Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/136

‘God, free me from my mother,’ she shrieked out,
‘These mothers are too dreadful.’ And, with force
As passionate as fear, she tore her hands
Like lilies from the rocks, from hers and his,
And sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep,
Away from both—away, if possible,
As far as God,—away! They yelled at her,
As famished hounds at a hare. She heard them yell,
She felt her name hiss after her from the hills,
Like shot from guns. On, on. And now she had cast
The voices off with the uplands. On. Mad fear
Was running in her feet and killing the ground;
The white roads curled as if she burnt them up,
The green fields melted, wayside trees fell back
To make room for her. Then, her head grew vexed,
Trees, fields, turned on her and ran after her;
She heard the quick pants of the hills behind,
Their keen air pricked her neck. She had lost her feet,
Could run no more, yet somehow went as fast,—
The horizon, red, ’twixt steeples in the east,
So sucked her forward, forward, while her heart
Kept swelling, swelling, till it swelled so big
It seemed to fill her body; then it burst,
And overflowed the world and swamped the light,
‘And now I am dead and safe,’ thought Marian Erle—
She had dropped, she had fainted.
When the sense returned,
The night had passed—not life’s night. She was ’ware
Of heavy tumbling motions, creaking wheels,

The driver shouting to the lazy team