285 Of perished summers, like a rose in a book, Kept more for ruth? than pleasure,?if past bloom, remorse
Past fading also.
She had lived, we'll say,
A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,
A quiet life, which was not life at all
290 (But that, she had not lived enough to know),
Between the vicar and the county squires,
The lord-lieutenant6 looking down sometimes From the empyrean0 to assure their souls highest heaven Against chance vulgarisms, and, in the abyss,
295 The apothecary,7 looked on once a year
To prove their soundness of humility.
The poor-club8 exercised her Christian gifts
Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats,
Because we are of one flesh, after all,
300 And need one flannel9 (with a proper sense
Of difference in the quality)?and still
The book-club, guarded from your modern trick
Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease,1 Preserved her intellectual.0 She had lived intellectual gifts 305 A sort of cage-bird life, born in a cage,
Accounting that to leap from perch to perch
Was act and joy enough for any bird.
Dear heaven, how silly are the things that live
In thickets, and eat berries!
I, alas, 310 A wild bird scarcely fledged, was brought to her cage,
And she was there to meet me. Very kind.
Bring the clean water, give out the fresh seed.
She stood upon the steps to welcome me,
Calm, in black garb. I clung about her neck,?
315 Young babes, who catch at every shred of wool
To draw the new light closer, catch and cling
Less blindly. In my ears my father's word
Hummed ignorantly, as the sea in shells,
'Love, love, my child.' She, black there with my grief,
320 Might feel my love?she was his sister once?
I clung to her. A moment she seemed moved,
Kissed me with cold lips, suffered me to cling,
And drew me feebly through the hall into
The room she sat in. There, with some strange spasm
6. Governor of the county. 1. The fold between two pages of a book, which 7. Pharmacist, who in England at the time could had to be cut to open the pages. Presumably, mod- prescribe as well as sell medicine. ern books were more apt to reveal dangerous mate8. Club devoted to making things for the poor. ria] when the crease was cut. 9. I.e., flannel petticoat.
.
1094 / ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
325 Of pain and passion, she wrung loose my hands
Imperiously, and held me at arm's length,
And with two grey-steel naked-bladed eyes Searched through my face,?ay, stabbed it through and through,
Through brows and cheeks and chin, as if to find
330 A wicked murderer in my innocent face,
If not here, there perhaps. Then, drawing breath,
She struggled for her ordinary calm?
