Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/405

Rh For he, a boy still, had been told the tale Of how a fairy bride from Italy, With smells of oleanders in her hair, Was coming through the vines to touch his hand; Whereat the blood of boyhood on the palm Made sudden heats. And when at last I came, And lived before him, lived, and rarely smiled, He smiled and loved me for the thing I was, As every child will love the year’s first flower, (Not certainly the fairest of the year, But, in which, the complete year seems to blow) The poor sad snowdrop,—growing between drifts, Mysterious medium ’twixt the plant and frost, So faint with winter while so quick with spring, So doubtful if to thaw itself away With that snow near it. Not that Romney Leigh Had loved me coldly. If I thought so once, It was as if I had held my hand in fire And shook for cold. But now I understood For ever, that the very fire and heat Of troubling passion in him, burned him clear, And shaped to dubious order, word and act. That, just because he loved me over all, All wealth, all lands, all social privilege, To which chance made him unexpected heir,— And, just because on all these lesser gifts, Constrained by conscience and the sense of wrong He had stamped with steady hand God’s arrow-mark Of dedication to the human need, He thought it should be so too, with his love;