When not too deep, and even of answering
With pretty 'may it please you,' or 'so it is,'?
Their rapid insight and fine aptitude,
435 Particular worth and general missionariness,
As long as they keep quiet by the fire
And never say 'no' when the world says 'ay,'
For that is fatal,?their angelic reach
Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn,
440 And fatten household sinners,?their, in brief,
Potential faculty in everything
Of abdicating power in it: she owned
She liked a woman to be womanly,
And English women, she thanked God and sighed
445 (Some people always sigh in thanking God),
Were models to the universe. And last
I learnt cross-stitch,9 because she did not like
To see me wear the night with empty hands
A-doing nothing. So, my shepherdess
450 Was something after all (the pastoral saints Be praised for't), leaning lovelorn with pink eyes
To match her shoes, when I mistook the silks;
Her head uncrushed by that round weight of hat
So strangely similar to the tortoise shell
Which slew the tragic poet.1 455 By the way, The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary?or a stool
460 To stumble over and vex you . . . 'curse that stool!'
6. Allusion to the story about Samuel Johnson 9. I.e., embroidery. (1709?1 784), who, when informed of the difficulty 1. According to tradition, the Greek playwright of a piece of music a young lady was playing, Aeschylus was killed by an eagle who, mistaking replied, 'I would it had been impossible.' his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise on it 7. As in painting with watercolors. to break the shell. 8. A kind of waltz.
.
AURORA LEIGH / 1097
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this?that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.
465 In looking down Those years of education (to return)
I wonder if Brinvilliers suffered more
In the water-torture2 . . . flood succeeding flood
To drench the incapable throat and split the veins . . .
470 Than I did. Certain of your feebler souls Go out? in such a process; many pine die
To a sick, inodorous light; my own endured:
I had relations in the Unseen, and drew
The elemental nutriment and heat
475 From nature, as earth feels the sun at nights,
Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark.
I kept the life thrust on me, on the outside
Of the inner life with all its ample room
For heart and lungs, for will and intellect,
