Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/348

Professing equally,—’an open mouth
A gross want, food to fill us, and no more!’
Why that’s so far from virtue, only vice
Finds reason for it! That makes libertines:
That slurs our cruel streets from end to end
With eighty thousand women in one smile,
Who only smile at night beneath the gas:
The body’s satisfaction and no more,
Being used for argument against the soul’s,
Her too! the want, here too, implying the right.
—How dark I stood that morning in the sun,
My best Aurora, though I saw your eyes,—
When first you told me . . oh, I recollect
The words . . and how you lifted your white hand,
And how your white dress and your burnished curls
Went greatening round you in the still blue air,
As if an inspiration from within
Had blown them all out when you spoke the same,
Even these,—’You will not compass your poor ends
‘Of barley-feeding and material ease,
‘Without the poet’s individualism
‘To work your universal. It takes a soul,
‘To move a body,—it takes a high-souled man,
‘To move the masses . . even to a cleaner stye:
‘It takes the ideal, to blow an inch inside
‘The dust of the actual: and your Fouriers failed
‘Because not poets enough to understand
‘That life develops from within.’ I say
Your words,—I could say other words of yours
For none of all your words has been more lost