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Read Ebook: The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume 4 by Browning Elizabeth Barrett
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Ebook has 175 lines and 12777 words, and 4 pages
Ah baby, my baby, too rough Is my lullaby? What have I said? Sleep! When I've wept long enough I shall learn to weep softly instead, And piece with some alien stuff My heart to lie smooth for thy head. Sleep.
Two souls met upon thee, my sweet; Two loves led thee out to the sun: Alas, pretty hands, pretty feet, If the one who remains Set her grief at thee, turned in a heat To thine enemy,--were it well done? Sleep.
LORD WALTER'S WIFE.
"But why do you go?" said the lady, while both sat under the yew, And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.
"Because I fear you," he answered;--"because you are far too fair, And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair."
"Oh, that," she said, "is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone, And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun."
"Yet farewell so," he answered;--"the sun-stroke's fatal at times. I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes."
"Oh, that," she said, "is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence: If two should smell it, what matter? who grumbles, and where's the pretence?"
"But I," he replied, "have promised another, when love was free, To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me."
"Why, that," she said, "is no reason. Love's always free, I am told. Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?"
"But you," he replied, "have a daughter, a young little child, who was laid In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid."
"Oh, that," she said, "is no reason. The angels keep out of the way; And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay."
At which he rose up in his anger,--"Why, now, you no longer are fair! Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear."
At which she laughed out in her scorn: "These men! Oh, these men overnice, Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice."
"What reason had you, and what right,--I appeal to your soul from my life,-- To find me too fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.
"Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?
"If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much To uses unlawful and fatal. The praise!--shall I thank you for such?
"Too fair?--not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while, You attain to it, straightway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.
"A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.
"You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring. You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter!--I've broken the thing.
"You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then In the senses--a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.
"Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills, And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.
"I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week, For the sake of ... what was it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on a cheek?
"And since, when all's said, you're too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant,
"There! Look me full in the face!--in the face. Understand, if you can, That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.
"Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar-- You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.
"You wronged me: but then I considered ... there's Walter! And so at the end I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.
"Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine! Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine."
BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES.
The cypress stood up like a church That night we felt our love would hold, And saintly moonlight seemed to search And wash the whole world clean as gold; The olives crystallized the vales' Broad slopes until the hills grew strong: The fire-flies and the nightingales Throbbed each to either, flame and song. The nightingales, the nightingales!
We paled with love, we shook with love, We kissed so close we could not vow; Till Giulio whispered "Sweet, above God's Ever guaranties this Now." And through his words the nightingales Drove straight and full their long clear call, Like arrows through heroic mails, And love was awful in it all. The nightingales, the nightingales!
O cold white moonlight of the north, Refresh these pulses, quench this hell! O coverture of death drawn forth Across this garden-chamber ... well! But what have nightingales to do In gloomy England, called the free ... when we two Are sundered, singing still to me? And still they sing, the nightingales!
He says to her what moves her most. He would not name his soul within Her hearing,--rather pays her cost With praises to her lips and chin. Man has but one soul, 't is ordained, And each soul but one love, I add; Yet souls are damned and love's profaned; These nightingales will sing me mad! The nightingales, the nightingales!
I marvel how the birds can sing. There's little difference, in their view, Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring As vital flames into the blue, And dull round blots of foliage meant, Like saturated sponges here, To suck the fogs up. As content Is he too in this land, 't is clear. And still they sing, the nightingales.
My native Florence! dear, forgone! I see across the Alpine ridge How the last feast-day of Saint John Shot rockets from Carraia bridge. The luminous city, tall with fire, Trod deep down in that river of ours, While many a boat with lamp and choir Skimmed birdlike over glittering towers. I will not hear these nightingales.
Too bold to sin, too weak to die; Such women are so. As for me, I would we had drowned there, he and I, That moment, loving perfectly. He had not caught her with her loosed Gold ringlets ... rarer in the south ... Nor heard the "Grazie tanto" bruised To sweetness by her English mouth. And still they sing, the nightingales.
She had not reached him at my heart With her fine tongue, as snakes indeed Kill flies; nor had I, for my part, Yearned after, in my desperate need, And followed him as he did her To coasts left bitter by the tide, Whose very nightingales, elsewhere Delighting, torture and deride! For still they sing, the nightingales.
A worthless woman; mere cold clay As all false things are: but so fair, She takes the breath of men away Who gaze upon her unaware. I would not play her larcenous tricks To have her looks! She lied and stole, And spat into my love's pure pyx The rank saliva of her soul. And still they sing, the nightingales.
I would not for her white and pink, Though such he likes--her grace of limb, Though such he has praised--nor yet, I think. For life itself, though spent with him, Commit such sacrilege, affront God's nature which is love, intrude 'Twixt two affianced souls, and hunt Like spiders, in the altar's wood. I cannot bear these nightingales.
If she chose sin, some gentler guise She might have sinned in, so it seems: She might have pricked out both my eyes, And I still seen him in my dreams! --Or drugged me in my soup or wine, Nor left me angry afterward: To die here with his hand in mine, His breath upon me, were not hard.
Giulio, my Giulio!--sing they so, And you be silent? Do I speak, And you not hear? An arm you throw Round someone, and I feel so weak? --Oh, owl-like birds! They sing for spite, They sing for hate, they sing for doom, They'll sing through death who sing through night, They'll sing and stun me in the tomb-- The nightingales, the nightingales!
MY KATE.
She was not as pretty as women I know, And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow Drop to shade, melt to nought in the long-trodden ways, While she's still remembered on warm and cold days-- My Kate.
Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace; You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face: And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth, You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth-- My Kate.
Such a blue inner light from her eyelids outbroke, You looked at her silence and fancied she spoke: When she did, so peculiar yet soft was the tone, Though the loudest spoke also, you heard her alone-- My Kate.
I doubt if she said to you much that could act As a thought or suggestion: she did not attract In the sense of the brilliant or wise: I infer 'T was her thinking of others made you think of her-- My Kate.
She never found fault with you, never implied Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town The children were gladder that pulled at her gown-- My Kate.
None knelt at her feet confessed lovers in thrall; They knelt more to God than they used,--that was all: If you praised her as charming, some asked what you meant, But the charm of her presence was felt when she went-- My Kate.
The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude, She took as she found them, and did them all good; It always was so with her--see what you have! She has made the grass greener even here ... with her grave-- My Kate.
My dear one!--when thou wast alive with the rest, I held thee the sweetest and loved thee the best: And now thou art dead, shall I not take thy part As thy smiles used to do for thyself, my sweet Heart-- My Kate?
A SONG FOR THE RAGGED SCHOOL OF LONDON.
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