Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/309

And take a blister on my brow instead
Of this dead weight! best, perfectly be stunned
By those insufferable cicale, sick
And hoarse with rapture of the summer-heat,
That sing like poets, till their hearts break, . . sing
Till men say, ‘It’s too tedious.’
Books succeed,
And lives fail. Do I feel it so, at last?
Kate loves a worn-out cloak for being like mine,
While I live self-despised for being myself,
And yearn toward some one else, who yearns away
From what he is, in his turn. Strain a step
For ever, yet gain no step? Are we such,
We cannot, with our admirations even,
Our tip-toe aspirations, touch a thing
That’s higher than we? is all a dismal flat,
And God alone above each,—as the sun
O’er level lagunes, to make them shine and stink,—
Laying stress upon us with immediate flame,
While we respond with our miasmal fog,
And call it mounting higher, because we grow
More highly fatal?
Tush, Aurora Leigh!
You wear your sackcloth looped in Cæsar’s way.
And brag your failings as mankind’s. Be still.
There is what’s higher in this very world,
Than you can live, or catch at. Stand aside,
And look at others—instance little Kate!
She’ll make a perfect wife for Carrington.
She always has been looking round the earth