Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/265

Rh All of you? am I wicked, do you think? God knows me, trusts me with a child! but you, You think me really wicked?’ ‘Complaisant,’ I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done, Because of certain profits,—which is wrong Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left The pure place and the noble heart, to take The hand of a seducer’. . ‘Whom? whose hand? I took the hand of’. . Springing up erect, And lifting up the child at full arm’s length, As if to bear him like an oriflamme Unconquerable to armies of reproach,— ‘By him,’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls, By those blue eyes no woman born could dare A perjury on, I make my mother’s oath, That if I left that Heart, to lighten it, The blood of mine was still, except for grief! No cleaner maid than I was, took a step To a sadder cup,—no matron-mother now Looks backwards to her early maidenhood Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily: And if I lie so,. . if, being fouled in will And paltered with in soul by devil’s lust, I dare to bid this angel take my part,. . Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven, Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak: He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’ ’s your word?