Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/251

I cannot write to Romney, ‘Here she is,
Here’s Marian found! I’ll set you on her track:
I saw her here, in Paris, . . and her child.
She put away your love two years ago,
But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then;
And, now that you’ve forgot her utterly
As any lost year’s annual in whose place
You’ve planted a thick flowering evergreen,
I choose, being kind, to write and tell you this
To make you wholly easy—she’s not dead,
But only . . damned.’
Stop there: I go too fast;
I’m cruel like the rest,—in haste to take
The first stir in the arras for a rat,
And set my barking, biting thoughts upon’t.
—A child! what then? Suppose a neighbour’s sick
And asked her, ‘Marian, carry out my child
In this spring air,’—I punish her for that?
Or say, the child should hold her round the neck
For good child-reasons, that he liked it so
And would not leave her—she had winning ways—
I brand her therefore, that she took the child?
Not so.
I will not write to Romney Leigh.
For now he’s happy,—and she may indeed
Be guilty,—and the knowledeg of her fault
Would draggle his smooth time. But I, whose days
Are not so fine they cannot bear the rain,
And who, moreover, having seen her face,
Must see it again, . . will see it, by my hopes