Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/336

Rh (So bold to cross the Alp by Lombardy And dash his brute front unabashed against The steep snow-bosses of that shield of God, Who soon shall rise in wrath and shake it clear Came hither also,—raking up our vines And olive-gardens with his tyrannous tusks, And rolling on our maize with all his swine.’

‘You had the news from Vincent Carrington,’ He echoed,—picking up the phrase beyond, As if he knew the rest was merely talk To fill a gap and keep out a strong wind,— ‘You had, then, Vincent’s personal news?’ ‘His own, I answered, ‘All that ruined world of yours Seems crumbling into marriage. Carrington Has chosen wisely.’ ‘Do you take it so?’ He cried, ‘and is it possible at last’. . He paused there,—and then, inward to himself, ‘Too much at last, too late!—yet certainly’. . (And there his voice swayed as an Alpine plank That feels a passionate torrent underneath) ‘The knowledge, if I had known it, first or last, Had never changed the actual case for me. And best, for her, at this time.’ Nay, I thought, He loves Kate Ward, it seems, now, like a man, Because he has married Lady Waldemar. Ah, Vincent’s letter said how Leigh was moved