy own soul hissing at me through the dark,\\nI ready for confession, I was wrong,\\nI ve sorely failed, I ve slipped the ends of life,\\nI yield you have conquered.\\nStay, I answered him\\nI ve something for your hearing, also. I\\nHave failed too.\\nYou he said, you re very great\\nThe sadness of your greatness fits you well.\\nAs if the plume upon a hero s casque\\nShould nod a shadow upon his victor s face.\\nI took him up austerely, You have read\\nMy book, but not my heart for, recollect,\\nTis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at.\\nI ve surely failed, I know, if failure means\\nTo look back sadly on work gladly done.\\nTo wander on my Mountains of Delight,\\nSo called (I can remember a friend s words\\nAs well as you, sir), weary, and in want\\nOf even a sheep-path, thinking bitterly\\nWell, well no matter. I but say so much,\\nTo keep you, Romney Leigh, from saying more,\\nAnd let you feel I am not so high indeed.\\nThat J can bear to have you at my foot.\\nOr safe, that I can help you. That June day.\\nToo deeply sunk in craterous sunsets now\\nFor you or me to dig it up alive", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0318.jp2"}, "317": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 297\\nTo pluck it out all bleeding with spent flame\\nAt the roots, before those moralizing stars\\nWe have got instead, that poor lost day, you said\\nSome words as truthful as the thing of mine\\nYou cared to keep in memory and I hold\\nIf I that day, and being the girl I was.\\nHad shown a gentler spirit, less arrogance.\\nIt had not hurt me. You will scarce mistake\\nThe point here. I but only think, you see.\\nMore justly, that s more humbly of myself.\\nThat when I tried a crown on, and supposed\\nNay, laugh, sir, I ll laugh with you pray you laugh.\\nI ve had so many birthdays since that day,\\nI ve learnt to prize mirth s opportunities,\\nWhich come too seldom. Was it you who said\\nI was not changed 1 the same Aurora Ah,\\nWe could laugh there, too Why, Ulysses dog\\nKnew him^ and wagged his tail and died but if\\nI had owned a dog, I, too, before my Troy,\\nAnd if you brought him here I warrant you\\nHe d look into my face, bark lustily.\\nAnd live on stoutly, as the creatures will\\nWhose spirits are not troubled by long loves.\\nA dog would never know me, I m so changed.\\nMuch less a friend except that you re misled\\nBy the color of the hair, the trick of the voice.\\nLike that Aurora Leigh s.\\nSweet trick of voice\\nI would be a dog for this, to know it at last,\\nAnd die upon the falls of it. O love,\\nO best Aurora are you then so sad\\nYou scarcely had been sadder as my wife\\nYour wife, sir I must certainly be changed.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0319.jp2"}, "318": {"fulltext": "298 AURORA LEIGH.\\nIf I, Aurora, can have said a thing\\nSo Hght, it catches at the knightly spurs\\nOf a noble gentleman like Romney Leigh,\\nAnd trips him from his honorable sense\\nOf what befits.\\nYou wholly misconceive,\\nHe answered.\\nI returned, I m glad of it.\\nBut keep from misconception, too, yourself\\nI am not humbled to so low a point.\\nNor so far saddened. If I am sad at all.\\nTen layers of birthdays on a woman s head\\nAre apt to fossilize her girlish mirth.\\nThough ne er so merry I m perforce more wise,\\nAnd that, in truth, means sadder. For the rest,\\nLook here, sir I was right, upon the whole,\\nThat birthday morning. Tis impossible\\nTo get at men excepting through their souls,\\nHowever open their carnivorous jaws;\\nAnd poets get directlier at the soul\\nThan any of your economists for which\\nYou must not overlook the poet s work\\nWhen scheming for the world s necessities.\\nThe soul s the way. Not even Christ himself\\nCan save man else than as he holds man s soul\\nAnd therefore did he come into our flesh,\\nAs some wise liunter, creeping on his knees\\nWith a torch, into the blackness of a cave^\\nTo face and quell the beast there, take the soul.\\nAnd so possess the whole man, body and soul.\\nI said, so. far, right, yes; not farther, though\\nWe both were wrong that June day, both as wrong\\nAs an east wind had been. I who talked of art,\\nAnd you who grieved for all men s griefs what then", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0320.jp2"}, "319": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 299\\nWe surely made too small a part for God\\nIn these things. What we are imports us more\\nThan what we eat; and life, you ve granted me,\\nDevelops from within. But innermost\\nOf the inmost, most interior of the interne,\\nGod claims his own, divine humanity\\nRenewing nature or the piercingest verse,\\nPrest in by subtlest poet still must keep\\nAs much upon the outside of a man\\nAs the very bowl in which he dips his beard.\\nAnd then the rest I cannot surely speak\\nPerhaps I doubt more than you doubted then,\\nIf I the poet s veritable charge.\\nHave borne upon my forehead. If I have,\\nIt might feel somewhat liker to a crown.\\nThe foolish green one, even. Ah, I think,\\nAnd chiefly when the sun shines, that I ve failed.\\nBut what then, Romney Though we fail indeed,\\nYou I a score of such weak workers He\\nFails never. IE he cannot work by us.\\nHe will work over us. Does he want a man,\\nMuch less a woman, think you Every time\\nThe star winks there, so many souls are born.\\nWho all shall work, too. Let our own be calm\\nWe should be ashamed to sit beneath those stars,\\nImpatient that we re nothing.\\nCould we sit\\nJust so forever, sweetest friend, he said,\\nMy failure would seem better than success.\\nAnd yet indeed your book has dealt with me\\nMore gently, cousin, than you ever will.\\nYour book brought down entire the bright June day.\\nAnd set me wandering in the garden-walks.\\nAnd let me watch the garland in a place", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0321.jp2"}, "320": {"fulltext": "300 AURORA LEIGH.\\nYou blushed so nay, forgive me, do not stir\\nI only thank the book for what it taught,\\nAnd what permitted. Poet, doubt yourself,\\nBut never doubt that you re a poet to me\\nFrom henceforth. You have written poems, sweet,\\nWhich moved me in secret, as the sap is moved\\nIn still March branches, signless as a stone\\nBut this last book o ercame me like soft rain\\nWhich falls at midnight, when the tightened bark\\nBreaks out into unhesitating buds.\\nAnd sudden protestations of the sirring.\\nIn all your other books I saw but you.\\nA man may see the moon so, in a pond,\\nAnd not be nearer therefore to the moon.\\nNor use the sight except to drown himself\\nAnd so I forced my heart back from the sight,\\nFor what had I thought, to do with her,\\nAurora Romney But in this last book\\nYou showed me something separate from yourself,\\nBeyond you, and I bore to take it in.\\nAnd let it draw me. You have shown me truths,\\nO June-day friend, that help me now at night\\nWhen June is over, truths not yours, indeed,\\nBut set within my reach by means of you.\\nPresented by your voice and verse the way\\nTo take them clearest. Verily I was wrong\\nAnd verily many thinkers of this age.\\nAy, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,\\nAre wrong in just my sense who understood\\nOur natural world too insularly, as if\\nNo spiritual counterpart completed it.\\nConsummating its meaning, rounding all\\nTo justice and perfection, line by line,\\nForm by form, nothing single nor alone,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0322.jp2"}, "321": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 30\\nThe great below clinched by the great above,\\nShade here authenticating substance there,\\nThe body proving spirit, as the effect\\nThe cause we meantime being too grossly apt\\nTo hold the natural, as dogs a bone,\\n(Though reason and nature beat us in the face)\\nSo obstinately that we ll break our teeth\\nOr ever we let go. For everywhere\\nWe re too materialistic, eating clay,\\n(Like men of the west) instead of Adam s corn\\nAnd Noah s wine, clay by handfuls, clay by lumps.\\nUntil we re filled up to the throat with clay.\\nAnd grow the grimy color of the ground\\nOn which we are feeding. Ay, materialist\\nThe age s name is. God himself, with some,\\nIs apprehended as the bare result\\nOf what his hand materially has made.\\nExpressed in such an algebraic sign\\nCalled God that is, to put it otherwise,\\nThey add up nature to a nought of God,\\nAnd cross the quotient. There are many even.\\nWhose names are written in the Christian church\\nTo no dishonor, diet still on mud.\\nAnd splash the altars with it. You might think\\nThe clay Christ laid upon their eyelids, when,\\nStill blind, he called them to the use of sight.\\nRemained there to retard its exercise\\nWith clogging incrustations. Close to heaven,\\nThey see for mysteries, through the open doors,\\nVague puffs of smoke from pots of earthenware,\\nAnd fain would enter, when their time shall come.\\nWith quite another body than St. Paul\\nHas promised, husk and chaff, the whole barley-corn.\\nOr where s the resurrection", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0323.jp2"}, "322": {"fulltext": "302 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThus it is,\\nI sighed. And he resumed with mournful face.\\nBeginning so, and filling up with clay,\\nThe wards of this great key, the natural world.\\nAnd fumbling vainly therefore at the lock\\nOf the spiritual, we feel ourselves shut in\\nWith all the wild-beast roar of struggling life,\\nThe terrors and compunctions of our souls,\\nAs saints with lions, we who are not saints,\\nAnd have no heavenly lordship in our stare\\nTo awe them backward. Ay, we are forced, so pent,\\nTo judge the whole too partially confound\\nConclusions. Is there any common phrase\\nSignificant, with the adverb heard alone.\\nThe verb being absent, and the pronoun out\\nBut we, distracted in the roar of life.\\nStill insolently at God s adverb snatch,\\nAnd bruit against him that his thought is void.\\nHis meaning hopeless, cry, that everywhere\\nThe government is slipping from his hand,\\nUnless some other Christ (say Romney Leigh)\\nCome up and toil and moil and change the world,\\nBecause the First has proved inadequate.\\nHowever we talk bigly of his work\\nAnd piously of his person. We blaspheme\\nAt last, to finish our doxology.\\nDespairing on the earth for which he died.\\nSo now, I asked, you have more hope of men\\nI hope, he answered. I am come to think\\nThat God will have his work done, as you said,\\nAnd that we need not be disturbed too much\\nFor Romney Leigh or others having failed", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0324.jp2"}, "323": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 303\\nWith this or that quack nostrum, recipes\\nFor keeping summits by annulling depths,\\nFor wrestling with luxurious lounging sleeves.