Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/180

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AURORA LEIGH.
We mused on with conjectural fantasy,As if some riddle of a summer-cloudOn which some one tries unlike similitudesOf now a spotted Hydra-skin cast off,And now a screen of carven ivoryThat shuts the heaven's conventual secrets upFrom mortals over-bold. We sought the sense:She loved him so perhaps, (such words mean love,)That, worked on by some shrewd perfidious tongue,(And then I thought of Lady Waldemar)She left him, not to hurt him; or perhapsShe loved one in her class,—or did not love,But mused upon her wild bad tramping life,Until the free blood fluttered at her heart,And black bread eaten by the road-side hedgeSeemed sweeter than being put to Romney's schoolOf philanthropical self-sacrifice,Irrevocably.—Girls are girls, beside,Thought I, and like a wedding by one rule.You seldom catch these birds, except with chaff:They feel it almost an immoral thingTo go out and be married in broad day,Unless some winning special flattery shouldExcuse them to themselves for't, . . 'No one partsHer hair with such a silver line as you,One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown!'Or else . . 'You bite your lip in such a way,It spoils me for the smiling of the rest'—And so on. Then a worthless gaud or two,To keep for love,—a ribbon for the neck,
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