Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/262

Rh And breaking on him in a storm of tears, Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots, Until he took it for a game, and stretched His feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings, And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh: ‘Mine, mine,’ she said; ‘I have as sure a right As any glad pround mother in the world, Who sets her darling down to cut his teeth Upon her church-ring. If she talks of law, I talk of law! I claim my mother-dues By law,—the law which now is paramount; The common law, by which the poor and weak Are trodden underfoot by vicious men, And loathed for ever after by the good. Let pass! I did not filch. . I found the child.’

‘You found him, Marian?’ ‘Ay, I found him where I found my curse,—in the gutter with my shame! What have you, any of you, to say to that, Who all are happy, and sit safe and high, And never spoke before to arraign my right To grief itself? What, what,. . being beaten down By hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch, Half-dead, whole mangled. . when a girl, at last, Breathes, sees. . and finds, there, bedded in her flesh, Because of the overcoming shock perhaps, Some coin of price! . . and when a good man comes (That’s God! the best men are not quite as good) And says, ‘I dropped the coin there: take it, you,