\\nAnd acting heroism without a scratch.\\nWe fail, what then Aurora, if I smiled\\nTo see you, in your lovely morning pride.\\nTry on the poet s wreath which suits the noon,\\n(Sweet cousin, walls must get the weather-stain\\nBefore they grow the ivy), certainly\\nI stood myself there worthier of contempt.\\nSelf rated, in disastrous arrogance,\\nAs competent to sorrow for mankind\\nAnd even their odds. A man may well despair,\\nWho counts himself so needful to success.\\nI failed I throw the remedy back on God,\\nAnd sit down here beside you, in good hope.\\nAnd yet take heed, I answered, lest we lean\\nToo dangerously on the other side.\\nAnd so fail twice. Be sure, no earnest work\\nOf any honest creature, howbeit weak,\\nImperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much\\nIt is not gathered as a grain of sand\\nTo enlarge the sum of human action used\\nFor carrying out God s end. No creature works\\nSo ill, observe, that therefore he s cashiered.\\nThe honest earnest man must stand and work,\\nThe woman also otherwise she drops\\nAt once below the dignity of man.\\nAccepting serfdom. Free men freely work.\\nWhoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.\\nHe cried True. After Adam, work was curse\\nThe natural creature labors, sweats, and frets,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0325.jp2"}, "324": {"fulltext": "304 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBut, after Christ, work turns to privilege,\\nAnd henceforth, one with our humanity,\\nThe Six-day Worker, working still in us.\\nHas called us freely to work on with him\\nIn high companionship. So, happiest\\nI count that heaven itself is only work\\nTo a surer issue. Let us work, indeed,\\nBut no more work as Adam, nor as Leigh\\nErewhile, as if the only man on earth.\\nResponsible for all the thistles blown.\\nAnd tigers couchant, struggling in amaze\\nAgainst disease and winter, snarling on\\nForever that the world s not paradise.\\ncousin, let us be content, in work.\\nTo do the thing we can, and not presume\\nTo fret because it s little. Twill employ\\nSeven men they say to make a perfect pin\\nWho makes the head, content to miss the point\\nWho makes the point, agreed to leave the join\\nAnd if a man should cry, I want a pin.\\nAnd I must make it straightway, head and point,\\nHis wisdom is not worth the pin he wants.\\nSeven men to a pin, and not a man too much.\\nSeven generations, haply, to this world.\\nTo right it visibly a finger s breadth.\\nAnd mend its rents a little. Oh, to storm\\nAnd say, This world here is intolerable\\n1 will not eat this corn, nor drink this wine,\\nNor love this woman, flinging her my soul\\nWithout a bond for t as a lover should.\\nNor use the generous leave of happiness\\nAs not too good for using generously\\n(Since virtue kindles at the touch of joy.\\nLike a man s cheek laid on a woman s hand.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0326.jp2"}, "325": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 305\\nAnd God, who knows it, looks for quick returns\\nFrom joys) to stand and claim to have a life\\nBeyond the bounds of the individual man,\\nAnd raze all personal cloisters of the soul\\nTo build up public stores and magazines,\\nAs if God s creatures otherwise were lost,\\nThe builder surely saved by any means\\nTo think, I have a pattern on my nail,\\nAnd I will carve the world new after it.\\nAnd solve so these hard social questions, nay.\\nImpossible social questions, since their roots\\nStrike deep in evil s own existence here.\\nWhich God permits because the question s hard\\nTo abolish evil nor attaint free-will.\\nAy, hard to God, but not to Romney Leigh\\nFor Romney has a pattern on his nail\\n(Whatever may be lacking on the Mount),\\nAnd, not being overnice to separate\\nWhat s element from what s convention, hastes\\nBy line on line to draw you out a world.\\nWithout your help indeed, unless you take\\nHis yoke upon you, and will learn of him.\\nSo much he has to teach so good a world,\\nThe same the whole creation s groaning for\\nNo rich nor poor, no gain nor loss nor stint,\\nNo pottage in it able to exclude\\nA brother s birthright, and no right of birth,\\nThe pottage, both secured to every man,\\nAnd perfect virtue dealt out like the rest\\nGratuitously, with the soup at six.\\nTo whoso does not seek it.\\nSoftly, sir,\\nI interrupted. I had a cousin once\\nI held in reverence. If he strained too wide,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0327.jp2"}, "326": {"fulltext": "306 AURORA LEIGH.\\nIt was not to take honor, but give help.\\nThe gesture was heroic. If his hand\\nAccomplished nothing (well, it is not proved)\\nThat empty hand thrown impotently out\\nWere sooner caught, I think, by One in heaven.\\nThan many a hand that reaped a harvest in\\nAnd keeps the scythe s glow on it. Pray you, then,\\nFor my sake merely, use less bitterness\\nIn speaking of my cousin.\\nAh, he said,\\nAurora when the prophet beats the ass,\\nThe angel intercedes. He shook his head.\\nAnd yet to mean so well, and fail so foul,\\nExpresses ne er another beast than man\\nThe antithesis is human. Hearken, dear\\nThere s too much abstract willing, purposing,\\nIn this poor world. We talk by aggregates,\\nAnd think by systems, and, being used to face\\nOur evils in statistics, are inclined\\nTo cap them with unreal remedies\\nDrawn out in haste on the other side the slate.\\nThat s true, I answered, fain to throw up thought,\\nAnd make a game of t. Yes, we generalize\\nEnough to please you. If we pray at all.\\nWe pray no longer for our daily bread,\\nBut next centenary s harvests. If we give,\\nOur cup of water is not tendered till\\nWe lay down pipes and found a company\\nWith branches. Ass or angel, tis the same\\nA woman cannot do the thing she ought,\\nWhich means whatever perfect thing she can,\\nIn life, in art, in science, but she fears\\nTo let the perfect action take her part,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0328.jp2"}, "327": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 307\\nAnd rest there she must prove what she can do\\nBefore she does it, prate of woman s rights,\\nOf woman s mission, woman s function, till\\nThe men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry,\\nA woman s function plainly is to talk.\\nPoor souls, they are very reasonably vexed\\nThey cannot hear each other talk.\\nAnd you,\\nAn artist, judge so\\nI, an artist, yes.\\nBecause, precisely, I m an artist, sir.\\nAnd woman, if another sate in sight,\\nI d whisper, Soft, my sister not a word\\nBy speaking we prove only we can speak.\\nWhich he, the man here, never doubted. What\\nHe doubts is, whether we can do the thing\\nWith decent grace we ve not yet done at all.\\nNow, do it bring your statue, you have room\\nHe ll see it even by the starlight here\\nAnd if tis e er so little like the god\\nWho looks out from the marble silently\\nAlong the track of his own shining dart\\nThrough the dusk of ages, there s no need to speak\\nThe universe shall henceforth speak for you.\\nAnd witness, She who did this thing was born\\nTo do it, claims her license in her work.\\nAnd so wdth more works. Whoso cures the plague.\\nThough twice a \\\\voman, shall be called a leech\\nWho rights a land s finances is excused\\nFor touching coppers, though her hands be white,\\nBut we, we talk\\nIt is the age s mood,\\nHe said we boast, and do not. We put up\\nHostelry signs where er we lodge a day,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0329.jp2"}, "328": {"fulltext": "308 AURORA LEIGH.\\nSome red colossal cow with mighty paps\\nA C}-clops fingers could not strain to milk,\\nThen bring out presently our saucerful\\nOf curds. We want more quiet in our works,\\nMore knowledge of the bounds in which we work,\\nMore knowledge that each individual man\\nRemains an Adam to the general race,\\nConstrained to see, like Adam, that he keep\\nHis personal state s condition honestly.\\nOr vain all thoughts of his to help the world,\\nWhich still must be developed from its one^\\nIf bettered in its many. We indeed.\\nWho think to lay it out new like a park,\\nWe take a work on us which is not man s\\nFor God alone sits far enough above\\nTo speculate so largely. None of us\\n(Not R.omney Leigh) is mad enough to say,\\nWe ll have a grove of oaks upon that slope.\\nAnd sink the need of acorns. Government,\\nIf veritable and lawful, is not given\\nBy imposition of the foreign hand.\\nNor chosen from a pretty pattern-book\\nOf some domestic idealogue who sits\\nAnd coldly chooses empire, where as well-\\nHe might republic. Y Genuine government\\nIs but the expression of a nation, good\\nOr less good, even as all society,\\nHowe er unequal, monstrous, crazed, and cursed.\\nIs but the expression of men s single lives.\\nThe loud sum of the silent units. What,\\nWe d change the aggregate, and yet retain\\nEach separate figure whom do we cheat by that\\nNow, not even Romney.\\nCousin, you are sad.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0330.jp2"}, "329": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 309\\nDid all your social labor at Leigh Hall\\nAnd elsewhere come to naught, then\\nIt was enough,\\nHe answered mildly. There is room indeed\\nFor statues still, in this large world of God s,\\nBut not for vacuums so I am not sad,\\nNot sadder than is good for what I am.\\nMy vain phalanstery dissolved itself\\nMy men and women of disordered lives,\\nI brought in orderly to dine and sleep,\\nBroke up those waxen masks I made them wear.\\nWith fierce contortions of the natural face,\\nAnd cursed me for my tyrannous constraint\\nIn forcing crooked creatures to live straight,\\nAnd set the country hounds upon my back\\nTo bite and tear me for my wicked deed\\nOf trying to do good without the church,\\nOr even the squires, Aurora. Do you mind\\nYour ancient neighbors The great book-club teems\\nWith sketches, summaries, and last tracts, but twelve.\\nOn socialistic troublers of close bonds\\nBetwixt the generous rich and grateful poor.\\nThe vicar preached from Revelation (till\\nThe doctor woke), and found me with the frogs\\nOn three successive Sundays ay, and stopped\\nTo weep a little (for he s getting old)\\nThat such perdition should o ertake a man\\nOf such fair acres, in the parish, too\\nHe printed his discourses by request\\nAnd, if your book shall sell as his did, then\\nYour verses are less good than I suppose.\\nThe women of the neighborhood subscribed,\\nAnd sent me a copy bound in scarlet silk.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0331.jp2"}, "330": {"fulltext": "3IO AURORA LEIGH.\\nTooled edges, blazoned with the arms of Leigh\\nI own that touched me.\\nWhat, the pretty ones?\\nPoor Romney\\nOtherwise the effect was small,\\nI had my windows broken once or twice\\nBy liberal peasants naturally incensed\\nAt such a vexer of Arcadian peace.\\nWho would not let men call their wives their own\\nTo kick like Britons, and made obstacles\\nWhen things went smoothly, as a baby drugged,\\nToward freedom and starvation, bringing down\\nThe wicked London tavern-thieves and drabs\\nTo affront the blessed hillside drabs and thieves\\nWith mended morals, quotha, fine new lives\\nMy windows paid for t. I was shot at once.\\nBy an active poacher who had hit a hare\\nFrom the other barrel (tired of springeing game\\nSo long upon my acres, undisturbed.\\nAnd restless for the country s virtue yet\\nHe missed me), ay, and pelted very oft\\nIn riding through the village. There he goes,\\nWho d drive away our Christian gentlefolks,\\nTo catch us undefended in the trap\\nHe bates with poisonous cheese, and locks us up\\nIn that pernicious prison of Leigh Hall\\nWith all his murderers Give another name.\\nAnd say Leigh Hell, and burn it up with fire.\\nAnd so they did, at last, Aurora.\\nDid\\nYou never heard it, cousin Vincent s news\\nCame stinted, then.\\nThey did They burnt Leigh Hall", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0332.jp2"}, "331": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH, 31 1\\nYou re sorry, dear Aurora Yes, indeed,\\nThey did it perfectly a thorough work,\\nAnd not a failure, this time. Let us grant\\nTis somewhat easier, though, to burn a house\\nThan build a system yet that s easy, too\\nIn a dream. Books, pictures, ay, the pictures What,\\nYou think your dear Vandykes would give them pause\\nOur proud ancestral Leighs, with those peaked beards.\\nOur bosoms white as foam thrown up on rocks\\nFrom the old-spent wave. Such calm, defiant looks\\nThey flared up with now never more to twit\\nThe bones in the family vault with ugly death.\\nNot one was rescued, save the Lady Maud,\\nWho threw you down, that morning you were born,\\nThe undeniable lineal mouth and chin.\\nTo wear forever for her gracious sake\\nFor which good deed I saved her the rest went\\nAnd you, you re sorry, cousin. Well, for me.\\nWith all my phalansterians safely out\\n(Poor hearts, they helped the burners, it was said.\\nAnd certainly a few clapped hands and yelled).\\nThe ruin did not hurt me as it might\\nAs when, for instance, I was hurt one day,\\nA certain letter being destroyed. In fact,\\nTo see the great house flare so oaken floors\\nOur fathers made so fine with rushes once.\\nBefore our mothers furbished them with trains,\\nCarved wainscoats, panelled walls (the favorite slide\\nFor draining off a martyr or a rogue)\\nThe echoing galleries, half a half-mile long,\\nAnd all the various stairs that took you up,\\nAnd took you down, and took you round about\\nUpon their slippery darkness, recollect.\\nAll helping to keep up one blazing jest", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0333.jp2"}, "332": {"fulltext": "312 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe flames through all the casements pushing forth\\nLike red-hot devils crinkled into snakes,\\nAll signifying, Look you, Romney Leigh,\\nWe save the people from your saving, here,\\nYet so as by fire we make a pretty show\\nBesides, and that s the best you ve ever done.\\nTo see this, almost moved myself to clap.\\nThe vale et plaude came too with effect.\\nWhen in the roof fell, and the fire that paused,\\nStunned momently beneath the stroke of slates\\nAnd tumbling rafters, rose at once and roared,\\nAnd, wrapping the whole house (which disappeared\\nIn a mounting whirlwind of dilated flame).\\nBlew upward straight its drift of fiery chaff\\nIn the face of heaven which blenched, and ran up higher.\\nPoor Romney\\nSometimes when I dream. he said,\\nI hear the silence after, twas so still.\\nFor all those wild beasts, yelling, cursing round,\\nWere suddenly silent while you counted five,\\nSo silent that you heard a young bird fall\\nFrom the top-nest in the neighboring rookery,\\nThrough edging over-rashly toward the light.\\nThe old rooks had already fled too far\\nTo hear the screech they fled with, though you saw\\nSome flying still, like scatterings of dead leaves\\nIn autumn-gusts, seen dark against the sky,\\nAll flying, ousted, like the house of Leigh.\\nDear Romney\\nEvidently twould have been\\nA fine sight for a poet, sweet, like you.\\nTo make the verse blaze after. I myself.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0334.jp2"}, "333": {"fulltext": "With one stone stair, symbolic of m}- life,\\nAscending, winding, leading up to nought. Page 313.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0335.jp2"}, "334": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0336.jp2"}, "335": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 313\\nEven I, felt something 111 the grand old trees,\\nWhich stood that moment like brute Druid gods\\nAmazed upon the rim of ruin, where.\\nAs into a blackened socket, the great fire\\nHad dropped, still throwing up splinters now and then\\nTo show them gray with all their centuries,\\nLeft there to witness that on such a day\\nThe house went out.\\nAh\\nWhile you counted five,\\nI seemed to feel a little like a Leigh\\nBut then it passed, Aurora. A child cried.\\nAnd I had enough to think of what to do\\nWith all those houseless wretches in the dark.\\nAnd ponder where they d dance the next time, they\\nWho had burnt the viol.\\nDid you think of that\\nWho burns his viol will not dance, I know.\\nTo cymbals, Romney.\\nO my sweet, sad voice,\\nHe cried, O voice that speaks and overcomes\\nThe sun is silent but Aurora speaks.\\nAlas I said, I speak I know not what\\nI m back in childhood, thinking as a child,\\nA foolish fancy will it make you smile\\nI shall not from the window of my room\\nCatch sight of those old chimneys any more.\\nNo more, he answered. If you pushed one day\\nThrough all the green hills to our fathers house.\\nYou d come upon a great charred circle, where\\nThe patient earth was singed an acre round,\\nWith one stone stair, symbolic of my life,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0337.jp2"}, "336": {"fulltext": "314 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAscending, winding, leading up to naught.\\nTis worth a poet s seeing. Will you go\\nI made no answer. Had I any right\\nTo weep with this man, that I dared to speak\\nA woman stood between his soul and mine,\\nAnd waved us off from touching evermore.\\nWith those unclean white hands of hers. Enough.\\nWe had burnt our viols and were silent.\\nSo,\\nThe silence lengthened till it pressed. I spoke\\nTo breathe, I think you were ill afterward.\\nMore ill, he answered, had been scarcely ill.\\nI hoped this feeble fumbling at life s knot\\nMight end concisely but I failed to die,\\nAs formerly I failed to live, and thus\\nGrew willing, having tried all other ways,\\nTo tr} just God s. Humility s so good\\nWhen pride s impossible. Mark us, how we make\\nOur virtues, cousin, from our worn-out sins,\\nWhich smack of them from henceforth. Is it right,\\nFor instance, to v/ed here while you love there\\nAnd yet, because a man sins once, the sin\\nCleaves to him in necessity to sin.\\nThat if he sin not so^ to damn himself\\nHe sins so., to damn others with himself\\nAnd thus to wed here, loving there, becomes\\nA duty. Virtue buds a dubious leaf\\nRound mortal brows your ivy s better, dear.\\nYet she, tis certain, is my very wife.\\nThe very lamb left mangled by the wolves\\nThrough my own bad shepherding and could I choose\\nBut take her on my shoulder past this stretch", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0338.jp2"}, "337": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH, 315\\nOf rough, uneasy wilderness, poor lamb,\\nPoor child, poor child Aurora, my beloved,\\nI will not vex you any more to-night\\nBut, having spoken what I came to say,\\nThe rest shall please you. What she can in me,\\nProtection, tender liking, freedom, ease,\\nShe shall have surely, liberally, for her\\nAnd hers, Aurora. Small amends they ll make\\nFor hideous evils which she had not known\\nExcept by me, and for this imminent loss,\\nThis forfeit presence of a gracious friend,\\nWhich also she must forfeit for my sake.\\nSince drop your hand in mine a moment, sweet.\\nWe re parting Ah, my snowdrop, what a touch.\\nAs if the wind had swept it off you grudge\\nYour gelid sweetness on my palm but so,\\nA moment angry, that I could not bear\\nYou speaking, breathing, living, side by side\\nWith some one called my wife and live myself\\nNay, be not cruel you must understand\\nYour lightest footfall on a floor of mine\\nWould shake the house, my lintel being uncrossed\\nGainst angels henceforth it is night with me.\\nAnd so, henceforth, I put the shutters up\\nAuroras must not come to spoil my dark.\\nHe smiled so feebly, with an empty hand\\nStretched sideway from me as indeed he looked\\nTo any one but me to give him help\\nAnd while the moon came suddenly out full.\\nThe double-rose of our Italian moons.\\nSufficient plainly for the heaven and earth,\\n(The stars struck dumb, and washed away in dews\\nOf golden glory, and the mountains steeped\\nIn divine languor) he, the man, appeared", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0339.jp2"}, "338": {"fulltext": "3l6 AURORA LEIGH,\\nSo pale and patient, like the marble man\\nA sculptor puts his personal sadness in\\nTo join his grandeur of ideal thought\\nAs if his mallet struck me from my height\\nOf passionate indignation, I who had risen\\nPale, doubting paused. Was Romney mad indeed\\nHad all this wrong of heart made sick the brain\\nThen quiet, with a sort of tremulous pride,\\nGo, cousin, I said coldly a farewell\\nWas sooner spoken twixt a pair of friends\\nIn those old days than seems to suit you now.\\nHowbeit, since then, I ve writ a book or two,\\nI m somewhat dull still in the manly art\\nOf phrase and metaphrase. Why, any man\\nCan carve a score of white Loves out of snow.\\nAs Buonarroti in my Florence there.\\nAnd set them on the wall in some safe shade,\\nAs safe, sir, as your marriage very good\\nThough if a woman took one from the ledge\\nTo put it on the table by her flowers,\\nAnd let it mind her of a certain friend,\\nTwould drop at once (so better), would not bear\\nHer nail-mark even, where she took it up\\nA little tenderly (so best, I say)\\nFor me, I would not touch the fragile thing\\nAnd risk to spoil it half an hour before\\nThe sun shall shine to melt it leave it there.