We are too heavy for our cross,
245 And fall and crush you and your seed.
xxxvr I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky.
The clouds are breaking on my brain;
2. I.e., the white race (the race of George Washington, the first president of the United States).
.
109 2 / ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
I am floated along, as if I should die
Of liberty's exquisite pain.
250 In the name of the white child waiting for me
In the death-dark where we may kiss and agree,
White men, I leave you all curse-free
In my broken heart's disdain!
1846 1848,1850
From Aurora Leigh
From Book 1
[THE EDUCATION OF AURORA LEIGH]1 Then, land!?then, England! oh, the frosty cliffs2
Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home
Among those mean red houses through the fog?
And when I heard my father's language first
255 From alien lips which had no kiss for mine I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept, And some one near me said the child was mad Through much sea-sickness. The train swept us on: Was this my father's England? the great isle?
260 The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship
Of verdure, field from field,3 as man from man;
The skies themselves looked low and positive,
As almost you could touch them with a hand,
And dared to do it they were so far off
265 From God's celestial crystals;4 all things blurred And dull and vague. Did Shakespeare and his mates Absorb the light here??not a hill or stone With heart to strike a radiant colour up Or active outline on the indifferent air.
270 I think I see my fathers sister stand
Upon the hall-step of her country-house
To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm,
Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight
As if for taming accidental thoughts
275 From possible pulses;5 brown hair pricked with gray
By frigid use of life (she was not old,
Although my fathers elder by a year),
A nose drawn sharply, yet in delicate lines;
A close mild mouth, a little soured about
280 The ends, through speaking unrequited loves
1. Aurora Leigh, the only child of an Italian 2. The white chalk cliffs at Dover. mother and an English father, is raised in Italy by 3. English fields were separated from each other her father after her mother's death when Aurora is by hedgerows. four years old. When she is thirteen her father also 4. Perhaps a reference to the ancient notion that dies, and the orphaned girl is sent to live in the sky was composed of several crystalline spheres England with her father's sister, who is to be orbiting the earth. responsible for the girl's education. 5. I.e., pulsation in her temples from excitement.
.
AURORA LEIGH / 1093
Or peradventure niggardly0 half-truths; miserly
Eyes of no colour,?once they might have smiled,
But never, never have forgot themselves
In smiling; cheeks, in which was yet a rose
