'Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and line. 'Happy are aJl free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed, But blessed are those among nations, who dare to be strong for the rest V XXt. Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined Long she stood and ga2ed, and twice she tried at the name, Only a tear for Venice ?—she turned as in passion and loss, And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing the cross. Fain*, with that strain of heart she moved on then to another, XXv. Holding his hands in hers :—* Out of the Piedmont lion Cometh the sweetness of freedom ! sweetest to live on or to die on.' Holding his cold rough hands—' Well, oh well have ye done Back he fell while she spoke. She rose to her feet with a spring— 'That was Piedmontese! and this is the Court of the King CONFESSIONS. Face to face in my chamber, my silent chamber, I saw her! ii. When God smote His hands together, and struck out tby soul as a spark ill. When God on that sin had pity, and did not trample thee straight iv. When God on that sin had pity, and did not meet it as such, v. Then T cried aloud in my passion, . . unthankful and impotent creature, 'I have loved,* she said, (Words bowing her head vi. Again with a lifted voice, like a choral trumpet that takes The lowest note of a viol that trembles, and triumphing breaks On the air with it solemn and clear,—* Behold! I have sinned not in this! Where I loved, I have loved much and well,—I have verily loved not amiss. 'Let the living, ' she said, 'Enquire of the Dead, In the house of the pale-fronted Images, My own true dead will answer for me, that I have not loved amiss In my love for all these. vtt. 'The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and by night: vm. 'If I angered any among them, from thenceforth my own life was sore; If I fell by chance from their presence, I clung to their memory more: Their tender I often felt holy, their bitter I sometimes called sweet: And whenever their heart was refused me, I fell down straight at their feet. 'I have loved,' she said,— 'Man is weak, God is dread; Yet the weak man dies with his spirit at ease. Having poured such an unguent of love but once on the Saviour's feet. As I lavished for these.' tX. Go, I cried, thou hast chosen the Human, and left the Divine! AURORA LEIGH. FIRST BOOK. Of writing many books there is no entl; 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, Iust To hold together what he was and is. I, writing thus, am still what men call young; I have not Bo far left the coasts of life To travel inland, that 1 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 tis both, Stroke out my childish curls across Ins knee; And hear Assunta's daily jest (she knew Stroke heavily, heavily the poor hair down, Draw, press the child's head closer to thy knee! I'm still too younj, 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. Left out at night in shutting up the fold.— As restless as a nest-deserted bird 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 haby-shoes, And stringing pretty words that make no sense, And kissing full sense into empty words; Love's holy earnest in a pretty play, Which burns and hurts not,—not a single bloom,— Become aware and unafraid of Love. Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well - Mine did, I know,—but still 'with heavier brains, And wills more consciously responsible, And not as wisely, since less foolishly; So mothers have God's license to be missed. My father was an austere Englishman, Who, after a dry life-time spent at home fn college-learning, law, and parish talk, Was flooded with a passion unaware. His whole provisioned and complacent past Drowned out from him that moment. As he stood In Florence, where he had come to spend a month And note the secret of Da Vinci's drains, He musing somewhat absently perhaps Some English question . . whether men should pay The unpopular but necessary tax With left or right hand—in the alien sun In that great square of the Santissima, There drifted past him (scarcely marked enough To move his comfortable island-scorn.) A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm, The white-veiled rose-crowned maidens holding up Tall tapers, weighty for such wrists, aslant To the blue luminous tremor of the air, And letting drop the white wax as they went To eat the bishop's wafer at the church; From which long trail of chanting priests and girls * A face flashed like a cymbal on his face, And shook with silent clangour brain and heart, Transfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus. He too received his sacramental gift With eucharistic meanings; lor he loved. And thus beloved, she died. I've heard it said That but to see h'jn in the first surprise Ol' widower and lather, nursing me, Unmothered little child of four vears old. His large man's hands afraid to touch my curls, As if the gold would tarnish,—his grave lips Contriving such a miserable smile, As if he knew needs must, or I should die, And yet 'twas hard,—would almost make the stones Cry out for pity. There's a verse he set In Santa Crocn to her memory. 'Weep for an infant too young to weep much When death removed this mother'— stops the mirth To-day on women's faces when they walk With rosy children hanging on their gowns, Under the cloister to escape the sun That scorches in the piazza. After which He left our Florence and made haste to hide Himself, his prattling child, and silent grief, Among the mountains above Pelago; Because unmothered babes, he thought, had need Of mother nature more than others use. And Pan's white goats, with udders warm and full Of mystic contemplations, come to feed Poor milkless lips of orphans like his own— Suchscholar-scraps lie talked, I've heard from friends, For even prosaic men, who wear grief long, Will get to wear it as a hat aside With a flower stuck in't. Father, then, and child, We lived among the mountains many years, God's silence on the outside of the house. And we, who did not speak loo loud within: And old Assunta to make up the fire. Crossing herself whene'er a sudden flame Which lightened from the firewood, niacin alive |