Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/132

Rh The having to thank God for such a joy!

And so passed Marian’s life from year to year. Her parents took her with them when they tramped, Dodged lanes and heaths, frequented towns and fairs, And once went farther and saw Manchester, And once the sea, that blue end of the world, That fair scroll-finis of a wicked book,— And twice a prison,—back at intervals, Returning to the hills. Hills draw like heaven, And stronger sometimes, holding out their hands To pull you from the vile flats up to them; And though, perhaps, these strollers still strolled back, As sheep do, simply that they knew the way, They certainly felt bettered unawares Emerging from the social smut of towns To wipe their feet clean on the mountain turf. In which long wanderings, Marian lived and learned, Endured and learned. The people on the roads Would stop and ask her how her eyes outgrew Her cheeks, and if she meant to lodge the birds In all that hair; and then they lifted her The miller in his cart, a mile or twain, The butcher’s boy on horseback. Often, too, The pedlar stopped, and tapped her on the head With absolute forefinger, brown and ringed, And asked if peradventure she could read! And when she answered ‘ay,’ would toss her down Some stray odd volume from his heavy pack, A Thomson’s Seasons, mulcted of the Spring,