from Aurora Leigh, Second Book

                                         'There it is!–

You play beside a death-bed like a child,

Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place

To teach the living. None of all these things,

Can women understand. You generalise,

Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts,

So sympathetic to the personal pang,

Close on each separate knife-stroke, yielding up

A whole life at each wound; incapable

Of deepening, widening a large lap of life

To hold the world-full woe. The human race

To you means, such a child, or such a man,

You saw one morning waiting in the cold,

Beside that gate, perhaps. You gather up

A few such cases, and, when strong, sometimes

Will write of factories and of slaves, as if

Your father were a negro, and your son

A spinner in the mills. All's yours and you,–

All, coloured with your blood, or otherwise

Just nothing to you. Why, I call you hard

To general suffering. Here's the world half blind

With intellectual light, half brutalised

With civilization, having caught the plague

In silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west

Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain

And sin too! ... does one woman of you all,

(You who weep easily) grow pale to see

This tiger shake his cage?–does one of you

Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls

And pine and die, because of the great sum

Of universal anguish?–Show me a tear

Wet as Cordelia's, in eyes bright as yours,

Because the world is mad? You cannot count,

That you should weep for this account, not you!

You weep for what you know. A red-haired child

Sick in a fever, if you touch him once,

Though but so little as with a finger-tip,

Will set you weeping! but a million sick . .

You could as soon weep for the rule of three,

Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world

Uncomprehended by you must remain

Uninfluenced by you. Women as you are,

Mere women, personal and passionate,

You give us doating mothers, and chaste wives.

Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!

We get no Christ from you,–and verily

We shall not get a poet, in my mind.'

'With which conclusion you conclude' . .

                                    'But this–

That you, Aurora, with the large live brow

And steady eyelids, cannot condescend

To play at art, as children play at swords,

To show a pretty spirit, chiefly admired

Because true action is impossible.

You never can be satisfied with praise

Which men give women when they judge a book

Not as mere work, but as mere woman's work,

Expressing the comparative respect

Which means the absolute scorn. 'Oh, excellent!

'What grace! what facile turns! what fluent sweeps!

'What delicate discernment ... almost thought!

'The book does honour to the sex, we hold.

'Among our female authors we make room

'For this fair writer, and congratulate

'The country that produces in these times

'Such women, competent to ... spell.''

                                'Stop there!'

I answered–burning through his thread of talk

With a quick flame of emotion,–'You have read

My soul, if not my book, and argue well

I would not condescend ... we will not say

To such a kind of praise, (a worthless end

Is praise of all kinds) but to such a use

Of holy art and golden life. I am young,

And peradventure weak–you tell me so–

Through being a woman. And, for all the rest,

Take thanks for justice. I would rather dance

At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped

Their gingerbread for joy,–than shift the types

For tolerable verse, intolerable

To men who act and suffer. Better far,

Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means,

Than a sublime art frivolously.'

*

Then I spoke.

'I have not stood long on the strand of life,

And these salt waters have had scarcely time

To creep so high up as to wet my feet.

I cannot judge these tides–I shall, perhaps.

A woman's always younger than a man

At equal years, because she is disallowed

Maturing by the outdoor sun and air,

And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.

Ah well, I know you men judge otherwise!

You think a woman ripens as a peach,–

In the cheeks, chiefly. Pass it to me now;

I'm young in age, and younger still, I think,

As a woman. But a child may say amen

To a bishop's prayer and see the way it goes;

And I, incapable to loose the knot

Of social questions, can approve, applaud

August compassion, christian thoughts that shoot

Beyond the vulgar white of personal aims.

Accept my reverence.'

                  There he glowed on me

With all his face and eyes. 'No other help?'

Said he–'no more than so?'

                    'What help?' I asked.

'You'd scorn my help,–as Nature's self, you say,

Has scorned to put her music in my mouth,

Because a woman's. Do you now turn round

And ask for what a woman cannot give?'

'For what she only can, I turn and ask,'

He answered, catching up my hands in his,

And dropping on me from his high-eaved brow

The full weight of his soul,–'I ask for love,

And that, she can; for life in fellowship

Through bitter duties–that, I know she can;

For wifehood ... will she?'

                      'Now,' I said, 'may God

Be witness 'twixt us two!' and with the word,

Meseemed I floated into a sudden light

Above his stature,–'am I proved too weak

To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear

Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think,

Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought?

Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can,

Yet competent to love, like HIM?'

                            I paused:

Perhaps I darkened, as the lighthouse will

That turns upon the sea. 'It's always so!

Anything does for a wife.'

                      'Aurora, dear,

And dearly honoured' ... he pressed in at once

With eager utterance,–'you translate me ill.