\\nI m plain at speech, direct in purpose when\\nI speak, you ll take the meaning as it is.\\nAnd not allow for puckerings in the silk\\nBy clever stitches. I m a woman, sir,\\nAnd use the woman s figures naturally.\\nAs you the male license. So, I wish you well.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0340.jp2"}, "339": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 3^7\\nI m simply sorry for the griefs you ve had,\\nAnd not for your sake only, but mankind s.\\nThis race is never grateful from the first,\\nOne fills their cup at supper with pure wine,\\nWhich back they give at cross-time on a sponge\\nIn vinegar and gall.\\nIf gratefuller,\\nHe murmured, by so much less pitiable\\nGod s self would never have come down to die,\\nCould man have thanked him for it.\\nHappily\\nTis patent, that, whatever, I resumed,\\nYou suffered from this thanklessness of men,\\nYou sink no more than Moses bulrush boat\\nWhen once relieved of Moses for you re light,\\nYou re light, my cousin which is well for you.\\nAnd manly. For myself now mark me, sir,\\nThey burnt Leigh Hall but if, consummated\\nTo devils, heightened beyond Lucifers,\\nThey had burnt instead a star or two of those\\nWe saw above there just a moment back.\\nBefore the moon abolished them, destroyed\\nAnd riddled them in ashes through a sieve\\nOn the head of the foundering universe what then\\nIf you and I remained still you and I,\\nIt could not shift our places as mere friends,\\nNor render decent you should toss a phrase\\nBeyond the point of actual feeling Nay,\\nYou shall not interrupt me as you said,\\nWe re parting. Certainly, not once nor twice\\nTo-night you ve mocked me somewhat, or yourself,\\nAnd I, at least have not deserved it so\\nThat I should meet it unsurprised. But now.\\nEnough. We re parting Parting. Cousin Leigh,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0341.jp2"}, "340": {"fulltext": "3l8 AURORA LEIGH.\\nI wish you well through all the acts of life\\nAnd life s relations, wedlock not the least,\\nAnd it shall please me, in your words, to know\\nYou yield your wife protection, freedom, ease.\\nAnd very tender liking. May you live\\nSo happy with her, Romney, that your friends\\nShall praise her for it. Meantime some of us\\nAre wholly dull in keeping ignorant\\nOf what she has suffered by you, and what debt\\nOf sorrow your rich love sits down to pay\\nBut, if tis sweet for love to pay its debt,\\nTis sweeter still for love to give its gift\\nAnd you, be liberal in the sweeter way\\nYou can, I think. At least as touches me,\\nYou owe her. Cousin Romney, no amends.\\nShe is not used to hold my gown so fast\\nYou need entreat her now to let it go\\nThe lady never was a friend of mine.\\nNor capable I thought you knew as much\\nOf losing for your sake so poor a prize\\nAs such a worthless friendship. Be content,\\nGood cousin, therefore, both for her and you\\nI ll never spoil your dark, nor dull your noon,\\nNor vex you when you re merry or at rest\\nYou shall not need to put a shutter up\\nTo keep out this Aurora, though your north\\nCan make Auroras which vex nobody.\\nScarce known from night, I fancied let me add,\\nMy larks fly higher than some windows. Well,\\nYou ve read your Leighs. Indeed twould shake a house.\\nIf such as I came in with outstretched hand\\nStill warm and thrilling from the clasp of one\\nOf one we know to acknowledge, palm to palm,\\nAs mistress there, the Lady Waldemar.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0342.jp2"}, "341": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 3^9\\nNow God be with us with a sudden clash\\nOf voice he interrupted. What name s that\\nYou spoke a name, Aurora.\\nPardon me\\nI would that, Romney, I could name your wife\\nNor wound you, yet be w^orthy.\\nAre we mad\\nHe echoed wife mine Lady Waldemar\\nI think you said my wife. He sprang to his feet,\\nAnd threw his noble head back toward the moon.\\nAs one who swims against a stormy sea.\\nThen laughed with such a helpless, hopeless scorn,\\nI stood and trembled.\\nMay God judge me so\\nHe said at last, I came convicted here.\\nAnd humbled sorely, if not enough. I came,\\nBecause this woman from her crystal soul\\nHad- shown me something which a man calls light\\nBecause, too, formerly, I sinned by her.\\nAs then and ever since I have by God,\\nThrough arrogance of nature, though I loved\\nWhom best I need not say, since that is writ\\nToo plainly in the book of my misdeeds\\nAnd thus I came here to abase myself.\\nAnd fasten, kneeling, on her regent brows\\nA garland which I startled thence one day\\nOf her beautiful June youth. But here again\\nI m baffled, fail in my abasement as\\nMy aggrandizement there s no room left for me\\nAt any woman s foot who misconceives\\nMy nature, purpose, possible actions. What\\nAre you the Aurora who made large my dreams\\nTo frame your greatness you conceive so small\\nYou stand so less than woman through being more.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0343.jp2"}, "342": {"fulltext": "320 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd lose your natural instinct (like a beast)\\nThrough intellectual culture since indeed,\\nI do not think that any common she\\nWould dare adopt such monstrous forgeries\\nFor the legible life-signature of such\\nAs I, with all my blots, with all my blots\\nAt last, then, peerless cousin, we are peers\\nAt last we re even. Ah, you ve left your height,\\nAnd here upon my level we take hands.\\nAnd here I reach you to forgive you, sweet,\\nAnd that s a fall, Aurora. Long ago\\nYou seldom understood me but before\\nI could not blame you. Then, you only seemed\\nSo high above, you could not see below\\nBut now I breathe, but now I pardon Nay,\\nWe re parting. Dearest, men have burnt my house,\\nMaligneti my motives but not one, I swear,\\nHas wronged my soul as this Aurora has.\\nWho called the Lady Waldemar my wife.\\nNot married to her Yet you said\\nAgain\\nNay, read the lines (he held a letter out)\\nShe sent you through me.\\nBy the moonlight there\\nI tore the meaning out with passionate haste\\nMuch rather than I read it. Thus it ran.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0344.jp2"}, "343": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 32 1\\nNINTH BOOK.\\nEven thus. I pause to write it out at length,\\nThe letter of the Lady Waldemar.\\nI prayed your Cousin Leigh to take you this\\nHe says he ll do it. After years of love,\\nOr what is called so, when a woman frets\\nAnd fools ujDon one string of a man s name,\\nAnd fingers it forever till it breaks,\\nHe may perhaps do for her such a thing,\\nAnd she accept it without detriment,\\nAlthough she should not love him any more.\\nAnd I, who do not love him, nor love you.\\nNor you, Aurora, choose you shall repent\\nYour most ungracious letter, and confess.\\nConstrained by his convictions (he s convinced),\\nYou ve wronged me foully. Are you made so ill,\\nYou woman, to impute such ill to me\\nWe both had mothers, lay in their bosom once.\\nAnd, after all, I thank you, Aurora Leigh,\\nFor proving to myself that there are things\\nI would not do, not for my life, nor him,\\nThough something I have somewhat overdone;\\nFor instance, when I went to see the gods\\nOne morning on Olympus, with a step\\nThat shook the thunder from a certain cloud.\\nCommitting myself vilely. Could I think\\nThe Muse I pulled my heart out from my breast\\nTo soften had herself a sort of heart,\\nAnd loved my mortal He at least loved her,\\nI heard him say so twas my recompense,\\nWhen, watching at his bedside fourteen days,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0345.jp2"}, "344": {"fulltext": "322 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHe broke out ever, like a flame at whiles\\nBetween the heats of fever, Is it thou\\nBreathe closer, sweetest mouth And when, at last\\nThe fever gone, the wasted face extinct,\\nAs if it irked him much to know me there,\\nHe said, Twas kind, twas good, twas womanly\\n(And fifty praises to excuse no love),\\nBut was the picture safe he had ventured for\\nAnd then, half wondering, I have loved her well\\nAlthough she could not love me. Say instead,\\nI answered, she does love you. Twas my turn\\nTo rave I would have married him so changed,\\nAlthough the world had jeered me properly\\nFor taking up with Cupid at his worst.\\nThe silver quiver worn off on his hair.\\nNo, no, he murmured, no, she loves me not\\nAurora Leigh does better. Bring her book\\nAnd read it softly. Lady Waldemar,\\nUntil I thank your friendship more for that\\nThan even for harder service. So I read\\nYour book, Aurora, for an hour that day\\nI kept its pauses, marked its emphasis\\nMy voice, empaled upon its hooks of rhyme.\\nNot once would writhe, nor quiver, nor revolt\\nI read on calmly, calmly shut it up,\\nObserving, There s some merit in the book\\nAnd yet the merit in t is thrown away.\\nAs chances still with women if we write\\nOr write not we want string to tie our flowers,\\nSo drop them as we walk, which serves to show\\nThe way we went. Good-morning, Mister Leigh\\nYou ll find another reader the next time.\\nA woman who does better than to love,\\nI hate she will do nothing very well", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0346.jp2"}, "345": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. ^27,\\nMale poets are preferable, straining less,\\nAnd teaching more. I triumphed o er you both,\\nAnd left him.\\nWhen I saw him afterward,\\nI had read your shameful letter, and my heart,\\nHe came with health recovered, strong, though pale,\\nLord Howe and he, a courteous pair of friends,\\nTo say what men dare say to women, when\\nTheir debtors. But I stopped them with a word,\\nAnd proved I had never trodden such a road\\nTo carry so much dirt upon my shoe.\\nThen, putting into it something of disdain,\\nI asked forsooth his pardon, and my own,\\nFor having done no better than to love.\\nAnd that not wisely, though twas long ago,\\nAnd had been mended radically since.\\nI told him, as I tell you now. Miss Leigh,\\nAnd proved I took some trouble, for his sake\\n(Because I knew he did not love the girl).\\nTo spoil my hands with working in the stream\\nOf that poor bubbling nature, till she went.\\nConsigned to one I trusted (my own maid\\nWho once had lived full five months in my house,\\nDressed hair superbly) with a lavish purse\\nTo carry to Australia where she had left\\nA husband, said she. If the creature lied.\\nThe mission failed, we all do fail and lie\\nMore or less, and I m sorry, which is all\\nExpected from us when we fail the most.