Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/158

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AURORA LEIGH.
149
And turned and went. Ay, masks, I thought,—bewareOf tragic masks, we tie before the glass,Uplifted on the cothurn half a yardAbove the natural stature! we would playHeroic parts to ourselves,—and end, perhaps,As impotently as Athenian wivesWho shrieked in fits at the Eumenides.
His foot pursued me down the stair. 'At least,You'll suffer me to walk with you beyondThese hideous streets, these graves, where men alive,Packed close with earthworms, burr unconsciouslyAbout the plague that slew them; let me go.The very women pelt their souls in mudAt any woman who walks here alone.How came you here alone?—you are ignorant.'
We had a strange and melancholy walk:The night came drizzling downward in dark rain;And, as we walked, the colour of the time,The act, the presence, my hand upon his arm,His voice in my ear, and mine to my own sense,Appeared unnatural. We talked modern books,And daily papers; Spanish marriage-schemes,And English climate—was't so cold last year?And will the wind change by to-morrow morn?Can Guizot stand? is London full? is tradeCompetitive? has Dickens turned his hingeA-pinch upon the fingers of the great?And are potatoes to grow mythical
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