I do not contradict my thought of you

Which is most reverent, with another thought

Found less so. If your sex is weak for art,

(And I who said so, did but honour you

By using truth in courtship) it is strong

For life and duty. Place your fecund heart

In mine, and let us blossom for the world

That wants love's colour in the grey of time.

With all my talk I can but set you where

You look down coldly on the arena-heaps

Of headless bodies, shapeless, indistinct!

The Judgment-Angel scarce would find his way

Through such a heap of generalised distress,

To the individual man with lips and eyes–

Much less Aurora. Ah, my sweet, come down,

And, hand in hand, we'll go where yours shall touch

These victims, one by one! till one by one,

The formless, nameless trunk of every man

Shall seem to wear a head, with hair you know,

And every woman catch your mother's face

To melt you into passion.'

                      'I am a girl,'

I answered slowly; 'you do well to name

My mother's face. Though far too early, alas,

God's hand did interpose 'twixt it and me,

I know so much of love, as used to shine

In that face and another. Just so much;

No more indeed at all. I have not seen

So much love since, I pray you pardon me,

As answers even to make a marriage with,

In this cold land of England. What you love,

Is not a woman, Romney, but a cause:

You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir,–

A wife to help your ends ... in her no end!

Your cause is noble, your ends excellent,

But I, being most unworthy of these and that,

Do otherwise conceive of love. Farewell.'

'Farewell, Aurora, you reject me thus?'

He said.

        'Why, sir, you are married long ago.

You have a wife already whom you love,

Your social theory. Bless you both, I say.

For my part, I am scarcely meek enough

To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse.

Do I look a Hagar, think you?'

                          'So, you jest!'

'Nay so, I speak in earnest,' I replied.

'You treat of marriage too much like, at least,

A chief apostle; you would bear with you

A wife ... a sister ... shall we speak it out?

A sister of charity.'

                 'Then, must it be

Indeed farewell? And was I so far wrong

In hope and in illusion, when I took

The woman to be nobler than the man,

Yourself the noblest woman,–in the use

And comprehension of what love is,–love,

That generates the likeness of itself

Through all heroic duties? so far wrong

In saying bluntly, venturing truth on love,

'Come, human creature, love and work with me,'–

Instead of, 'Lady, thou art wondrous fair,

'And, where the Graces walk before, the Muse

'Will follow at the lighting of the eyes,

'And where the Muse walks, lovers need to creep

'Turn round and love me, or I die of love.''

With quiet indignation I broke in.

'You misconceive the question like a man,

Who sees a woman as the complement

Of his sex merely. You forget too much

That every creature, female as the male,

Stands single in responsible act and thought

As also in birth and death. Whoever says

To a loyal woman, 'Love and work with me,'

Will get fair answers, if the work and love

Being good themselves, are good for her–the best

She was born for. Women of a softer mood,

Surprised by men when scarcely awake to life,

Will sometimes only hear the first word, love,

And catch up with it any kind of work,

Indifferent, so that dear love go with it:

I do not blame such women, though, for love,

They pick much oakum; earth's fanatics make

Too frequently heaven's saints. But me, your work

Is not the best for,–nor your love the best,

Nor able to commend the kind of work

For love's sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,

To be over-bold in speaking of myself,–

I, too, have my vocation,–work to do,

The heavens and earth have set me, since I changed

My father's face for theirs,–and though your world

Were twice as wretched as you represent

Most serious work, most necessary work,

As any of the economists'. Reform,

Make trade a Christian possibility,

And individual right no general wrong;

Wipe out earth's furrows of the Thine and Mine,

And leave one green, for men to play at bowls;

With innings for them all! ... what then, indeed,

If mortals were not greater by the head

Than any of their prosperities? what then,

Unless the artist keep up open roads

Betwixt the seen and unseen,–bursting through

The best of your conventions with his best

The unspeakable, imaginable best

God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond

Both speech and imagination? A starved man

Exceeds a fat beast: we'll not barter, sir,

The beautiful for barley.–And, even so,

I hold you will not compass your poor ends

Of barley-feeding and material ease,

Without a poet's individualism

To work your universal. It takes a soul,

To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,

To move the masses ... even to a cleaner stye:

It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's breadth off

The dust of the actual.–ah, your Fouriers failed,

Because not poets enough to understand

That life develops from within.–For me,

Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,

Of work like this! ... perhaps a woman's soul

Aspires, and not creates! yet we aspire,

And yet I'll try out your perhapses, sir;

And if I fail ... why, burn me up my straw

Like other false works–I'll not ask for grace,

Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I

Who love my art, would never wish it lower

To suit my stature. I may love my art,

You'll grant that even a woman may love art,

Seeing that to waste true love on anything,

Is womanly, past question.'