\\nAnd go to church to own it. What I meant\\nWas just the best for him, and me, and her\\nBest even for Marian I am sorry for t.\\nAnd very sorry. Yet my creature said\\nShe saw her stop to speak in Oxford Street", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0347.jp2"}, "346": {"fulltext": "324 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo one no matter I had sooner cut\\nMy hand off (though twere kissed the hour before,\\nAnd promised a duke s troth-ring for the next)\\nThan crush her silly head with so much wTong.\\nPoor child I would have mended it with gold,\\nUntil it gleamed like St. Sophia s dome\\nWhen all the faithful troop to morning prayer\\nBut he, he nipped the bud of such a thought\\nWith that cold Leigh look which I fancied once,\\nAnd broke in, Henceforth she was called his wife.\\nHis wife required no succor he was bound\\nTo Florence to resume this broken bond\\nEnough so. Both were happy, he and Howe,\\nTo acquit me of the heaviest charge of all\\nAt which I shot my tongue against my fly,\\nAnd struck him Would he carry, he Avas just,\\nA letter from me to Aurora Leigh,\\nAnd ratify from his authentic mouth\\nMy answer to her accusation V Yes,\\nIf such a letter were prepared in time.\\nHe s just, your cousin ay, abhorrently\\nHe d wash his hands in blood to keep them clean.\\nAnd so, cold, courteous, a mere gentleman,\\nHe bowed, we parted.\\nParted. Face no more.\\nVoice no more, love no more wiped wholly out,\\nLike some ill scholar s scrawl from heart and slate\\nAy, spit on, and so wiped out utterly,\\nBy some coarse scholar I have been too coarse.\\nToo human. Have we business, in our rank.\\nWith blood i the veins I will have henceforth none,\\nNot even to keep the color of my lip.\\nA rose is pink and pretty without blood\\nWhy not a woman When we ve played in vain", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0348.jp2"}, "347": {"fulltext": "A URORA LEIGH, 325\\nThe game, to adore, we have resources still,\\nAnd can play on, at leisure, being adored\\nHere s Smith, already swearing at my feet\\nThat I m the typic she. Away with Smith!\\nSmith smacks of Leigh, and henceforth I ll admit\\nNo socialists within three crinolines.\\nTo live and have his being. But for you,\\nThough insolent your letter and absurd.\\nAnd though I hate you frankly, take my Smith\\nFor when you have seen this famous marriage tied,\\nA most unspotted Erie to a noble Leigh\\n(His love astray on one he should not love),\\nHowbeit you may not want his love, beware,\\nYou ll want some comfort. So I leave you Smith\\nTake Smith! he talks Leigh s subjects, somewhat worse;\\nAdopts a thought of Leigh s and dwindles it\\nGoes leagues beyond, to be no inch behind\\nWill mind you of him, as a shoestring may\\nOf a man and women when they are made like you\\nGrow tender to a shoestring, footprint even.\\nAdore averted shoulders in a glass.\\nAnd memories of what, present once, was loathed.\\nAnd yet you loathed not Romney, though you played\\nAt fox-and-goose about him with your soul\\nPass over fox, you rub out fox, ignore\\nA feeling, you eradicate it the act s\\nIdentical.\\nI wish you joy, Miss Leigh,\\nYou ve made a happy marriage for your friend,\\nAnd all the honor, well-assorted love,\\nDerives from you who love him, whom he loves\\nYou need not wish me joy to think of it,\\nI have so much. Observe, Aurora Leigh,\\nYour droop of eyelid is the same as his,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0349.jp2"}, "348": {"fulltext": "326 AURORA LEIGH.\\nAnd but for you I might have won his love,\\nAnd to you I have shown my naked heart\\nFor which three things, I hate, hate, hate you. Hush\\nSuppose a fourth, I cannot choose but think\\nThat, with him, I were virtuouser than you\\nWithout him so I hate you from this gulf\\nAnd hollow of my soul which opens out\\nTo what, except for you, had been my heaven,\\nAnd is, instead, a place to curse by Love.\\nAn active kind of curse. I stood there cursed.\\nConfounded. I had seized and caught the sense\\nOf the letter, with its twenty stinging snakes.\\nIn a moment s sweep of eyesight, and I stood\\nDazed. Ah not married.\\nYou mistake, he said,\\nI m married. Is not Marian Erie my wife\\nAs God sees things, I have a wife and child\\nAnd I, as I m a man who honors God,\\nAm here to claim them as my child and wife.\\nI felt it hard to breathe, much less to speak.\\nNor word of mine was needed. Some one else\\nWas there for answering. Romney, she began,\\nMy great good angel, Romney.\\nThen, at first,\\nI knew that Marian Erie was beautiful.\\nShe stood there, still and pallid as a saint,\\nDilated, like a saint in ecstasy\\nAs if the floating moonshine interposed\\nBetwixt her foot and the earth, and raised her up\\nTo float upon it. I had left my child,\\nWho sleeps, she said, and, having drawn this way,\\nI heard you speaking friend Confirm me now.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0350.jp2"}, "349": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 327\\nYou take this Marian, such as wicked men\\nHave made her, for your honorable wife\\nThe thrilHng, solemn, proud, pathetic voice.\\nHe stretched his arms out toward that thrilling voice,\\nAs if to draw it on to his embrace.\\nI take her as God made her, and as men\\nMust fail to unmake her, for my honored wife.\\nShe never raised her eyes, nor took a step,\\nBut stood there in her place, and spoke again.\\nYou take this, Marian s child, which is her shame,\\nIn sight of men and women, for your child.\\nOf whom you will not ever feel ashamed\\nThe thrilling, tender, proud, pathetic voice.\\nHe stepped on toward it, still with outstretched arms,\\nAs if to quench upon his breast that voice.\\nMay God so father me as I do him,\\nAnd so forsake me as I let him feel\\nHe s orphaned haply. Here I take the child\\nTo share my cup, to slumber on my knee.\\nTo play his loudest gambol at my foot,\\nTo hold my finger in the public ways,\\nTill none shall need inquire, Whose child is this\\nThe gesture saying so tenderly, My own.\\nShe stood a moment silent in her place\\nThen turning toward me, very slow and cold,\\nAnd you, what say you will you blame me much,\\nIf, careful for that outcast child of mine,\\nI catch this hand that s stretched to me and him.\\nNor dare to leave him friendless in the world\\nWhere men have stoned me.? Have I not the right", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0351.jp2"}, "350": {"fulltext": "328 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo take so mere an aftermath from life,\\nElse found so wholly bare Or is it wrong\\nTo let your cousin, for a generous bent.\\nPut out his ungloved fingers among briers\\nTo set a tumbling bird s nest somewhat straight\\nYou will not tell him, though we re innocent,\\nWe are not harmless and that both our harms\\nWill stick to his good, smooth, noble life like burrs.\\nNever to drop off, though he shakes the cloak\\nYou ve been my friend you will not now be his\\nYou ve known him that he s worthy of a friend,\\nAnd you re his cousin, lady, after all.\\nAnd therefore more than free to take his part,\\nExplaining, since the nest is surely spoilt,\\nAnd Marian what you know her, though a wife.\\nThe world would hardly understand her case\\nOf being just hurt and honest while for him,\\nTwould ever twit him with his bastard child\\nAnd married harlot. Speak while yet there s time.\\nYou would not stand and let a good man s dog\\nTurn round and rend him, because his, and reared\\nOf a generous breed and will you let his act.\\nBecause it s generous Speak. I m bound to you.\\nAnd I ll be bound by only you in this.\\nThe thrilling, solemn voice, so passionless.\\nSustained, yet low, without a rise or fall,\\nAs one who had authority to speak.\\nAnd not as Marian.\\nI looked up to feel\\nIf God stood near me, and beheld his heaven\\nAs blue as Aaron s priestly robe appeared\\nTo Aaron when he took it off to die.\\nAnd then I spoke, Accept the gift, I say,\\nMy sister Marian, and be satisfied.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0352.jp2"}, "351": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 329\\nThe hand that gives has still a soul behind\\nWhich will not let it quail for having given,\\nThough foolish worldlings talk they know not what\\nOf what they know not. Romney s strong enough\\nFor this do you be strong to know he s strong.\\nHe stands on right s side never flinch for him,\\nAs if he stood on the other. You ll be bound\\nBy me I am a woman of repute\\nNo fly-blow gossip ever specked my life\\nMy name is clean and open as this hand,\\nWhose glove there s not a man dares blab about,\\nAs if he had touched it freely. Here s my hand\\nTo clasp your hand, my Marian, owned as pure 1\\nAs pure, as I m a woman and a Leigh\\nAnd, as I m both, I ll witness to the world\\nThat Romney Leigh is honored in his choice\\nWho chooses Marian for his honored wife.\\nHer broad wild woodland eyes shot out a light\\nHer smile was wonderful for rapture. Thanks,\\nMy great Aurora. Forward then she sprang\\nAnd, dropping her impassioned spaniel head\\nWith all its brown abandonment of curls\\nOn Romney s feet, we heard the kisses drawn\\nThrough sobs upon the foot, upon the ground\\nO Romney O my angel O unchanged\\nThough since we ve parted I have passed the grave\\nBut death itself could only better theey\\nNot change thee. Thee I do not thank at all\\nI but thank God who made thee what thou art,\\nSo wholly godlike.\\nWhen he tried in vain\\nTo raise her to his embrace, escaping thence\\nAs any leaping fawn from a huntsman s grasp,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0353.jp2"}, "352": {"fulltext": "330 AURORA LEIGH.\\nShe bounded off, and lighted beyond reach,\\nBefore him, with a staglike majesty\\nOf soft, serene defiance, as she knew\\nHe could not touch her, so was tolerant\\nHe had cared to try. She stood there with her great\\nDrowned eyes, and dripping cheeks, and strange sweet smile\\nThat lived through all, as if one held a light\\nAcross a waste of waters, shook her head\\nTo keep some thoughts down deeper in her soul,\\nThen, white and tranquil like a summer-cloud,\\nWhich, having rained itself to a tardy peace,\\nStands still in heaven as if it ruled the day.\\nSpoke out again, Although, my generous friend,\\nSince last we met and parted you re unchanged,\\nAnd, having promised faith to Marian Erie,\\nMaintain it, as she were not changed at all\\nAnd though that s worthy, though that s full of balm\\nTo any conscious spirit of a girl\\nWho once has loved you as I loved you once,\\nYet still it will not make her if she s dead.\\nAnd gone away where none can give or take\\nIn marriage, able to revive, return\\nAnd wed you, will it, Romney Here s the point;\\nMy friend, we ll see it plainer you and I\\nMust never, never, never join hands so.