Poor Marian! 'twas aluckless day for her, When first she chanced on my philanthropy.'

Have ruined no one through your dreams. Instead,

You've helped the facile youth to live youth's day

down;

And I, instinctively, as women use Before a sweet friend's grief,-when, in his ear,

They hum the tune of comfort though themselves

Most ignorant of the special words of such,

And quiet so and fortify his brain

And give it time and strength for feeling

out

To reach the availing sense beyond that sound,

Went murmuring to him what, if written here,

Would seem not much, yet fetched him better help

That he and I,- despite a year or two

I've known the pregnant thinkers of our time,

And stood by breathless, hanging on their lips,

When some chromatic sequence of fine thought

In learned modulation phrased itself
To an unconjectured harmony of truth:
And yet I've been more moved, more
raised, I say,

days,

The three-hour speeches from the member's seat,

The hot committees in and out of doors, The pamphlets, 'Arguments,' 'Collective Views,'

Tossed out as straw before sick houses, just

To show one's sick and so be trod to dirt And no more use,—through this world's underground

than by all

the arm

And heart come torn,-'twas sure that

he and I

Were, after all, unequally fatigued ;

mouths.

'Ah, dear Aurora,' he began at last, His pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile, 'Your printer's devils have not spoilt your heart:

That's well. And who knows but, long years ago

When you and I talked, you were somewhat right

In being so peevish with me? You, at least,

on me,

So many seasons I had missed my Springs.

My cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs,

And all the youth-blood in them had grown white

As dew on autumn cyclamens: alone My eyes and forehead answered for my face.

'Not so, my cousin,-only not asleep,'
I answered, smiling gently. Let it be.
You scarcely found the poet of Vaucluse
As drowsy as the shepherds. What is art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art's life, and where we live, we
suffer and toil.'

He seemed to sift me with his painful

what bread i' the house,

What fire i' the frost!" There must be some response,

Though mine fail utterly. This social Sphinx

Who sits between the sepulchres and stews,

Makes mock and mow against the crystal heavens,

And bullies God,-exacts a word at least From each man standing on the side of God,

However paying a sphinx-price for it. We pay it also if we hold our peace,

In

pangs and pity. Let me speak and die. Alas, you'll say I speak and kill instead.' I pressed in there. 'The best men, doing their best,

Know peradventure least of what they do: Men usefullest i' the world are simply used;

The nail that holds the wood, must And He alone who wields the hammer pierce it first,

sees

The work advanced by the earliest blow. Take heart.'

Ah, if I could have taken yours!' he said, 'But that's past now.' Then rising,'I will take

At least your kindness and encourage

ment.

I thank you. Dear, be happy. Sing your songs,

If that's your way! but sometimes slumber too,

Nor tire too much with following, out of breath,

The rimes upon your mountains of
Delight.
Reflect, if Art be in truth the higher life,
You need the lower life to stand upon
In order to reach up unto that higher;
He cannot stand in with two stable feet.
And none can stand a-tiptoe in the place
Remember then!-for Art's sake, hold
your life.'

We parted so. I held him in respect.
I comprehended what he was in heart
And sacrificial greatness. Aye, but he

So plainly in tune to these things and the rest,

That men shall feel it catch them on the quick,

As having the same warrant over them To hold and move them if they will or no,

Alike imperious as the primal rhythm Of that theurgic nature?—I must fail, Who fail at the beginning to hold and

move

One man, and he my cousin, and he my friend,

And he born tender, made intelligent,
Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides
Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to me,
Of me, incurious! likes me very well,
And wishes me a paradise of good,
Good looks, good means, and good
digestion,-aye,

But otherwise evades me, puts me off With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,

Too light a book for a grave man's reading! Go,

Aurora Leigh: be humble.

There it is,

We miss the abstract when we comprehend.

We miss it most when we aspire,-and fail.

Yet, so, I will not.-This vile woman's

way

Oftrailing garments, shall not trip me up: I'll have no traffic with the personal thought

In art's pure temple. Must I work in vain,
Without the approbation of a man?
It cannot be; it shall not. Fame itself,
That approbation of the general race,
Presents a poor end (though the arrow
speed,

Shot straight with vigorous finger to the white),

And the highest fame was never reached except

By what was aimed above it. Art for art, And good for God Himself, the essential Good!

We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes

erect,

Although our woman-hands should shake and fail;

And if we fail... But must we ?—

Shall I fail? The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase,

'Let no one be called happy till his death.'

To which I add,-Let no one till his death

Be called unhappy. Measure not the work

Until the day's out and the labour done, Then bring your gauges. If the day's work's scant,

Why, call it scant; affect no compromise; And, in that we have nobly striven at least,

Deal with us nobly, women though webe, And honour us with truth if not with praise.

My ballads prospered; but the ballad's

race

Is rapid for a poet who bears weights Of thought and golden image. He can

stand

His own heavens pregnant with dynastic stars;

But then he must stand still, nor take a step.

In that descriptive poem called 'The Hills,'

The prospects were too far and indistinct.

'Tis true my critics said, 'A fine view, that!'

The public scarcely cared to climb my book

For even the finest, and the public's right;

A tree's mere firewood, unless humanized,

Which well the Greeks knew when they stirred its bark

With close-pressed bosoms of subsiding nymphs,

And made the forest-rivers garrulous With babble of gods. For us, we are

called to mark

A still more intimate humanity
In this inferior nature, or ourselves
Must fall like dead leaves trodden under-
foot

By veritable artists. Earth (shut up
By Adam, like a fakir in a box
Left too long buried) remained stiff and
dry,

A mere dumb corpse, till Christ the Lord came down,

Unlocked the doors, forced open the blank eyes,

And used his kingly chrism to straighten

out

The leathery tongue turned back into the throat;

Since when, she lives, remembers, palpitates

In every limb, aspires in every breath,
Embraces infinite relations. Now
We want no half-gods, Panomphaean
Joves,

Fauns, Naiads, Tritons, Oreads and the

rest,

To take possession of a senseless world To unnatural vampire-uses. See the earth,

Aye, but every age Appears to souls who live in 't (ask Carlyle)

Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours : The thinkers scout it, and the poets abound

Who scorn to touch it with a finger-tip :

turned grey

washed;

An age of scum, spooned off the richer past,

An age of patches for old gaberdines, An age of mere transition, meaning nought

Except that what succeeds must shame it quite

If God please.

That's wrong thinking,

to my mind, And wrong thoughts make poor poems. Every age, Through being beheld too close, is illdiscerned

By those who have not lived past it. We'll suppose

Mount Athos carved, as Alexander schemed,

To some colossal statue of a man. The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,

Had guessed as little as the browsing goats

Of form or feature of humanity Up there,-in fact, had travelled five miles off

Or ere the giant image broke on them, Full human profile, nose and chin distinct, Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky

And fed at evening with the blood of suns; Grand torso,-hand, that flung perpetually

The largesse of a silver river down

a front;

With times we live in,-evermore too great