Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/86

Rh To duchies or to dunghills, not an inch She’d budge, ’twas obvious, for such worthless odds: Nor, though the stars were suns, and overburned Their spheric limitations, swallowing up Like wax the azure spaces, could they force Those open eyes to wink once. What last sight Had left them blank and flat so,—drawing out The faculty of vision from the roots, As nothing more, worth seeing, remained behind?

Were those the eyes that watched me, worried me? That dogged me up and down the hours and days, A beaten, breathless, miserable soul? And did I pray, a half hour back, but so, To escape the burden of those eyes. . those eyes? ‘Sleep late’ I said.— Why now, indeed, they sleep. God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in’t. Every wish Is like a prayer. . With God. I had my wish,— To read and meditate the thing I would, To fashion all my life upon my thought, And marry, or not marry. Henceforth, none Could disapprove me, vex me, hamper me. Full ground-room, in this desert newly made, For Babylon or Balbec,—when the breath, Just choked with sand, returns, for building towns!