And dry out from my drowned anatomy
The last sea-salt left in me.
So it was. 385 I broke the copious curls upon my head
In braids, because she liked smooth-ordered hair.
I left off saying my sweet Tuscan words
Which still at any stirring of the heart
Came up to float across the English phrase 390 As lilies (Bene or Che che4), because She liked my father's child to speak his tongue.
I learnt the collects5 and the catechism,
The creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice,6 The Articles, the Tracts against the times7 395 (By no means Buonaventure's 'Prick of Love'8),
And various popular synopses of
Inhuman doctrines never taught by John,9
Because she liked instructed piety.
I learnt my complement of classic French 400 (Kept pure of Balzac and neologism')
And German also, since she liked a range
Of liberal education,?tongues,0 not books. languages
I learnt a little algebra, a little
Of the mathematics,?brushed with extreme flounce2 405 The circle of the sciences, because
She misliked women who are frivolous.
I learnt the royal genealogies
Of Oviedo,3 the internal laws
Of the Burmese empire,?by how many feet
410 Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe,
What navigable river joins itself
To Lara,4 and what census of the year five
Was taken at Klagenfurt,5?because she liked
A general insight into useful facts.
3. As in embroidery. 8. St. Bonaventure's doctrine that the power of 4. No, no, indeed (Italian). 'Bene': it is well (Ital-the heart to love leads to higher illumination than ian). the power of the mind to reason. 5. Seasonal opening prayers in the Angbcan 9. I.e., the author of the Gospel. Church service. 1. A new word or expression. Honore de Balzac 6. Articles of Christian faith such as those pro-(1799?1850), a French novelist whose realism claimed by Athanasius, an Egyptian theologian of made him improper reading for a young English the 4th century c .E., and at the early Church coun-lady of the 19th century. cil held at Nicaea in the same era. 2. An ornamental edge to a skirt. 'Extreme': out7. In the 1 830s leaders of the conservative High ermost. Church party, such as John Henry Newman, had 3. Spanish historian (16th century), who wrote a published Tracts for the Times, which expounded book on the genealogies of Spanish noblemen. arguments against efforts by liberals to modernize 4. A town in Spain on the river Arlanza. Mount the Anglican Church. Aurora's version of the title Chimborazo is one of the highest peaks of the is hence ironic. 'Articles': the thirty-nine articles Andes. Teneriffe is a mountain in the Canary are the principles of faith of the Church of Islands. England. 5. A town in Austria.
.
1096 / ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
415 I learnt much music,?such as would have been
As quite impossible in Johnson's day6
As still it might be wished?fine sleights of hand
And unimagined fingering, shuffling off
The hearer's soul through hurricanes of notes
420 To a noisy Tophet;? and I drew . . . costumes hell From French engravings, nereids? neatly draped sea nymphs(With smirks of simmering godship): I washed in7 Landscapes from nature (rather say, washed out). I danced the polka and Cellarius,8
425 Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modeled flowers in wax,
Because she liked accomplishments in girls.
I read a score of books on womanhood
To prove, if women do not think at all,
They may teach thinking (to a maiden aunt
430 Or else the author),?books that boldly assert
Their right of comprehending husband's talk
