Цитаты из книги Aurora Leigh

Good love, howe'er ill-placed, Is better for a man's soul in the end, Than if he loved ill what deserves love well.

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak, Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties My hair . . . now could I but unloose my soul!

We are sepulchred alive in this close world, And want more room.

he takes up imperfectly The social question--by one handle--leaves The rest to trail. A Christian socialist Is Romney Leigh, you understand.' 'Not I. I disbelieve in Christian-pagans, much

As you in women-fishes.

I set myself to art! What then? what's done? What's done, at last? Behold, at last, a book. If life-blood's necessary, which it is-- (By that blue vein a-throb on Mahomet's brow, Each prophet-poet's book must show man's blood!) If life-blood's fertilising, I wrung mine On every leaf of this--unless the drops Slid heavily on one side and left it dry.

Nay, if there's room for poets in this world A little overgrown (I think there is), Their sole work is to represent the age, Their age, not Charlemagne's--this live, throbbing age, That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires, And spends more passion, more heroic heat, Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms, Than Roland with his knights at Roncesvalles.

But poets should Exert a double vision; should have eyes To see near things as comprehensively As if afar they took their point of sight, And distant things as intimately deep As if they touched them. Let us strive for this.

All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes: every age, Heroic in proportions, double-faced, Looks backward and before, expects a morn And claims an epos.

My ballads prospered; but the ballad's race Is rapid for a poet who bears weights Of thought and golden image. He can stand Like Atlas, in the sonnet--and support* His own heavens pregnant with dynastic stars; But then he must stand still, nor take a step.

Well, he had some right On his side probably; men always have, Who go absurdly wrong.

We catch love And other fevers in the vulgar way: Love will not be outwitted by our wit, Nor outrun by our equipages--mine Persisted, spite of efforts.

I worked with patience, which means almost power:

And there, in a certain house in Kensington, Three years I lived and worked. Get leave to work In this world--'tis the best you get at all; For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts Than men in benediction. God says, 'Sweat For foreheads,' men say 'crowns,' and so we are crowned, Ay, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work; Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,

In the beginning when God called all good, Even then, was evil near us, it is writ. But we, indeed, who call things good and fair, The evil is upon us while we speak; Deliver us from evil, let us pray.

But I could not hide My quickening inner life from those at watch. They saw a light at a window now and then, They had not set there. Who had set it there? My father's sister started when she caught My soul agaze in my eyes. She could not say I had no business with a sort of soul, But plainly she objected,–and demurred, That souls were dangerous things to carry straight Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.

And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed My prayers without the vicar; read my books, Without considering whether they were fit To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good By being ungenerous, even to a book, And calculating profits . . so much help By so much rending. It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth– 'Tis then we get the right good from a book.

He left our Florence, and made haste to hide Himself, his prattling child, and silent grief, Among the mountains above Pelago; Because unmothered babes, he thought, had need Of mother nature more than others use, And Pan's white goats, with udders warm and full Of mystic contemplations, come to feed Poor milkless lips of orphans like his own–