Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/318

To take between his dainty, milk-fed lips,
God love him! I should certainly be glad,
Except, God help me, that I’m sorrowful,
Because of Romney.
Romney, Romney! Well,
This grows absurd!—too like a tune that runs
I’ the head, and forces all things in the world,
Wind, rain, the creaking gnat or stuttering fly,
To sing itself and vex you;—yet perhaps
A paltry tune you never fairly liked,
Some ‘I’d be a butterfly,’ or ‘C’est l’amour:’
We’re made so,—not such tyrants to ourselves,
We are not slaves to nature. Some of us
Are turned, too, overmuch like some poor verse
With a trick of ritournelle: the same thing goes
And comes back ever.
Vincent Carrington
Is ‘sorry,’ and I’m sorry; but he’s strong
To mount from sorrow to his heaven of love,
And when he says at moments, ‘Poor, poor Leigh,
Who’ll never call his own, so true a heart,
So fair a face even,’—he must quickly lose
The pain of pity in the blush he has made
By his very pitying eyes. The snow, for him,
Has fallen in May, and finds the whole earth warm,
And melts at the first touch of the green grass.
But Romney,—he has chosen, after all.
I think he had as excellent a sun
To see by, as most others, and perhaps