\\nNay, let me say it for I said it first\\nTo God, and placed it, rounded to an oath,\\nFar, far above the moon there, at his feet.\\nAs surely as I wept just now at yours,\\nWe never, never, never join hands so.\\nAnd now, be patient with me do not think\\nI m speaking from a false humility.\\nThe truth is, I am grown so proud with grief.\\nAnd He has said so often through his nights", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0354.jp2"}, "353": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 331\\nAnd through his mornings, Weep a little still,\\nThou foolish Marian, because women must,\\nBut do not blush at all except for sin,\\nThat I, who felt myself unworthy once\\nOf virtuous Romney and his high-born race,\\nHave come to learn, a woman, poor or rich,\\nDespised or honored, is a human soul.\\nAnd what her soul is, that she is herself.\\nAlthough she should be spit upon of men,\\nAs is the pavement of the churches here,\\nStill good enough to pray in. And being chaste\\nAnd honest, and inclined to do the right,\\nAnd love the truth, and live my life out green\\nAnd smooth beneath his steps, I should not fear\\nTo make him thus a less uneasy time\\nThan many a happier woman. Very proud\\nYou see me. Pardon, that I set a trap\\nTo hear a confirmation in your voice.\\nBoth yours, and yours. It is so good to know\\nTwas really God who said the same before\\nAnd thus it is in heaven, that first God speaks.\\nAnd then his angels. Oh, it does me good.\\nIt wipes me clean and sweet from devil s dirt.\\nThat Romney Leigh should think me worthy still\\nOf being his true and honorable wife\\nHenceforth I need not say, on leaving earth,\\nI had no glory in it. For the rest.\\nThe reason s ready (master, angel, friend,\\nBe patient with me) wherefore you and I\\nCan never, never, never join hands so.\\nI know you ll not be angry like a man\\n(For 7^?/ are none) when I shall tell the truth,\\nWhich is, I do not love you, Romney Leigh,\\nI do not love you. Ah, well catch my hands,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0355.jp2"}, "354": {"fulltext": "332 AURORA LEIGH.\\nMiss Leigh, and burn into my eyes ^vith yours,\\nI swear I do not love him. Did I once\\nTis said that women have been bruised to death,\\nAnd yet, if once they loved, that love of theirs\\nCould never be drained out with all their blood\\nI ve heard such things and pondered. Did I indeed\\nLove once or did I only worship Yes,\\nPerhaps, O friend, I set you up so high\\nAbove all actual good, or hope of good.\\nOr fear of evil, all that could be mine,\\nI haply set you above love itself.\\nArid out of reach of these poor woman s arms.\\nAngelic Romney. What was in my thought?\\nTo be your slave, your help, your toy, your tool.\\nTo be your love I never thought of that.\\nTo give you love still less. I gave you love\\nI think I did not give you anything\\nI was but only yours, upon my knees.\\nAll yours, in soul and body, in head and heart,\\nA creature you had taken from the ground.\\nStill crumbling through your fingers to your feet\\nTo join the dust she came from. Did I love,\\nOr did I worship Judge, Aurora Leigh\\nBut, if indeed I loved, twas long ago.\\nSo long before the sun and moon were made,\\nBefore the hells were open, ah, before\\nI heard my child cry in the desert night,\\nAnd knew he had no father. It may be\\nI m not as strong as other women are,\\nWho, torn and crushed, are not undone from love.\\nIt may be I am colder than the dead.\\nWho, being dead, love always. But for me.\\nOnce killed, this ghost of Marian loves no more.\\nNo more except the child no more at all.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0356.jp2"}, "355": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 333\\nI told your cousin, sir, tliat I was dead\\nAnd now she thinks I ll get up from my grave,\\nAnd wear my chin-cloth for a wedding-veil.\\nAnd glide along the churchyard like a bride.\\nWhile all the dead keep whispering though the withes\\nYou would be better in your place with us,\\nYou pitiful corruption At the thought,\\nThe damps break out on me like leprosy,\\nAlthough I m clean. Ay, clean as Marian Erie\\nAs Marian Leigh, I know I were not clean\\nNor have I so much life that I should love,\\nExcept the child. Ah God I could not bear\\nTo see my darling on a good man s knees,\\nAnd know by such a look, or such a sigh,\\nOr such a silence, that he thought sometimes,\\nThis child was fathered by some cursed wretch\\nFor, Romney, angels are less tender-wise\\nThan God and mothers even you would think\\nWhat we think never. He is ours, the child\\nAnd we would sooner vex a soul in heaven\\nBy coupling with it the dead body s thought\\nIt left behind it in a last month s grave\\nThan in my child see other than my child.\\nWe only never call him fatherless\\nWho has God and his mother. O my babe.\\nMy pretty, pretty blossom an ill wind\\nOnce blew upon my breast Can any think\\nI d have another, one called happier,\\nA fathered child, with father s love and race\\nThat s worn as bold and open as a smile.\\nTo vex my darling when he s asked his name\\nAnd has no answer What a happier child\\nThan mine, my best, who laughed so loud to-night\\nHe could not sleep for pastime Nay, I swear", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0357.jp2"}, "356": {"fulltext": "334 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBy life and love, that if I lived like some,\\nAnd loved like sotjte^ ay, loved you, Romney Leigh,\\nAs some love (eyes that have wept so much see clear)\\nI ve room for no more children in my arms,\\nMy kisses are all melted on one mouth,\\nI would not push my darling to a stool\\nTo dandle babies. Here s a hand shall keep\\nForever clean without a marriage ring.\\nTo tend my boy until he cease to need\\nOne steadying finger of it, and desert\\n(Not miss) his mother s lap to sit with men.\\nAnd when I miss him (not he me) I ll come\\nAnd say, Now give me some of Romney s work,\\nTo help your outcast orphans of the world\\nAnd comfort grief with grief. For you, meantime,\\nMost noble Romney, wed a noble wife.\\nAnd open on each other your great souls\\nI need not farther bless you. If I dared\\nBut strain and touch her in her upper sphere\\nAnd say, Come down to Romney pay my debt\\nI should be joyful with the stream of joy\\nSent through me. But the moon is in my face\\nI dare not though I guess the name he loves\\nI m learned with my studies of old days,\\nRemembering how he crushed his under lip\\nWhen some one came and spoke, or did not come\\nAurora, I could touch her with my hand.\\nAnd fly because I dare not.\\nShe was gone.\\nHe smiled so sternly that I spoke in haste.\\nForgive her she sees clearly for herself\\nHer instinct s holy.\\nforgive he said,\\nI only marvel how she sees so sure.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0358.jp2"}, "357": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 335\\nWhile others there he paused, then hoarse, abrupt,\\nAurora, you forgive us, her and me\\nFor her, the thing she sees, poor loyal child,\\nIf once corrected by the thing I know.\\nHad been unspoken, since she loves you well,\\nHas leave to love you while for me, alas\\nIf once or twice I let my heart escape\\nThis night remember, where hearts slip and fall\\nThey break beside we re parting, parting ah,\\nYou do not love, that you should surely know\\nWhat that word means. Forgive, be tolerant\\nIt had not been, but that I felt myself\\nSo safe in impuissance and despair\\nI could not hurt you, though I tossed my arms\\nAnd sighed my soul out. The most utter wretch\\nWill choose his postures ^vhen he comes to die,\\nHowever in the presence of a queen\\nAnd you ll forgive me some unseemly spasms\\nWhich meant no more than dying. Do you think\\nI had ever come here in my perfect mind,\\nUnless I had come here in my settled mind\\nBound Marian s, bound to keep the bond, and give\\nMy name, my house, my hand, the things I could.\\nTo Marian For even could give as much\\nEven I, affronting her exalted soul\\nBy a supposition that she wanted these,\\nCould act the husband s coat and hat set up\\nTo creak i the wind, and drive the world-crows off\\nFrom pecking in her garden. Straw can fill\\nA hole to keep out vermin. Now, at last,\\nI own heaven s angels round her life suffice\\nTo fight the rats of our society,\\nWithout this Romney. I can see it at last\\nAnd here is ended my pretension which", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0359.jp2"}, "358": {"fulltext": "336 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe most pretended. Over-proud of course,\\nEven so but not so stupid blind that I,\\nWhom thus the great Taskmaster of the world\\nHas set to meditate mistaken work,\\nMy dreary face against a dim blank wall\\nThroughout man s natural lifetime, could pretend\\nOr wish O love, I have loved you O my soul,\\nI have lost you But I swear by all yourself.\\nAnd all you might have been to me these years\\nIf that June morning had not failed my hope,\\nI m not so bestial to regret that day\\nThis night, this night, which still to you is fair\\nNay, not so blind, Aurora. I attest\\nThose stars above us which I cannot see.\\nYou cannot\\nThat if Heaven itself should stoop.\\nRemix the lots, and give me another chance,\\nI d say, No other I d record my blank.\\nAurora never should be wife of mine.\\nNot see the stars\\nTis worse still not to see\\nTo find your hand, although we re parting, dear.\\nA moment let me hold it ere we part.\\nAnd understand my last words these at last\\nI would not have you thinking when I m gone\\nThat Romney dared to hanker for your love\\nIn thought or vision, if attainable,\\n(Which certainly for me it never was)\\nAnd wished to use it for a dog to-day\\nTo help the blind man stumbling. God forbid\\nAnd now I know he held you in his palm,\\nAnd kept you open-eyed to all my faults,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0360.jp2"}, "359": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 337\\nTo save you at last from such a dreary end.\\nBelieve me, dear, that if I had known, like him,\\nWhat loss was coming on me, I had done\\nAs well in this as he has. Farewell you\\nWho are still my light, farewell How late it is\\nI know^ that now. You ve been too patient, sweet.\\nI will but blow my whistle toward the lane.\\nAnd some one comes, the same who brought me here.\\nGet in. Good-night.\\nA moment. Heavenly Christ\\nA moment. Speak once, Romney. Tis not true\\nI hold your hands, I look into your face\\nYou see me\\nNo more than the blessed stars.\\nBe blessed too, Aurora. Nay, my sweet.