The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume II Part 21

"Nay, your Silence," said I, "truly, holds her symbol-rose but slackly, Yet _she holds it_, or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken: And your n.o.bles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly In the presence of the social law as mere ign.o.ble men.

x.x.xIII.

"Let the poets dream such dreaming! madam, in these British islands 'T is the substance that wanes ever, 't is the symbol that exceeds.

Soon we shall have nought but symbol: and, for statues like this Silence, Shall accept the rose's image--in another case, the weed's."

x.x.xIV.

"Not so quickly," she retorted,--"I confess, where'er you go, you Find for things, names--shows for actions, and pure gold for honour clear: But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence here."

x.x.xV.

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation; Friends, who listened, laughed her words off, while her lovers deemed her fair: A fair woman, flushed with feeling, in her n.o.ble-lighted station Near the statue's white reposing--and both bathed in sunny air!

x.x.xVI.

With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal murmur, And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move, And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer, Then recoiling in a tremble from the too much light above.

x.x.xVII.

'T is a picture for remembrance. And thus, morning after morning, Did I follow as she drew me by the spirit to her feet.

Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs--we both were dogs for scorning-- To be sent back when she pleased it and her path lay through the wheat.

x.x.xVIII.

And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and spite of sorrow, Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days pa.s.sed along,-- Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow, Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in a song.

x.x.xIX.

Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sate down in the gowans, With the forest green behind us and its shadow cast before, And the river running under, and across it from the rowans A brown partridge whirring near us till we felt the air it bore,--

XL.

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own; Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle interflowings Found in Petrarch's sonnets--here's the book, the leaf is folded down!

XLI.

Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl, Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,-- Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.

XLII.

Or at times I read there, hoa.r.s.ely, some new poem of my making: Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth, For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking, And the chariot wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them forth.

XLIII.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast She would break out on a sudden in a gush of woodland singing, Like a child's emotion in a G.o.d--a naiad tired of rest.

XLIV.

Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest, For her looks sing too--she modulates her gestures on the tune, And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest, 'T is the eyes that shoot out vocal light and seem to swell them on.

XLV.

Then we talked--oh, how we talked! her voice, so cadenced in the talking, Made another singing--of the soul! a music without bars: While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking, Brought interposition worthy-sweet,--as skies about the stars.

XLVI.

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them; She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch, Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them, In the birchen-wood a chirrup, or a c.o.c.k-crow in the grange.

XLVII.

In her utmost lightness there is truth--and often she speaks lightly, Has a grace in being gay which even mournful souls approve, For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.

XLVIII.

And she talked on--_we_ talked, rather! upon all things, substance, shadow, Of the sheep that browsed the gra.s.ses, of the reapers in the corn, Of the little children from the schools, seen winding through the meadow, Of the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer by its scorn.

XLIX.

So, of men, and so, of letters--books are men of higher stature, And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear; So, of mankind in the abstract, which grows slowly into nature, Yet will lift the cry of "progress," as it trod from sphere to sphere.

L.

And her custom was to praise me when I said,--"The Age culls simples, With a broad clown's back turned broadly to the glory of the stars.

We are G.o.ds by our own reck'ning, and may well shut up the temples, And wield on, amid the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars.

LI.

"For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self admiring, With, at every mile run faster,--'O the wondrous wondrous age!'

Little thinking if we work our SOULS as n.o.bly as our iron, Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage.

LII.

"Why, what _is_ this patient entrance into nature's deep resources But the child's most gradual learning to walk upright without bane?

When we drive out, from the cloud of steam, majestical white horses, Are we greater than the first men who led black ones by the mane?

LIII.

"If we trod the deeps of ocean, if we struck the stars in rising, If we wrapped the globe intensely with one hot electric breath, 'T were but power within our tether, no new spirit-power comprising, And in life we were not greater men, nor bolder men in death."

LIV.

She was patient with my talking; and I loved her, loved her certes As I loved all heavenly objects, with uplifted eyes and hands; As I loved pure inspirations, loved the graces, loved the virtues, In a Love content with writing his own name on desert sands.

LV.

Or at least I thought so, purely; thought no idiot Hope was raising Any crown to crown Love's silence, silent Love that sate alone: Out, alas! the stag is like me, he that tries to go on grazing With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan.