Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/259

Rh Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose The shepherd’s heart blood ebbed away into, The faster for his love. And love was here As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth, Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked; The little naked feet drawn up the way Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft And tender,—to the little holdfast hands, Which, closing on a finger into sleep, Had kept the mould of’t. While we stood there dumb,— For oh, that it should take such innocence To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb; The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide, And staring out at us with all their blue, As half perplexed between the angelhood He had been away to visit in his sleep, And our most mortal presence,—gradually He saw his mother’s face, accepting it In change for heaven itself, with such a smile As might have well been learnt there,—never moved, But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy, So happy (half with her and half with heaven) He could not have the trouble to be stirred, But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said: As red and still indeed as any rose, That blows in all the silence of its leaves, Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.

She leaned above him (drinking him as wine)