\\nYou tremble. Tender-hearted Do you mind\\nOf yore, dear, how you used to cheat old John\\nAnd let the mice out slyly from his traps.\\nUntil he marvelled at the soul in mice\\nWhich took the cheese, and left the snare The same\\nDear soft heart always Twas for this I grieved\\nHowe s letter never reached you. Ah, you had heard\\nOf illness, not the issue, not the extent,\\nMy life long sick with tossings up and down,\\nThe sudden revulsion in the blazing house.\\nThe strain and struggle both of body and soul,\\nWhich left fire running in my veins for blood\\nScarce lacked that thunderbolt of the falling beam\\nWhich nicked me on the forehead as I passed\\nThe gallery-door with a burden. Say heaven s bolt.\\nNot William Erie s, not Marian s father s, tramp\\nAnd poacher, whom I found for what he was,\\nAnd, eager for her sake to rescue him,\\nForth swept from the open highw^ay of the world,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0361.jp2"}, "360": {"fulltext": "338 AURORA LEIGH.\\nRoad-dust and all, till, like a woodland boar\\nIvlost naturally unwilling to be tamed.\\nHe notched me with his tooth. But not a word\\nTo Marian And I do not think, besides,\\nHe turned the tilting of the beam my way\\nAnd if he laughed, as many swear, poor wretch,\\nNor he nor I supposed the hurt so deep.\\nWe ll hope his next laugh may be merrier,\\nIn a better cause.\\nBlind, Romney\\nAh, my friend,\\nYou ll learn to say it in a cheerful voice.\\nI, too, at first desponded. To be blind,\\nTurned out of nature, mulcted as a man.\\nRefused the daily largess of the sun\\nTo humble creatures When the fever s heat\\nDropped from me, as the flame did from my house\\nAnd left me ruined like it, stripped of all\\nThe hues and shapes of aspectable life,\\nA mere bare blind stone in the blaze of day,\\nA man, upon the outside of the earth,\\nAs dark as ten feet under, in the grave,\\nWhy, that seemed hard.\\nNo hope\\nA tear you weep.\\nDivine Aurora tears upon my hand\\nI ve seen you weeping for a mouse, a bird,\\nBut, weep for me, Aurora Yes, there s hope.\\nNo hope of sight I could be learned, dear,\\nAnd tell you in what Greek and Latin name\\nThe visual nerve is withered to the root.\\nThough the outer eyes appear indifferent.\\nUnspotted in their crystals. But there s hope.\\nThe spirit from behind this dethroned sense.", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0362.jp2"}, "361": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH, 339\\nSees, waits in patience till the walls break up\\nFrom which the bas-relief and fresco have dropf\\nThere s hope. The man here, once so arrogant\\nAnd restless, so ambitious for his part,\\nOf dealing with statistically packed\\nDisorders (from a pattern on his nail).\\nAnd packing such things quite another way,\\nIs now contented. From his personal loss\\nHe has come to hope for others when they lose,\\nAnd wear a gladder faith in what we gain\\nThrough bitter experience, compensation sweet,\\nLike that tear, sweetest. I am quiet now.\\nAs tender surely for the suffering world.\\nBut quiet, sitting at the wall to learn.\\nContent henceforth to do the thing I can\\nFor though as powerless, said I, as a stone,\\nA stone can still give shelter to a worm,\\nAnd it is worth while being a stone for that.\\nThere s hope, Aurora.\\nIs there hope for me\\nFor me and is there room beneath the stone\\nFor such a worm And if I came and said\\nWhat all this weeping scarce will let me say,\\nAnd yet what women cannot say at all\\nBut weeping bitterly (the pride keeps up\\nUntil the heart breaks under it) I love,\\nI love you, Romney\\nSilence he exclaimed\\nA woman s pity sometimes makes her mad.\\nA man s distraction must not cheat his soul\\nTo take advantage of it. Yet tis hard\\nFarewell, Aurora.\\nBut I love you, sir\\nAnd when a woman says she loves a man,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0363.jp2"}, "362": {"fulltext": "340 AURORA LEIGH.\\nThe man must hear her, though he love her not,\\nWhich hush he has leave to answer in his turn\\nShe will not surely blame him. As for me,\\nYou call it pity, think I m generous\\nTwere somewhat easier, for a woman proud\\nAs I am, and I m very vilely proud,\\nTo let it pass as such, and press on you\\nLove born of pity, seeing that excellent loves\\nAre born so, often, nor the quicker die,\\nAnd this would set me higher by the head\\nThan now I stand. No matter. Let the truth\\nStand high Aurora must be humble no.\\nMy love s not pity merely. Obviously\\nI m not a generous woman, never was,\\nOr else, of old, I had not looked so near\\nTo weights and measures, grudging you the power\\nTo give, as first I scorned your power to judge\\nFor me, Aurora. I would have no gifts\\nForsooth, but God s and I would use them, too,\\nAccording to my pleasure and my choice.\\nAs he and I were equals, you below.\\nExcluded from that level of interchange\\nAdmitting benefaction. You were wrong\\nIn much you said so. I was wrong in most.\\nOh, most You only thought to rescue men\\nBy half-means, half-way, seeing half their wants,\\nWhile thinking nothing of your personal gain.\\nBut I, who saw the human nature broad\\nAt both sides, comprehending too the soul s\\nAnd all the high necessities of art.\\nBetrayed the thing I saw, and wronged my own life\\nFor which I pleaded. Passioned to exalt\\nThe artist s instinct in me at the cost\\nOf putting down the woman s, I forgot", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0364.jp2"}, "363": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 34 1\\nNo perfect artist is developed here\\nFrom any imperfect woman. Flower from root,\\nAnd spiritual from natural, grade by grade\\nIn all our life. A handful of the earth\\nTo make God s image the despised poor earth,\\nThe healthy odorous earth, I missed, with it,\\nThe divine breath that blows the nostrils out\\nTo ineffable inflatus, ay, the breath\\nWhich love is. Art is much but love is more.\\nart, my art, thou rt much but love is more\\nArt symbolizes heaven but love is God,\\nAnd makes heaven. I, Aurora, fell from mine.\\n1 would not be a woman like the rest,\\nA simple woman who believes in love,\\nAnd owns the right of love because she loves,\\nAnd, hearing she s beloved, is satisfied\\nWith what contents God I must analyze,\\nConfront, and question, just as if a fly\\nRefused to warm itself in any sun\\nTill such was in leone I must fret.\\nForsooth, because the month w^as only May,\\nBe faithless of the kind of proffered love.\\nAnd captious, lest it miss my dignity.\\nAnd scornful that my lover sought a wdfe\\nTo use to use O Romney, O my love\\nI am changed since then, changed wholly for indeed\\nIf now you d stoop so low to take my love.\\nAnd use it roughly, without stint or spare.\\nAs men use common things with more behind\\n(And, in this, ever would be more behind).\\nTo any mean and ordinary end.\\nThe joy would set me, like a star in heaven,\\nSo high up, I should shine because of height.\\nAnd not of virtue. Yet in one respect.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0365.jp2"}, "364": {"fulltext": "342 AURORA LEIGH.\\nJust one, beloved, I am in no wise changed\\nI love you, loved you loved you first and last.\\nAnd love you on forever. Now I know\\nI loved you always, Romney. She who died\\nKnew that, and said so Lady Waldemar\\nKnows that and Marian. I had known the same.\\nExcept that I was prouder than I knew,\\nAnd not so honest. Ay, and as I live,\\nI should have died so, crushing in my hand\\nThis rose of love, the wasp inside and all.\\nIgnoring ever to my soul and you\\nBoth rose and pain, except for this great loss,\\nThis great despair, to stand before your face\\nAnd know you do not see me where I stand.\\nYou think, perhaps, I am not changed from pride.\\nAnd that I chiefly bear to say such words\\nBecause you cannot shame me with your eyes\\ncalm, grand eyes, extinguished in a storm,\\nBlown out like lights o er melancholy seas.\\nThough shrieked for by the shipwrecked O my Dark,\\nMy Cloud, to go before me every day.\\nWhile I go ever toward the wilderness,\\n1 would that you could see me bare to the soul\\nIf this be pity, tis so for myself.\\nAnd not for Romney he can stand alone\\nA man like hi7?i is never overcome\\nNo woman like me counts him pitiable\\nWhile saints applaud him. He mistook the world\\nBut I mistook my own heart, and that slip\\nWas fatal. Romney, will you leave me here\\nSo wrong, so proud, so weak, so unconsoled,\\nSo mere a woman and I love you so,\\nI love you, Romney\\nCould I see his face", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0366.jp2"}, "365": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 343\\nI wept so Did I drop against his breast,\\nOr did his arms constrain me Were my cheeks\\nHot, overflooded, with my tears, or his\\nAnd which of our two large explosive hearts\\nSo shook me That I know not. There were words\\nThat broke in utterance melted in the fire\\nEmbrace that was convulsion then a kiss\\nAs long and silent as the ecstatic night.\\nAnd deep, deep, shuddering breaths, which meant beyond\\nWhatever could be told by word or kiss.\\nBut what he said I have written day by day,\\nWith somewhat even writing. Did I think\\nThat such a passionate rain would intercept\\nAnd dash this last page What he said, indeed,\\nI fain would write it down here like the rest,\\nTo keep it in my eyes, as in my ears.\\nThe heart s sweet scripture, to be read at night\\nWhen weary, or at morning when afraid,\\nAnd lean my heaviest oath on when I swear.\\nThat when all s done, all tried, all counted here.\\nAll great arts, and all good philosophies,\\nThis love just puts its hand out in a dream.\\nAnd straight outstretches all things.\\nWhat he said\\nI fain would write. But, if an angel spoke\\nIn thunder, should we haply know much more\\nThan that it thundered If a cloud came down\\nAnd wrapt us wholly, could we draw its shape.\\nAs if on the outside, and not overcome\\nAnd so he spake. His breath against my face\\nConfused his words, yet made them more intense,\\n(As when the sudden finger of the wind\\nWill wipe a row of single city lamps", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0367.jp2"}, "366": {"fulltext": "344 AURORA LEIGH.\\nTo a pure white line of flame, more luminous\\nBecause of obliteration) more intense,\\nThe intimate presence carrying in itself\\nComplete communication, as with souls,\\nWho, having put the body off, perceive\\nThrough simply being. Thus twas granted me\\nTo know he loved me to the depth and height\\nOf such large natures, ever competent.\\nWith grand horizons by the sea or land,\\nTo love s grand sunrise. Small spheres hold small iircs\\nBut he loved largely, as a man can love.