Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/12

Rh 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.

My father was an austere Englishman, Who, after a dry life-time spent at home In college-learning, law, and parish talk, Was flooded with a passion unaware, His whole provisioned and complacent past Drowned out from him that moment.As he stood In Florence, where he had come to spend a month And note the secret of Da Vinci’s drains, He musing somewhat absently perhaps Some English question whether men should pay The unpopular but necessary tax With left or right hand—in the alien sun B 2