And catch up with it any kind of work,
Indifferent, so that dear love go with it.
I do not blame such women, though, for love,
They pick much oakum;7 earth's fanatics make
450 Too frequently heaven's saints. But me your work
Is not the best for,?nor your love the best,
Nor able to commend the kind of work
For love's sake merely. Ah, you force me, sir,
To be overbold in speaking of myself:
455 I too have my vocation,?work to do, The heavens and earth have set me since I changed
My father's face for theirs, and, though your world
Were twice as wretched as you represent,
Most serious work, most necessary work
460 As any of the economists'. Reform,
Make trade a Christian possibility,
And individual right no general wrong;
Wipe out earth's furrows of the Thine and Mine,
And leave one green for men to play at bowls,8
465 With innings for them all! . . . What then, indeed,
If mortals are not greater by the head
Than any of their prosperities? what then,
Unless the artist keep up open roads
Betwixt the seen and unseen,?bursting through
470 The best of your conventions with his best,
The speakable, imaginable best
God bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond
Both speech and imagination? A starved man
Exceeds a fat beast: we'll not barter, sir,
475 The beautiful for barley.?And, even so, I hold you will not compass your poor ends
Of barley-feeding and material ease,
Without a poet's individualism
To work your universal. It takes a soul,
480 To move a body: it takes a high-souled man,
To move the masses, even to a cleaner stye:
It takes the ideal, to blow a hair's-breadth off
The dust of the actual.?Ah, your Fouriers9 failed,
Because not poets enough to understand 485 That life develops from within. For me,
Perhaps I am not worthy, as you say,
Of work like this: perhaps a woman's soul
Aspires, and not creates: yet we aspire,
And yet I'll try out your perhapses, sir,
7. Fiber derived by untwisting (picking) old rope, 9. I.e., Utopian thinkers; Francois-larie-Churles a task frequently assigned to workhouse inmates. Fourier (1772?1837), a French political theorist 8. A game of skill played on a smooth lawn with who advocated communal property as a basis for weighted wooden balls. social harmony.
.
110 4 / ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
490 And if I fail . . . why, burn me up my straw'
Like other false works?I'll not ask for grace;
Your scorn is better, cousin Romney. I
Who love my art, would never wish it lower
