Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/239

230 Is this French people. All idealists Too absolute and earnest, with them all The idea of a knife cuts real flesh; And still, devouring the safe interval Which Nature placed between the thought and act, With those to fiery and impatient souls, They threaten conflagration to the world And rush with most unscrupulous logic on Impossible practice. Set your orators To blow upon them with loud windy mouths Through watchword phrases, jest or sentiment, Which drive our burley brutal English mobs Like so much chaff, whichever way they blow,— This light French people will not thus be driven. They turn indeed; but then they turn upon Some central pivot of their thought and choice, And veer out by the force of holding fast. —That’s hard to understand, for Englishmen Unused to abstract questions, and untrained To trace the involutions, valve by valve, In each orbed bulb-root of a general truth, And mark what subtly fine integument Divides opposed compartments. Freedom’s self Comes concrete to us, to be understood, Fixed in a feudal form incarnately To suit our ways of thought and reverence, The special form, with us, being still the thing. With us, I say, though I’m of Italy My mother’s birth and grave, by father’s grave