First Book

Of writing many books there is no end;

And I who have written much in prose and verse

For others’ uses, will write now for mine,—

Will write my story for my better self,

As when you paint your portrait for a friend,

Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it

Long after he has ceased to love you, just

To hold together what he was and is.

I, writing thus, am still what men call young;

I have not so far left the coasts of life

To travel inland, that I cannot hear

That murmur of the outer Infinite

Which unweaned babies smile at in their sleep

When wondered at for smiling; not so far,

But still I catch my mother at her post

Beside the nursery-door, with finger up,

‘Hush, hush—here’s too much noise!’ while her sweet eyes

Leap forward, taking part against her word

In the child’s riot. Still I sit and feel

My father’s slow hand, when she had left us both,

Stroke out my childish curls across his knee;

And hear Assunta’s daily jest (she knew

He liked it better than a better jest)

Inquire how many golden scudi went

To make such ringlets. O my father’s hand,

Stroke the poor hair down, stroke it heavily,—

Draw, press the child’s head closer to thy knee!

I’m still too young, too young, to sit alone.

I write. My mother was a Florentine,

Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me

When scarcely I was four years old; my life,

A poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp

Which went out therefore. She was weak and frail;

She could not bear the joy of giving life—

The mother’s rapture slew her. If her kiss

Had left a longer weight upon my lips,

It might have steadied the uneasy breath,

And reconciled and fraternised my soul

With the new order. As it was, indeed,

I felt a mother-want about the world,

And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb

Left out at night, in shutting up the fold,—

As restless as a nest-deserted bird

Grown chill through something being away, though what

It knows not. I, Aurora Leigh, was born

To make my father sadder, and myself

Not overjoyous, truly. Women know

The way to rear up children, (to be just,)

They know a simple, merry, tender knack

Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,

And stringing pretty words that make no sense,

And kissing full sense into empty words;

Which things are corals to cut life upon,

Although such trifles: children learn by such,

Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play,

And get not over-early solemnised,—

But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love’s Divine,

Which burns and hurts not,—not a single bloom,—

Become aware and unafraid of Love.

Such good do mothers. Fathers love as well

—Mine did, I know,—but still with heavier brains,

And wills more consciously responsible,

And not as wisely, since less foolishly;

So mothers have God’s licence to be missed.