FIRST BOOK.

Of writing many books there is no end; And I have written much in prose and

verse

For others' uses, will write now for mine,

Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend,

Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just

To hold together what he was and is.

I, writing thus, am still what men call young;

I have not so far left the coasts of life
To travel inland, that I cannot hear
That murmur of the outer Infinite
Which unweaned babies smile at in their
sleep

When wondered at for smiling; not so far,

But still I catch my mother at her post Beside the nursery-door, with finger up, 'Hush, hush-here's too much noise!' while her sweet eyes

Leap forward, taking part against her word

In the child's riot. Still I sit and feel My father's slow hand, when she had left us both,

Stroke out my childish curls across his knee ;

And hear Assunta's daily jest (she knew
He liked it better than a better jest)
Inquire how many golden scudi went
To make such ringlets. O my father's
hand,

Stroke heavily, heavily the poor hair down,

Draw, press the child's head closer to thy knee !

I'm still too young, too young, to sit alone.

I write. My mother was a Florentine, Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me

When scarcely I was four years old; my life

A poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp

Which went out therefore. She was weak and frail;

She could not bear the joy of giving life

The mother's rapture slew her. If her kiss

Had left a longer weight upon my lips, It might have steadied the uneasy breath, And reconciled and fraternised my soul With the new order. As it was, indeed, I felt a mother-want about the world, And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb

Left out at night in shutting up the fold,

As restless as a nest-deserted bird Grown chill through something being away, though what

It knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was born

To make my father sadder, and myself Not overjoyous, truly. Women know The way to rear up children, (to be just,) They know a simple, merry, tender

knack

Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make

A weary, wormy darkness, spurred the flank

With flame, that it should eat and end itself

Like some tormented scorpion. Then, at last,

I do remember clearly, how there came A stranger with authority, not right, (I thought not) who commanded, caught

me up

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

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

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

In all a child's astonishment at grief Stared at the wharf-edge where she stood and moaned,

My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned !

The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy, Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck,

Like one in anger drawing back her skirts

Which suppliants catch at. Then the bitter sea

Inexorably pushed between us both, And sweeping up the ship with my despair

Threw us out as a pasture to the stars.

Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep;

Ten nights and days without the common face

Of any day or night; the moon and sun Cut off from the green reconciling earth, To starve into a blind ferocity

And glare unnatural; the very sky (Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea As if no human heart should 'scape alive,)

Bedraggled with the desolating salt, Until it seemed no more that holy heaven To which my father went. All new, and strange

The universe turned stranger, for a child.

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

Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home