The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 4

III.

And if your politics were not heady,

Violent, ... “Good,” you added, “good

In all things! Mourn on sure and steady.

Churchyard thistles are wholesome food

For our European wandering asses.

IV.

“The date of the resurrection passes

Human foreknowledge: men unborn

Will gain by it (even in the lower classes),

But none of these. It is not the morn

Because the cock of France is crowing.

V.

“Cocks crow at midnight, seldom knowing

Starlight from dawn-light! ’t is a mad

Poor creature.” Here you paused, and growing

Scornful,—suddenly, let us add,

The trumpet sounded, the graves were open.

VI.

Life and life and life! agrope in

The dusk of death, warm hands, stretched out

For swords, proved more life still to hope in,

Beyond and behind. Arise with a shout,

Nation of Italy, slain and buried!

VII.

Hill to hill and turret to turret

Flashing the tricolor,—newly created

Beautiful Italy, calm, unhurried,

Rise heroic and renovated,

Rise to the final restitution.

VIII.

Rise; prefigure the grand solution

Of earth’s municipal, insular schisms,—

Statesmen draping self-love’s conclusion

In cheap vernacular patriotisms,

Unable to give up Judæa for Jesus.

IX.

Bring us the higher example; release us

Into the larger coming time:

And into Christ’s broad garment piece us

Rags of virtue as poor as crime,

National selfishness, civic vaunting.

X.

No more Jew nor Greek then,—taunting

Nor taunted;—no more England nor France!

But one confederate brotherhood planting

One flag only, to mark the advance,

Onward and upward, of all humanity.

XI.

For civilization perfected

Is fully developed Christianity.

“Measure the frontier,” shall it be said,

“Count the ships,” in national vanity?

—Count the nation’s heart-beats sooner.

XII.

For, though behind by a cannon or schooner,

That nation still is predominant

Whose pulse beats quickest in zeal to oppugn or

Succour another, in wrong or want,

Passing the frontier in love and abhorrence.

XIII.

Modena, Parma, Bologna, Florence,

Open us out the wider way!

Dwarf in that chapel of old Saint Lawrence

Your Michel Angelo’s giant Day,

With the grandeur of this Day breaking o’er us!

XIV.

Ye who, restrained as an ancient chorus,

Mute while the coryphæus spake,

Hush your separate voices before us,

Sink your separate lives for the sake

Of one sole Italy’s living for ever!

XV.

Givers of coat and cloak too,—never

Grudging that purple of yours at the best,

By your heroic will and endeavour

Each sublimely dispossessed,

That all may inherit what each surrenders!

XVI.

Earth shall bless you, O noble emenders

On egotist nations! Ye shall lead

The plough of the world, and sow new splendours

Into the furrow of things for seed,—

Ever the richer for what ye have given.

XVII.

Lead us and teach us, till earth and heaven

Grow larger around us and higher above.

Our sacrament-bread has a bitter leaven;

We bait our traps with the name of love,

Till hate itself has a kinder meaning.

XVIII.

Oh, this world: this cheating and screening

Of cheats! this conscience for candle-wicks,

Not beacon-fires! this overweening

Of underhand diplomatical tricks,

Dared for the country while scorned for the counter!

XIX.

Oh, this envy of those who mount here,

And oh, this malice to make them trip!

Rather quenching the fire there, drying the fount here,

To frozen body and thirsty lip,

Than leave to a neighbour their ministration.

XX.

I cry aloud in my poet-passion,

Viewing my England o’er Alp and sea.

I loved her more in her ancient fashion:

She carries her rifles too thick for me

Who spares them so in the cause of a brother.

XXI.

Suspicion, panic? end this pother.

The sword, kept sheathless at peace-time, rusts.

None fears for himself while he feels for another:

The brave man either fights or trusts,

And wears no mail in his private chamber.

XXII.

Beautiful Italy! golden amber

Warm with the kisses of lover and traitor!

Thou who hast drawn us on to remember,

Draw us to hope now: let us be greater

By this new future than that old story.

XXIII.

Till truer glory replaces all glory,

As the torch grows blind at the dawn of day;

And the nations, rising up, their sorry

And foolish sins shall put away,

As children their toys when the teacher enters.

XXIV.

Till Love’s one centre devour these centres

Of many self-loves; and the patriot’s trick

To better his land by egotist ventures,

Defamed from a virtue, shall make men sick,

As the scalp at the belt of some red hero.

XXV.

For certain virtues have dropped to zero,

Left by the sun on the mountain’s dewy side;

Churchman’s charities, tender as Nero,

Indian suttee, heathen suicide,

Service to rights divine, proved hollow:

XXVI.

And Heptarchy patriotisms must follow.

—National voices, distinct yet dependent,

Ensphering each other, as swallow does swallow,

With circles still widening and ever ascendant,

In multiform life to united progression,—

XXVII.

