Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/14

Rh With rosy children hanging on their gowns, Under the cloister, to escape the sun That scorches in the piazza.After which, He left our Florence, and made haste to hide Himself, his prattling child, and silent grief, Among the mountains above Pelago; Because unmothered babes, he thought, had need Of mother nature more than others use, And Pan’s white goats, with udders warm and full Of mystic contemplations, come to feed Poor milkless lips of orphans like his own— Such scholar-scraps he talked, I’ve heard from friends, For even prosaic men, who wear grief long, Will get to wear it as a hat aside With a flower stuck in’t.Father, then, and child, We lived among the mountains many years, God’s silence on the outside of the house, And we, who did not speak too loud, within; And old Assunta to make up the fire, Crossing herself whene’er a sudden flame Which lightened from the firewood, made alive That picture of my mother on the wall. The painter drew it after she was dead; And when the face was finished, throat and hands, Her cameriera carried him, in hate Of the English-fashioned shroud, the last brocade She dressed in at the Pitti.‘He should paint No sadder thing than that,’ she swore, ‘to wrong Her poor signora.’Therefore, very strange The effect was.I, a little child, would crouch