Aurora Leigh

‘You’re sorry, dear Aurora? Yes indeed, They did it perfectly: a thorough work, And not a failure, this time. Let us grant ’Tis somewhat easier, though, to burn a house Than bui...

To change the water for my heliotropes And yellow roses. Paris has such flowers. But England, also. ’Twas a yellow rose, By that south window of the little house, My cousin Romn...

‘So young,’ he gently asked her, ‘you have lost Your father and your mother?’ ‘Both,’ she said, ‘Both lost! my father was burnt up with gin Or ever I sucked milk, and so is lost...

‘I love and lie?’ she said—‘I lie, forsooth?’ And beat her taper foot upon the floor, And smiled against the shoe,—‘You’re hard, Miss Leigh, Unversed in current phrases.—Bowling...

Here’s Marian’s letter, which a ragged child Brought running, just as Romney at the porch Looked out expectant of the bride. He sent The letter to me by his friend Lord Howe Som...

‘You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months Will walk as well as you,’ she cried in haste, ‘Without a steadying finger. Why, you child, God help you, you are groping in the d...

Truth, so far, in my book! a truth which draws From all things upwards. I, Aurora, still Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life As Jove did Io: and, until that Hand Sh...

ONE eve it happened, when I sate alone, Alone, upon the terrace of my tower, A book upon my knees, to counterfeit The reading that I never read at all, While Marian, in the gard...

How lovely One I love not, looked to-night! She’s very pretty, Lady Waldemar. Her maid must use both hands to twist that coil Of tresses, then be careful lest the rich Bronze ro...

But then my cousin sets his dignity On personal virtue. If he understands By love, like others, self-aggrandisement, It is that he may verily be great By doing rightly and kindl...

‘You cannot’.... ‘That if Heaven itself should stoop, Remix the lots, and give me another chance, I’d say, ‘No other!’—I’d record my blank. Aurora never should be wife of mine.’...

I took him up austerely,—‘You have read My book, but not my heart; for recollect, ’Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at. I’ve surely failed, I know; if failure means To loo...

The critics say that epics have died out With Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods— I’ll not believe it. I could never dream As Payne Knight did, (the mythic mountaineer Who trave...

‘Enough so!—it is plain enough so. True, We wretches cannot tell out all our wrong, Without offence to decent happy folk. I know that we must scrupulously hint With half-words,...

But I, convicted, broken utterly, With woman’s passion clung about her waist, And kissed her hair and eyes,—‘I have been wrong, Sweet Marian’ ... (weeping in a tender rage) ‘Swe...

‘Aurora, let’s be serious, and throw by This game of head and heart. Life means, be sure, Both heart and head,—both active, both complete, And both in earnest. Men and women mak...

I mind me, when we parted at the door, How strange his good-night sounded,—like good-night Beside a deathbed, where the morrow’s sun Is sure to come too late for more good-days:...

The cygnet finds the water; but the man Is born in ignorance of his element, And feels out blind at first, disorganised By sin i’ the blood,—his spirit-insight dulled And crosse...

I answered mild but earnest. ‘I believe In no one’s honour which another keeps, Nor man’s nor woman’s. As I keep, myself, My truth and my religion, I depute No father, though I...

It burns, it burnt—my whole life burnt with it, And light, not sunlight and not torchlight, flashed My steps out through the slow and difficult road. I had grown distrustful of...

The next day, we took train to Italy And fled on southward in the roar of steam. The marriage-bells of Romney must be loud, To sound so clear through all! I was not well; And tr...

And I, I was a good child on the whole, A meek and manageable child. Why not? I did not live, to have the faults of life: There seemed more true life in my father’s grave Than i...

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I felt it hard to breathe, much less to speak. Nor word of mine was needed. Some one else Was there for answering. ‘Romney,’ she began, ‘My great good angel, Romney.’ Then at fi...