These shall remain. And when, in the session

Of nations, the separate language is heard,

Each shall aspire, in sublime indiscretion,

To help with a thought or exalt with a word

Less her own than her rival’s honour.

XXVIII.

Each Christian nation shall take upon her

The law of the Christian man in vast:

The crown of the getter shall fall to the donor,

And last shall be first while first shall be last,

And to love best shall still be, to reign unsurpassed.

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write

My curse to-night.

From the summits of love a curse is driven,

As lightning is from the tops of heaven.”

“Not so,” I answered. “Evermore

My heart is sore

For my own land’s sins: for little feet

Of children bleeding along the street:

“For parked-up honours that gainsay

The right of way:

For almsgiving through a door that is

Not open enough for two friends to kiss:

“For love of freedom which abates

Beyond the Straits:

For patriot virtue starved to vice on

Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:

“For an oligarchic parliament,

And bribes well-meant.

What curse to another land assign,

When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write

My curse to-night.

Because thou hast strength to see and hate

A foul thing done within thy gate.”

“Not so,” I answered once again.

“To curse, choose men.

For I, a woman, have only known

How the heart melts and the tears run down.”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write

My curse to-night.

Some women weep and curse, I say

(And no one marvels), night and day.

“And thou shalt take their part to-night,

Weep and write.

A curse from the depths of womanhood

Is very salt, and bitter, and good.”

So thus I wrote, and mourned indeed,

What all may read.

And thus, as was enjoined on me,

I send it over the Western Sea.

II.

Ye shall watch while kings conspire

Round the people’s smouldering fire,

And, warm for your part,

Shall never dare—O shame!

To utter the thought into flame

Which burns at your heart.

This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while nations strive

With the bloodhounds, die or survive,

Drop faint from their jaws,

Or throttle them backward to death;

And only under your breath

Shall favour the cause.

This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while strong men draw

The nets of feudal law

To strangle the weak;

And, counting the sin for a sin,

Your soul shall be sadder within

Than the word ye shall speak.

This is the curse. Write.

When good men are praying erect

That Christ may avenge his elect

And deliver the earth,

The prayer in your ears, said low,

Shall sound like the tramp of a foe

That’s driving you forth.

This is the curse. Write.

When wise men give you their praise,

They shall pause in the heat of the phrase,

As if carried too far.

When ye boast your own charters kept true

Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do

Derides what ye are.

This is the curse. Write.

When fools cast taunts at your gate,

Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate

As ye look o’er the wall;

For your conscience, tradition, and name

Explode with a deadlier blame

Than the worst of them all.

This is the curse. Write.

Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done,

Go, plant your flag in the sun

Beside the ill-doers!

And recoil from clenching the curse

Of God’s witnessing Universe

With a curse of yours.

This is the curse. Write.

TO “GRATEFUL FLORENCE,”

TO THE MUNICIPALITY HER REPRESENTATIVE,

AND TO TOMMASEO ITS SPOKESMAN,

MOST GRATEFULLY.

Meek, obedient in your sight,

Gentle to a beck or breath

Only on last Monday! Yours,

Answering you like silver bells

Lightly touched! An hour matures:

You can teach her nothing else.

She has seen the mystery hid

Under Egypt’s pyramid:

By those eyelids pale and close

Now she knows what Rhamses knows.

III.

Cross her quiet hands, and smooth

Down her patient locks of silk,

Cold and passive as in truth

You your fingers in spilt milk

Drew along a marble floor;

But her lips you cannot wring

Into saying a word more,

“Yes,” or “No,” or such a thing:

Though you call and beg and wreak

Half your soul out in a shriek,

She will lie there in default

And most innocent revolt.

IV.

Ay, and if she spoke, maybe

She would answer, like the Son,

“What is now ’twixt thee and me?”

Dreadful answer! better none.

Yours on Monday, God’s to-day!

Yours, your child, your blood, your heart,

Called ... you called her, did you say,

“Little Mattie” for your part?

Now already it sounds strange,

And you wonder, in this change,

What He calls His angel-creature,

Higher up than you can reach her.

V.

’T was a green and easy world

As she took it; room to play

(Though one’s hair might get uncurled

At the far end of the day).

What she suffered she shook off

In the sunshine; what she sinned

She could pray on high, enough

To keep safe above the wind.

If reproved by God or you,

’T was to better her, she knew;

And if crossed, she gathered still

’T was to cross out something ill.

VI.

You, you had the right, you thought,

To survey her with sweet scorn,

Poor gay child, who had not caught

Yet the octave-stretch forlorn

Of your larger wisdom! Nay,

Now your places are changed so,

In that same superior way

She regards you dull and low

As you did herself exempt

From life’s sorrows. Grand contempt

Of the spirits risen awhile,

Who look back with such a smile!

VII.

