Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Aurora Leigh (1856). Selection from Seventh Book

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

THE NEXT day we took train to Italy

And fled on southward in the roar of steam.

The marriage-bells of Romney must be loud,

To sound so clear through all: I was not well,

And truly, though the truth is like a jest,

I could not choose but fancy, half the way,

I stood alone i’ the belfry, fifty bells

Of naked iron, mad with merriment,

(As one who laughs and cannot stop himself)

All clanking at me, in me, over me,

Until I shrieked a shriek I could not hear,

And swooned with noise,—but still, along my swoon,

Was ’ware the baffled changes backward rang,

Prepared, at each emerging sense, to beat

And crash it out with clangour. I was weak;

I struggled for the posture of my soul

In upright consciousness of place and time,

But evermore, ’twixt waking and asleep,

Slipped somehow, staggered, caught at Marion’s eyes

A moment, (it is very good for strength

To know that some one needs you to be strong)

And so recovered what I called myself,

For that time.
I just knew it when we swept

Above the old roofs of Dijon: Lyons dropped

A spark into the night, half trodden out

Unseen. But presently the winding Rhone

Washed out the moonlight large along his banks

Which strained their yielding curves out clear and clean

To hold it,—shadow of town and castle blurred

Upon the hurrying river. Such an air

Blew thence upon the forehead,—half an air

And half a water,—that I leaned and looked,

Then, turning back on Marion, smiled to mark

That she looked only on her child, who slept,

His face toward the moon too.
So we passed

The liberal open country and the close,

And shot through tunnels, like a lightening-wedge

By great Thor-hammers driven through the rock,

Which, quivering through the intestine blackness, splits

And lets it in at once: the train swept in

Athrob with effort, trembling with resolve,

The fierce denouncing whistle wailing on

And dying off smothered in the shuddering dark,

While we, self-awed, drew troubled breath, oppressed

As other Titans underneath the pile

And nightmare of the mountains. Out, at last,

To catch the dawn afloat upon the land!

—Hills, slung forth broadly and gauntly everywhere,

Not crampt in their foundations, pushing wide

Rich outspreads of the vineyards and the corn,

(As if the entertained i’ the name of France)

While, down their straining sides, streamed manifest

A soil as red as Charlemagne’s knightly blood,

To consecrate the verdure. Some one said,

‘Marseilles!’ And lo, the city of Marseilles,

With all her ships behind her, and beyond,

The scimitar of ever-shining sea

For right-hand use, bared blue against the sky!

That night we spent between the purple heaven

And purple water: I think Marian slept;

But I, as a dog a-watch for his master’s foot,

Who cannot sleep or eat before he hears,

I sate upon the deck and watched the night

And listened through the stars for Italy.

Those marriage-bells I spoke of, sounded far,

As some child’s go-cart in the street beneath

To a dying man who will not pass the day,

And knows it, holding by a hand he loves.

I too sate quiet, satisfied with death,

Sate silent: I could hear my own soul speak,

And had my friend,—for Nature comes sometimes

And says, “I am ambassador for God.”

I felt the wind soft from the land of souls;

The old miraculous mountains heaved in sight,

One straining past another along the shore,

The way of grand dull Odyssean ghosts,

Athirst to drink the cool blue wine of seas

And stare on voyagers. Peak pushing peak

They stood: I watched, beyond that Tyrian belt

Of intense sea betwixt them and the ship,

Down all their sides the misty olive-woods

Dissolving in the weak congenial moon

And still disclosing some brown convent-tower

That seems as if it grew from some brown rock,

Or many a little lighted village, dropt

Like a fallen star upon so high a point,

You wonder what can keep it in its place

From sliding headlong with the waterfalls

Which powder all the myrtle and orange groves

With spray of silver. Thus my Italy

Was stealing on us. Genoa broke with day,

The Doria’s long pale palace striking out,

From green hills in advance of the white town,

A marble finger dominant to ships,

Seen glimmering through the uncertain gray of dawn.

Truth, so far, in my book! a truth which draws

From all things upward. I, Aurora, still

Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life

As Jove did Io; and, until that Hand

Shall overtake me wholly and on my head

Lay down its large unfluctuating peace,

The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down.

It must be. Art’s the witness of what Is

Behind this show. If this world’s show were all,

Then imitation would be all in Art;

There, Jove’s hand gripes us!—For we stand here, we,

If genuine artists, witnessing for God’s

Complete, consummate, undivided work;

—That every natural flower which grows on earth

Implies a flower upon the spiritual side,

Substantial, archetypal, all a-glow

With blossoming causes,—not so far away,

But we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared,

May catch at something of the bloom and breath,—

Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed

Still apprehended, consciously or not,

And still transferred to picture, music, verse,

For thrilling audient and beholding souls

By signs and touches which are known to souls.

How known, they know not,—why, they cannot find,

So straight call out on genius, say, “A man

Produced this,” when much rather they should say,

“’T is insight, and he saw this.”…