Inexorably pushed between us both,

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

Which, round the new-made creatures hanging there,

Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives ;

Then bring your gauges. If the days work s scant,

Hummed ignorantly, as the sea in shells,

Tormented by the quickened blood of roots,

To starve into a blind ferocity

The ends, through speaking unrequited loves

Stared at the wharf-edge where she stood and moaned,

I recollect as, after fevers, men

And drew me feebly through the hall into

With an intense, strong, struggling heart beside

Sp plainly in tune to these things and the rest,

That approbation of the general race,

There it is,

That scarce dare breathe they are so beautiful ?--

Among those mean red houses through the fog ?

With the human hearts large seasons, when it hopes

With winters and with autumns, -- and beyond,

Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands

Aurora Leigh : be humble.

Deal with us nobly, women though we be.

In a sacrament of souls ? with mothers breasts

Missing the turn still, baffled by the door ;

Less blindly. In my ears, my fathers word

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

And she was there to meet me. Very kind.

`Let no one be called happy till his death.

She struggled for her ordinary calm

From possible pulses ; brown hair pricked with grey

And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates

Be called unhappy. Measure not the work

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

(Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea

To speak my poems in mysterious tune

She stood upon the steps to welcome me,

`She loved my father, and would love９9lｉb•nｅｔ me too

I, alas,

Threw us out as a pasture to the stars.

From Gods celestial crystals ; all things blurred

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

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

Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres ? --

A nose drawn sharply yet in delicate lines ;

Against chance-vulgarisms, and, in the abyss

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

And dared to do it they were so far off

To some one friend. We must have mediators

They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows

`Love, love, my child. She, black there with my grief,

A weary, wormy darkness, spurrd i the flank

And need one flannel (with a proper sense

The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes

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

The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy,

Of any day or night ; the moon and sun

Because we are of one flesh after all

With springs delicious trouble in the ground,

The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship

The universe turned stranger, for a child.

Or all the life in heaven seems slow and cold :

Although our woman-hands should shake and fail ;

With heart to strike a radiant colour up

Bedraggled with the desolating salt,

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

Like some tormented scorpion. Then at last

Among his mountains : I was just thirteen,

Imperiously, and held me at arms length,

And the highest fame was never reached except

As being not small, and more appreciable

With flame, that it should eat and end itself

As if no human heart should scape alive,)

And if we fail .. But must we ? --

And glare unnatural ; the九九藏书网 very sky

Accounting that to leap from perch to perch

And sweeping up the ship with my despair

In tongue-tied Springs, -- and suddenly awoke

We ll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,

We miss the abstract when we comprehend.

A stranger with authority, not right,

The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts

Who fail at the beginning to hold and move

With multitudinous life, and finally

Ay, Romney, I remember, told me once

And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyes

Beyond our mortal ? -- can I speak my verse

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase,

Until it seemed no more that holy heaven

Makes awful lightning. His last word was, `Love --

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

Ten nights and days, without the common face

We women are too apt to look to One,

In all a childs astonishment at grief

[Book 1]

We miss it most when we aspire, -- and fail.

Good only being perceived as the end of good,

Was act and joy enough for any bird.

With man and nature ? -- with the lava-lymph

To draw the new light closer, catch and cling

Kissed me with cold lips, suffered me to cling,

Of difference in the quality) -- and still

I think I see my fathers sister stand

And, in that we have nobly striven at least,

And wishes me a paradise of good,

And fears, joys, grieves, and loves ? -- with all that strain

And not enough for us by any means.

The book-club, guarded from your modern trick

Might feel my love -- she was his sister once,

To hold and move them if they will or no,

From the empyrean to assure their souls

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

Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home

Like one in anger drawin九-九-藏-书-网g back her skirts

A close mild mouth, a little soured about

Past fading also.

In smiling ; cheeks, in which was yet a rose

Thread back the passage of delirium,

By what was aimed above it. Art for art,

Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find

The apothecary, looked on once a year

Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck,

To which I add, -- Let no one till his death

Of perished summers, like a rose in a book,

Betwixt our highest conscience and the judge ;

But never, never have forgot themselves

Presents a poor end, (though the arrow speed,

We strain our natures at doing something great,

And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves

To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,

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

`Love, my child, love, love ! -- (then he had done with grief)

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

It cannot be ; it shall not. Fame itself,

To full life and life s needs and agonies,

Searched through my face, -- ay, stabbed it through and through,

Of trailing garments, shall not trip me up :

As long as I deserved it. Very kind.

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

Or active outline on the indifferent air.

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

Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight

By frigid use of life, (she was not old

Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh

One man, -- and he my cousin, and he my friend,

Why, call it scant ; affect no compromise ;

Still growing like the plants from unseen roots

Between the vicar and the country squires,

To which my father went. All new and strange

And some one near me said the child was mad

But otherwise 九九藏书网evades me, puts me off

`Love, my child. Ere I answered he was gone,

A quiet life, which was not life at all,

Young babes, who catch at every shred of wool

(I thought not) who commanded, caught me up

From alien lips which had no kiss for mine

Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides

In arts pure temple. Must I work in vain,

Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,

The room she sate in.

But then my mothers smile breaks up the whole,

Absorb the light here ? -- not a hill or stone

Too light a book for a grave mans reading ! Go,

Than haply that we, so, commend ourselves

Their radiant faces upward, burn away

Or peradventure niggardly half-truths ;

That trickles from successive galaxies

From old Assuntas neck ; how, with a shriek,

Although my fathers elder by a year)

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

With the great escapings of ecstatic souls,

Without the approbation of a man ?

And honour us with truth if not with praise.

I ll have no traffic with the personal thought

Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live

Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame,

Of my fathers silence, to shriek back a word,

Shot straight with vigorous finger to the white,)

I am like,

With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness, --

[Book 5]

In token of the harvest-time of flowers ?--

That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,

And God alone pleased, -- thats too poor, we think,

Of delicate features, -- paler, near as grave ;

Cut off from the green reconciling earth,

A wicked murderer in my innocent face,

And he born tender, made intelligent,

As having the same warrant over them

Which supplicants catch at. Then the bitter sea

Still drop b九-九-藏-书-网y drop adown the finger of God

She had lived, well say,

Of difficult questions ; yet, obtuse to me,

To prove their soundness of humility.

Until the day s out and the labour done,

And makes it better sometimes than itself.

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

Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep ;

And none was left to love in all the world.

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

Which proves a certain impotence in art.

In still new worlds ? -- with summer-days in this ?

Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth

Alike imperious as the primal rhythm

Yet, so, I will not. -- This vile womans way

Far less because it s something great to do,

Some sweet saints blood must quicken in our palms

Good looks, good means, and good digestion, -- ay,

Shall I fail ?

As almost you could touch them with a hand,

Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.

Of that theurgic nature ? I must fail,

AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope

Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,

There, ended childhood. What succeeded next

Upon the hall-step of her country-house

In thickets, and eat berries !

My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned !

A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,

Was this my fathers England ? the great isle ?

And when I heard my fathers language first

Of me, incurious ! likes me very well,

There, with some strange spasm

Preserved her intellectual. She had lived

As if for taming accidental thoughts

I do remember clearly, how there came

And good for God Himself, the essential Good !

This dark of the body, issuing on a world,

The skies themselves looked low and positive,