As honeyed bees keep humming to themselves,
'The worthiest poets have remained uncrowned
Till death has bleached their foreheads to the bone;
And so with me it must be unless I prove
Unworthy of the grand adversity,
And certainly I would not fail so much.
What, therefore, if I crown myself to-day
In sport, not pride, to learn the feel of it,
Before my brows be numbed as Dante's own
To all the tender pricking of such leaves?
Such leaves! what leaves?'
I pulled the branches down
To choose from.
'Not the bay!6 I choose no bay
(The fates deny us if we are overbold),
Nor myrtle?which means chiefly love; and love
Is something awful which one dares not touch
So early o' mornings. This verbena strains
The point of passionate fragrance; and hard by, This guelder-rose,0 at far too slight a beck cranberry bush
Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.
Ah?there's my choice,?that ivy on the wall,
That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow
inspiration: poetic aspirations, fostered by the dis-5. The protective outer leaves covering a flower or covery of her father's library; the beauty of the nat-bud. ural world; and the intellectual companionship of 6. Laurel, associated with poetry and prophecy by her cousin Romney Leigh, an idealistic young man the ancient Greeks, who also crowned the athletic troubled by the misery of the poor and inspired by victors in the Pythian games with a laurel wreath. contemporary notions of social reform.
.
AURORA LEIGH / 1099
But thinking of a wreath. Large leaves, smooth leaves,
Serrated like my vines, and half as green.
50 I like such ivy, bold to leap a height
'Twas strong to climb; as good to grow on graves
As twist about a thyrsus;7 pretty too
(And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb.'
Thus speaking to myself, half singing it,
55 Because some thoughts are fashioned like a bell
To ring with once being touched, I drew a wreath
Drenched, blinding me with dew, across my brow,
And fastening it behind so, turning faced
. . . My public!?cousin Romney?with a mouth
Twice graver than his eyes. 60 I stood there fixed,?
My arms up, like the caryatid,8 sole
Of some abolished temple, helplessly
Persistent in a gesture which derides
A former purpose. Yet my blush was flame,
As if from flax, not stone. 65 'Aurora Leigh,
The earliest of Auroras!'9
Hand stretched out
I clasped, as shipwrecked men will clasp a hand,
Indifferent to the sort of palm. The tide
