Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/238



English have a scornful insular way Of calling the French light. The levity Is in the judgment only, which yet stands; For say a foolish thing but oft enough, (And here’s the secret of a hundred creeds,— Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, By re-iteration chiefly) the same thing Shall pass at least for absolutely wise, And not with fools exclusively. And so, We say the French are light, as if we said The cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk: Say rather, cats are milked, and milch cows mew, For what is lightness but inconsequence, Vague fluctuation ’twixt effect and cause, Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light, That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eye Winks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itself To a wafer on the white speck on a wall A hundred paces off? Even so direct, So sternly undivertible of aim,