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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from Aurora Leigh: Aurora’s Home

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

Extracts from Aurora Leigh: Aurora’s Home

I HAD a little chamber in the house,

As green as any privet-hedge a bird

Might choose to build in, though the nest itself

Could show but dead brown sticks and straws; the walls

Were green, the carpet was pure green, the straight

Small bed was curtained greenly, and the folds

Hung green about the window which let in

The out-door world with all its greenery.

You could not push your head out and escape

A dash of dawn-dew from the honey-suckle,

But so you were baptized into the grace

And privilege of seeing….
First, the lime,

(I had enough there, of the lime, be sure,—

My morning-dream was often hummed away

By the bees in it); past the lime, the lawn,

Which, after sweeping broadly round the house,

Went trickling through the shrubberies in a stream

Of tender turf, and wore and lost itself

Among the acacias, over which you saw

The irregular line of elms by the deep lane

Which stopped the grounds and dammed the overflow

Of arbutus and laurel. Out of sight

The lane was; sunk so deep, no foreign tramp

Nor drover of wild ponies out of Wales

Could guess if lady’s hall or tenant’s lodge

Dispensed such odours,—though his stick well-crooked

Might reach the lowest trail of blossoming briar

Which dipped upon the wall. Behind the elms,

And through their tops, you saw the folded hills

Striped up and down with hedges (burly oaks

Projecting from the line to show themselves)

Through which my cousin Romney’s chimney smoked

As still as when a silent month in frost

Breathes, showing where the woodlands hid Leigh Hall;

While, far above, a jut of table-land,

A promontory without water stretched,—

You could not catch it if the days were thick,

Or took it for a cloud; but, otherwise,

The vigorous sun would catch it up at eve

And use it for an anvil till he had filled

The shelves of heaven with burning thunderbolts,

Protesting against night and darkness:—then,

When all his setting trouble was resolved

To a trance of passive glory, you might see

In apparition on the golden sky

(Alas, my Giotto’s background!) the sheep run

Along the fine clear outline, small as mice

That run along a witch’s scarlet thread.