Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/29

20 At whiles she let him shut my music up And push my needles down, and lead me out To see in that south angle of the house The figs grow black as if by a Tuscan rock, On some light pretext. She would turn her head At other moments, go to fetch a thing, And leave me breath enough to speak with him, For his sake; it was simple. Sometimes too He would have saved me utterly, it seemed, He stood and looked so. Once, he stood so near He dropped a sudden hand upon my head Bent down on woman’s work, as soft as rain— But then I rose and shook it off as fire, The stranger’s touch that took my father’s place, Yet dared seem soft. I used him for a friend Before I ever knew him for a friend. ’Twas better, ’twas worse also, afterward: We came so close, we saw our differences Too intimately. Always Romney Leigh Was looking for the worms, I for the gods. A godlike nature his; the gods look down, Incurious of themselves; and certainly ’Tis well I should remember, how, those days I was a worm too, and he looked on me.

A little by his act perhaps, yet more By something in me, surely not my will,