There’s the sting of’t. That, I think,

Hurts the most a thousandfold!

To feel sudden, at a wink,

Some dear child we used to scold,

Praise, love both ways, kiss and tease,

Teach and tumble as our own,

All its curls about our knees,

Rise up suddenly full-grown.

Who could wonder such a sight

Made a woman mad outright?

Show me Michael with the sword

Rather than such angels, Lord!

IV.

And yet peradventure one day

Thou, sitting alone at the glass,

Remarking the bloom gone away,

Where the smile in its dimplement was,

V.

And seeking around thee in vain

From hundreds who flattered before,

Such a word as “Oh, not in the main

Do I hold thee less precious, but more!”...

VI.

Thou’lt sigh, very like, on thy part,

“Of all I have known or can know,

I wish I had only that Heart

I trod upon ages ago!”

III.

O lips of thy father! the same,

So like! Very deeply they swore

When he gave me his ring and his name,

To take back, I imagined, no more!

And now is all changed like a game,

Though the old cards are used as of yore?

Sleep.

IV.

“Void in law,” said the Courts. Something wrong

In the forms? Yet, “Till death part us two,

I, James, take thee, Jessie,” was strong,

And One witness competent. True

Such a marriage was worth an old song,

Heard in Heaven though, as plain as the New.

Sleep.

V.

Sleep, little child, his and mine!

Her throat has the antelope curve,

And her cheek just the colour and line

Which fade not before him nor swerve:

Yet she has no child!—the divine

Seal of right upon loves that deserve.

Sleep.

VI.

My child! though the world take her part,

Saying “She was the woman to choose;

He had eyes, was a man in his heart,”—

We twain the decision refuse:

We ... weak as I am, as thou art, ...

Cling on to him, never to loose.

Sleep.

VII.

He thinks that, when done with this place,

All’s ended? he’ll new-stamp the ore?

Yes, Cæsar’s—but not in our case.

Let him learn we are waiting before

The grave’s mouth, the heaven’s gate, God’s face

With implacable love evermore.

Sleep.

VIII.

He’s ours, though he kissed her but now,

He’s ours, though she kissed in reply:

He’s ours, though himself disavow,

And God’s universe favour the lie;

Ours to claim, ours to clasp, ours below,

Ours above, ... if we live, if we die.

Sleep.

IX.

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.

X.

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 (only one)

Set her grief at thee, turned in a heat

To thine enemy,—were it well done?

Sleep.

XI.

May He of the manger stand near

And love thee! An infant He came

To His own who rejected Him here,

But the Magi brought gifts all the same.

I hurry the cross on my Dear!

My gifts are the griefs I declaim!

Sleep.

IV.

“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.”

V.

“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?”

VI.

“But I,” he replied, “have promised another, when love was free,

To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me.”

VII.

“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?”

VIII.

“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.”

IX.

“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.”

X.

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.”

XI.

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.”

XII.

Her eyes blazed upon him—“And you! You bring us your vices so near

That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought ’t would defame us to hear!

XIII.

“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.

XIV.

“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?

XV.

“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?

XVI.

“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.

XVII.

“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.

XVIII.

“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.

XIX.

“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.

XX.

“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.

XXI.

“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?

XXII.

“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,

XXIII.

“I determined to prove to yourself that, whate’er you might dream or avow

By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.

XXIV.

“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.

XXV.

“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.

XXVI.

“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.

XXVII.

“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.”

We scarce knew if our nature meant

Most passionate earth or intense heaven

The nightingales, the nightingales!

III.

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!

IV.

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 ...

(Yes, free to die in!...) when we two

Are sundered, singing still to me?

And still they sing, the nightingales!

V.

I think I hear him, how he cried

“My own soul’s life!” between their notes.

Each man has but one soul supplied,

And that’s immortal. Though his throat’s

On fire with passion now, to her

He can’t say what to me he said!

And yet he moves her, they aver.

The nightingales sing through my head,—

The nightingales, the nightingales!

VI.

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!

VII.

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.

VIII.

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.

IX.

I seem to float, we seem to float

Down Arno’s stream in festive guise;

A boat strikes flame into our boat,

And up that lady seems to rise

As then she rose. The shock had flashed

A vision on us! What a head,

What leaping eyeballs!—beauty dashed

To splendour by a sudden dread.

And still they sing, the nightingales.

X.

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.

XI.

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.

XII.

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.

XIII.

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.

XIV.

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.

(Our Lady hush these nightingales!)

XV.

But set a springe for him, “mio ben,”

My only good, my first last love!—

Though Christ knows well what sin is, when

He sees some things done they must move

Himself to wonder. Let her pass.

I think of her by night and day.

Must I too join her ... out, alas!...

With Giulio, in each word I say?

And evermore the nightingales!

XVI.

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!

IV.

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.

V.

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.

VI.

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.

VII.

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.

VIII.

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?