And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; All thinking things, all objects of all thought, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. DIED 1861. The most learned, and perhaps the most talented, of English female poets. Art, life, politics, and religion are treated by her with great vigor of thought, and simplicity of language. PRINCIPAL WRITINGS. "Casa Guidi Windows," a political poem: "The Seraphim;" A Drama of Exile;" "The Duchess May;" "Lady Geraldine's Courtship;' "Bertha in the Lane;" "The Cry of the Children;" 66 Cowper's Grave;""Prometheus Bound," translation from Eschylus; and "Aurora Leigh," her greatest work. MOTHER AND POET. DEAD!-one of them shot by the sea in the east, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast, 2. Yet I was a poetess only last year; And good at my art, for a woman, men said. 3. What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain! 4. What art's for a woman?- To hold on her knees And 'broider the long clothes and neat little coat; 5. To teach them. . . . It stings there. I made them indeed And, when their eyes flashed, 6. - oh my beautiful eyes!forth at the wheels But then the surprise then one weeps, then one kneels. God! how the house feels! 7. At first, happy news came, in gay letters, moiled 8. Then was triumph at Turin. "Ancona was free!" 9. I bore it friends soothed me. My grief looked sublime To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time 10. - shorter, sadder, more strong, Writ now but in one hand. "I was not to faint. And letters still came, One loved me for two; would be with me ere long: And Viva Italia' he died for, our saint, Who forbids our complaint," 11. My Nanni would add, "He was safe, and aware Of a presence that turned off the balls; was imprest 12. On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line Swept smoothly the next news from Gaëta,-"Shot! " Tell his mother. Ah, ah! "his," "their" mother, not "mine." No voice says "My mother" again to me. You think Guido forgot? 13. What! Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven, 14. O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of thy mother! consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate; mark Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say! 15. Both boys dead! But that's out of nature. We all. Have been patriots; yet each house must always keep one: 'Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall. And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done 16. Ah, ah, ah! when Gaëta's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men; When your guns of Cavalli with final retort Have cut the game short; 17. When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee; When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red; When you have your country from mountain to sea; When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead,) — 18. What then? Do not mock me. Ah! ring your bells low. And burn your lights faintly. My country is there, Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow; My Italy's there with my brave civic pair, To disfranchise despair. Forgive me! 19. Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn; But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn Dead! When the man-child is born. 20. one of them shot by the sea in the west, AURORA LEIGH. - AND I—I was a good child, on the whole, — So it was. I broke the copious curls upon my head And various popular synopses of I learnt my complement of classic French I learnt a little algebra, a little Of the mathematics, brushed with extreme flounce She misliked women who are frivolous. I learnt the royal genealogies Of Oviedo, the internal laws Of the Burmese Empire, by how many feet What navigable river joins itself To Lara, and what census of the year five Was taken at Klagenfurt, because she liked I learnt much music, - such as would have been As still it might be wished, fine sleights of hand And unimagined fingering, shuffling off From French engravings, Nereids neatly draped, Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax, - I read a score of books on womanhood, And never say "No" when the world says "Ay," Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn, And fatten household sinners; their, in brief, Of abdicating power in it. She owned She liked a woman to be womanly; And English women she thanked God and sighed And, last, I learnt cross-stitch, because she did not like |