Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/103

94 More passion.’ Surely. Self is put away, And calm with abdication. She is Jove, And no more Danae—greater thus. Perhaps The painter symbolises unawares Two states of the recipient artist-soul; One, forward, personal, wanting reverence, Because aspiring only. We’ll be calm, And know that, when indeed our Joves come down, We all turn stiller than we have ever been.

Kind Vincent Carrington. I’ll let him come. He talks of Florence,—and may say a word Of something as it chanced seven years ago,— A hedgehog in the path, or a lame bird, In those green country walks, in that good time, When certainly I was so miserable. . I seem to have missed a blessing ever since.

The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars. It is not thus with men. We do not make our places with our strains,— Content, while they rise, to remain behind, Alone on earth instead of so in heaven. No matter—I bear on my broken tale.

When Romney Leigh and I had parted thus, I took a chamber up three flights of stairs Not far from being as steep as some larks climb, And, in a certain house in Kensington,