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From “Aurora Leigh”
WHOEVER lives true life, will love true love. | |
| I learned to love that England. Very oft, | |
| Before the day was born, or otherwise | |
| Through secret windings of the afternoons, | |
| I threw my hunters off and plunged myself | 5 |
| Among the deep hills, as a hunted stag | |
| Will take the waters, shivering with the fear | |
| And passion of the course. And when, at last | |
| Escaped,—so many a green slope built on slope | |
| Betwixt me and the enemy’s house behind, | 10 |
| I dared to rest, or wander,—like a rest | |
| Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,— | |
| And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement, | |
| (As if God’s finger touched but did not press | |
| In making England!) such an up and down | 15 |
| Of verdure,—nothing too much up or down, | |
| A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky | |
| Can stoop to tenderly and the wheatfields climb; | |
| Such nooks of valleys, lined with orchises, | |
| Fed full of noises by invisible streams; | 20 |
| And open pastures, where you scarcely tell | |
| White daisies from white dew,—at intervals | |
| The mythic oaks and elm-trees standing out | |
| Self-poised upon their prodigy of shade,— | |
| I thought my father’s land was worthy too | 25 |
| Of being my Shakespeare’s. * * * * * | |
| The skies, the clouds, the fields, | |
| The happy violets hiding from the roads | |
| The primroses run down to, carrying gold,— | |
| The tangled hedgerows, where the cows push out | 30 |
| Impatient horns and tolerant churning mouths | |
| ’Twixt dripping ash-boughs,—hedgerows all alive | |
| With birds and gnats and large white butterflies | |
| Which look as if the May-flower had sought life | |
| And palpitated forth upon the wind,— | 35 |
| Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist, | |
| Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills, | |
| And cattle grazing in the watered vales, | |
| And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods, | |
| And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere, | 40 |
| Confused with smell of orchards. “See,” I said, | |
| “And see! is God not with us on the earth? | |
| And shall we put Him down by aught we do? | |
| Who says there ’s nothing for the poor and vile | |
| Save poverty and wickedness? behold!” | 45 |
| And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped, | |
| And clapped my hands, and called all very fair. | |
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