Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/61

‘What grace! what facile turns! what fluent sweeps!
‘What delicate discernment . . almost thought!
‘The book does honour to the sex, we hold.
‘Among our female authors we make room
‘For this fair writer, and congratulate
‘The country that produces in these times
‘Such women, competent to . . spell.’’
‘Stop there!’
I answered—burning through his thread of talk
With a quick flame of emotion,—‘You have read
My soul, if not my book, and argue well
I would not condescend . . we will not say
To such a kind of praise, (a worthless end
Is praise of all kinds) but to such a use
Of holy art and golden life. I am young,
And peradventure weak—you tell me so—
Through being a woman. And, for all the rest,
Take thanks for justice. I would rather dance
At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped
Their gingerbread for joy,—than shift the types
For tolerable verse, intolerable
To men who act and suffer. Better far,
Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means,
Than a sublime art frivolously.’
‘You,
Choose nobler work than either, O moist eyes,
And hurrying lips, and heaving heart! We are young
Aurora, you and I. The world . . look round . .
The world, we’re come to late, is swollen hard

With perished generations and their sins: