Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/276

Rh ‘Would suffer steadily and never flinch, ‘But suffer surely and keenly, when his class ‘Turned shoulder on him for a shameful match, ‘And set him up as nine-pin in their talk ‘To bowl him down with jestings.’—There, she paused; And when I used the pause in doubting that We wronged him after all in what we feared— ‘Suppose such things should never touch him, more ‘In his high conscience, (if the things should be,) ‘Than, when the queen sits in an upper room ‘The horses in the street can spatter her!’— A moment, hope came,—but the lady closed That door and nicked the lock and shut it out, Observing wisely that ‘the tender heart ‘Which made him over-soft to a lower class, ‘Could scarcely fail to make him sensitive ‘To a higher,—how they thought and what they felt.’

‘Alas, alas!’ said Marian, rocking slow The pretty baby who was near asleep, The eyelids creeping over the blue balls,— ‘She made it clear, too clear—I saw the whole! And yet who knows if I had seen my way Straight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear, Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this, Had set her own house all a-fire for me, To light me forwards? Leaning on my face Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will, She told me tenderly, (as when men come To a bedside to tell people they must die)