\\nWho, baffled in his love, dares live his life,\\nAccept the ends which God loves, for his own,\\nAnd lift a constant aspect.\\nFrom the day\\nI brought to England my poor searching face\\n(An orphan even of my father s grave),\\nHe had loved me, watched me, watched his soul in mine,\\nWhich in me grew and heightened into love.\\nFor he, a boy still, had been told the tale\\nOf how a fairy bride from Italy,\\nWith smells of oleanders in her hair,\\nWas coming through the vines to touch his hand\\nWliereat the blood of boyhood on the palm\\nMade sudden heats. And when at last I came.\\nAnd lived before him, lived, and rarely smiled,\\nHe smiled and loved me for the thing I was.\\nAs every child will love the year s first flower\\n(Not certainly the fairest of the year.\\nBut in which the complete year seems to blow),\\nThe poor sad snowdrop, growing between drifts,\\nMysterious medium twixt the plant and frost.\\nSo faint with winter while so quick with spring,\\nAnd doubtful if to thaw itself away", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0368.jp2"}, "367": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 345\\nWith that snow near it. Not that Romney Leigh\\nHad loved me coldly. If I thought so once,\\nIt was as if I had held my hand in fire,\\nAnd shook for cold. But now I understood\\nForever, that the very fire and heat\\nOf troubling passion in him burned him clear,\\nAnd shaped to dubious order word and act\\nThat, just because he loved me over all,\\nAll wealth, all lands, all social privilege,\\nTo which chance made him unexpected heir,\\nAnd just because on all these lesser gifts.\\nConstrained by conscience and the sense of wrong,\\nHe had stamped with steady hand God s arrow-mark\\nOf dedication to the human need,\\nHe thought it should be so, too, with his love.\\nHe, passionately loving, w^ould bring down\\nHis love, his life, his best (because the best).\\nHis bride of dreams, who walked so still and high\\nThrough flowery poems, as through meadow-grass.\\nThe dust of golden lilies on her feet,\\nThat she should walk beside him on the rocks\\nIn all that clang and hewing out of men,\\nAnd help the work of help which was his life,\\nAnd prove he kept back nothing, not his soul.\\nAnd when I failed him, for I failed him, I,\\nAnd when it seemed he had missed my love, he thought\\nAurora makes room for a working-noon,\\nAnd so, self-girded with torn strips of hope,\\nTook up his life as if it were for death\\n(Just capable of one heroic aim).\\nAnd threw it in the thickest of the world,\\nAt which men laughed as if he had drowned a dog.\\nNo wonder, since Aurora failed him first\\nThe morning and the evening made his day.", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0369.jp2"}, "368": {"fulltext": "346 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBut oh the night O bitter-sweet O sweet\\ndark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy\\nOf darkness O great mystery of love,\\nIn which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason s self.\\nEnlarges rapture, as a pebble dropt\\nIn some full wine-cup over-brims the wine\\nWhile we two sate together, leaned that night\\nSo close my very garments crept and thrilled\\nWith strange electric life, and both my cheeks\\nGrew red, then pale, with touches from my hair\\nIn which his breath was while the golden moon\\nWas hung before our faces as the badge\\nOf some sublime, inherited despair,\\nSince ever to be seen by only one,\\nA voice said, low and rapid as a sigh.\\nYet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile,\\nThank God, who made me blind to make me see\\nShine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls.\\nWhich rul st forevermore both day and night\\n1 am happy.\\nI flung closer to his breast.\\nAs sword that after battle flings to sheath\\nAnd, in that hurtle of united souls,\\nThe mystic motions which in common moods\\nAre shut beyond our sense broke in on us,\\nAnd, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin,\\nAnd all the starry turbulence of worlds\\nSwing round us in their audient circles, till\\nIf that same golden moon were overhead\\nOr if beneath our feet, we did not know.\\nAnd then, calm, equal, smooth with weights of joy,\\nHis voice rose, as some chief musician s song\\nAmid the old Jewish temple s Selah-pause,", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0370.jp2"}, "369": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 347\\nAnd bade me mark how we two met at last\\nUpon this moon-bathed promontory of earth,\\nTo give up much on each side, then take all.\\nBeloved, it sang, we must be here to work\\nAnd men who work can only work for men,\\nAnd, not to work in vain, must comprehend\\nHumanity, and so work humanly.\\nAnd raise men s bodies still by raising souls,\\nAs God did first.\\nBut stand upon the earth,\\nI said, to raise them (this is human too\\nThere s nothing high which has not first been low\\nMy humbleness, said One, has made me great)\\nAs God did last.\\nAnd work all silently\\nAnd simply, he returned, as God does all\\nDistort our nature never for our work.\\nNor count our right hands stronger for being hoofs.\\nThe man most man, with tenderest human hands,\\nWorks best for men, as God in Nazareth.\\nHe paused upon the word, and then resumed\\nFewer programmes, we who have no prescience.\\nFewer systems, we who are held, and do not hold.\\nLess mapping out of masses to be saved.\\nBy nations or by sexes. Fourier s void.\\nAnd Comte absurd, and Cabet, puerile.\\nSubsist no rules of life outside of life,\\nNo perfect manners, without Christian souls\\nThe Christ himself had been no Lawgiver\\nUnless he had given the life, too, with the law.\\nI echoed thoughtfully, The man most man\\nWorks best for men, and, if most man indeed,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0371.jp2"}, "370": {"fulltext": "348 AURORA LEIGH.\\nHe gets his manhood plainest from his soul\\nWhile obviously this stringent soul itself\\nObeys the old law of development,\\nThe spirit ever witnessing in ours,\\nAnd love, the soul of soul, within the soul,\\nEvolving it sublimely. First, God s love.\\nAnd next, he smiled, the love of wedded souls.\\nWhich still presents that mystery s counterpart.\\nSweet shadow-rose upon the water of life.\\nOf such a mystic substance, Sharon gave\\nA name to human, vital, fructuous rose.\\nWhose calyx holds the multitude of leaves,\\nLoves filial, loves fraternal, neighbor-loves\\nAnd civic, all fair petals, all good scents.\\nAll reddened, sweetened, from one central Heart\\nAlas I cried, It was not long ago\\nYou swore this very social rose smelt ill.\\nAlas he answered, is it a rose at all\\nThe filial s thankless, the fraternal s hard,\\nThe rest is lost. I do but stand and think,\\nAcross the waters of a troubled life,\\nThis flower of heaven so vainly overhangs,\\nWhat perfect counterpart would be in sight\\nIf tanks were clearer. Let us clean the tubes.\\nAnd wait for rains. O poet, O my love.\\nSince was too ambitious in my deed.\\nAnd thought to distance all men in success\\n(Till God came on me, marked the place, and said,\\nIll-doer, henceforth keep within this line,\\nAttempting less than others and I stand\\nAnd work among Christ s little ones, content).", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0372.jp2"}, "371": {"fulltext": "AURORA LEIGH. 349\\nCome thou, my compensation, my dear sight,\\nMy morning-star, my morning rise and shine,\\nAnd touch my hills with radiance not their own.\\nShine out for two, Aurora, and fulfil\\nMy falling-short that must be work for two,\\nAs I, though thus restrained, for two shall love\\nGaze on, with inscient vision, toward the sun,\\nAnd from his visceral heat pluck out the roots\\nOf light beyond him. Art s a service, mark\\nA silver key is given to thy clasp.\\nAnd thou shalt stand unwearied, night and day,\\nAnd fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards,\\nTo open, so, that intermediate door\\nBetwixt the different planes of sensuous form\\nAnd form insensuous, that inferior men\\nMay learn to feel on still through these to those,\\nAnd bless thy ministration. The world waits\\nFor help. Beloved, let us love so well.\\nOur work shall still be better for our love.\\nAnd still our love be sweeter for our work.\\nAnd both commended, for the sake of each,\\nBy all true workers and true lovers born.\\nNow press the clarion on thy woman s lip\\n(Love s holy kiss shall still keep consecrate).\\nAnd breathe thy fine keen breath along the brass,\\nAnd blow all class walls level as Jericho s\\nPast Jordan, crying from the top of souls.\\nTo souls, that, here assembled on earth s flats.\\nThey get them to some purer eminence\\nThan any hitherto beheld for clouds\\nWhat height we know not, but the way we know,\\nAnd how, by mounting ever, we attain.\\nAnd so climb on. It is the hour for souls,\\nThat bodies, leavened by the will and love,", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0373.jp2"}, "372": {"fulltext": "350 AURORA LEIGH.\\nBe lightened to redemption. The world s old\\nBut the old world waits the time to be renewed,\\nToward which new hearts in individual growth\\nMust quicken, and increase to multitude\\nIn new dynasties of the race of men,\\nDeveloped whence shall grow spontaneously\\nNew churches, new economies, new laws\\nAdmitting freedom, new societies\\nExcluding falsehood He shall make all new.\\nMy Romney Lifting up my hand in his.\\nAs wheeled by seeing spirits toward the east,\\nHe turned instinctively, where, faint and far,\\nAlong the tingling desert of the sky,\\nBeyond the circle of the conscious hills,\\nWere laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass\\nThe first foundations of that new, near day\\nWhich should be builded out of heaven to God.\\nHe stood a moment with erected brows\\nIn silence, as a creature might who gazed,\\nStood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyes\\nUpon the thought of perfect noon and when\\nI saw his soul saw, Jasper first, I said,\\nAnd second, sapphire third, chalcedony\\nThe rest in order, last an amethyst.\\nvu", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0374.jp2"}, "373": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0375.jp2"}, "374": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3677", "width": "2350", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0376.jp2"}, "375": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3667", "width": "2349", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0377.jp2"}, "376": {"fulltext": "", "height": "3825", "width": "2476", "jp2-path": "auroraleighpoemi00brow_0378.jp2"}}