Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/392

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AURORA LEIGH.
And glide along the churchyard like a bride,While all the dead keep whispering through the withes,‘You would be better in your place with us,‘You pitiful corruption!’ At the thought,The damps break out on me like leprosy,Although I’m clean. Ay, clean as Marian Erle:As Marian Leigh, I know, I were not clean:I have not so much life that I should love,. . Except the child. Ah God! I could not bearTo see my darling on a good man’s knees,And know by such a look, or such a sigh,Or such a silence, that he thought sometimes,‘This child was fathered by some cursed wretch' . .For, Romney,—angels are less tender-wiseThan God and mothers: even you would thinkWhat we think never. He is ours, the child;And we would sooner vex a soul in heavenBy coupling with it the dead body’s thought,It left behind it in a last month’s grave,Than, in my child, see other than . . my child.We only, never call him fatherlessWho has God and his mother. O my babe,My pretty, pretty blossom, an ill-windOnce blew upon my breast! can any thinkI’d have another,—one called happier,A fathered child, with father’s love and raceThat’s worn as bold and open as a smile,To vex my darling when he’s asked his nameAnd has no answer? What! a happier childThan mine, my best,—who laughed so loud to-night
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