Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Brother and Sister (1869)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) (1819–1880)

I CANNOT choose but think upon the time

When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss

At lightest thrill from the bee’s swinging chime,

Because the one so near the other is.

He was the elder and a little man

Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,

And I the girl that puppy-like now ran,

Now lagged behind my brother’s larger tread.

I held him wise, and when he talked to me

Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best,

I thought his knowledge marked the boundary

Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest.

If he said “Hush!” I tried to hold my breath.

Wherever he said “Come!” I stepped in faith.

Long years have left their writing on my brow,

But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam

Of those young mornings are about me now,

When we two wandered toward the far-off stream

With rod and line. Our basket held a store

Baked for us only, and I thought with joy

That I should have my share, though he had more,

Because he was the elder and a boy.

The firmaments of daisies since to me

Have had those mornings in their opening eyes,

The bunchèd cowslip’s pale transparency

Carries that sunshine of sweet memories,

And wild-rose branches take their finest scent

From those blest hours of infantine content.

Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways,

Stroked down my tippet, set my brother’s frill,

Then with the benediction of her gaze

Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still

Across the homestead to the rookery elms,

Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound,

So rich for us, we counted them as realms

With varied products: here were earth-nuts found,

And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade;

Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew,

The large to split for pith, the small to braid;

While over all the dark rooks cawing flew,

And made a happy strange solemnity,

A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me.

Our meadow-path had memorable spots:

One where it bridged a tiny rivulet,

Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots;

And all along the waving grasses met

My little palm, or nodded to my cheek,

When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew

My wonder downward, seeming all to speak

With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew.

Then came the copse, where wild things rushed unseen,

And black-scathed grass betrayed the past abode

Of mystic gypsies, who still lurked between

Me and each hidden distance of the road.

A gypsy once had startled me at play,

Blotting with her dark smile my sunny day.

Thus rambling we were schooled in deepest lore,

And learned the meanings that give words a soul,

The fear, the love, the primal passionate store,

Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole.

Those hours were seed to all my after good;

My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch,

Took easily as warmth a various food

To nourish the sweet skill of loving much.

For who in age shall roam the earth and find

Reasons for loving that will strike out love

With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind?

Were reasons sown as thick as stars above,

’Tis love must see them, as the eye sees light:

Day is but Number to the darkened sight.

Our brown canal was endless to my thought;

And on its banks I sat in dreamy peace,

Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought,

Untroubled by the fear that it would cease.

Slowly the barges floated into view

Rounding a grassy hill to me sublime

With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew

The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring time.

The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers,

The wondrous watery rings that died too soon,

The echoes of the quarry, the still hours

With white robe sweeping-on the shadeless noon,

Were but my growing self, are part of me,

My present Past, my root of piety.

Those long days measured by my little feet

Had chronicles which yield me many a text;

Where irony still finds an image meet

Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext.

One day my brother left me in high charge,

To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait,

And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge,

Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late.

Proud of the task, I watched with all my might

For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide,

Till sky and earth took on a strange new light

And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide

A fair pavilioned boat for me alone

Bearing me onward through the vast unknown.

But sudden came the barge’s pitch-black prow,

Nearer and angrier came my brother’s cry,

And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo!

Upon the imperilled line, suspended high,

A silver perch! My guilt that won the prey,

Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich

Of hugs and praises, and made merry play,

Until my triumph reached its highest pitch

When all at home were told the wondrous feat,

And how the little sister had fished well.

In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet,

I wondered why this happiness befell.

“The little lass had luck,” the gardener said:

And so I learned, luck was with glory wed.

We had the self-same world enlarged for each

By loving difference of girl and boy:

The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach

He plucked for me, and oft he must employ

A measuring glance to guide my tiny shoe

Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind

“This thing I like my sister may not do,

For she is little, and I must be kind.”

Thus boyish Will the nobler mastery learned

Where inward vision over impulse reigns,

Widening its life with separate life discerned,

A Like unlike, a Self that self-restrains.

His years with others must the sweeter be

For those brief days he spent in loving me.

His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy

Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;

My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy

Had any reason when my brother came.

I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling

Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop,

Or watched him winding close the spiral string

That looped the orbits of the humming top.

Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought

Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil;

My aëry-picturing fantasy was taught

Subjection to the harder, truer skill

That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-tracked line,

And by “What is,” “What will be” to define.

School parted us; we never found again

That childish world where our two spirits mingled

Like scents from varying roses that remain

One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.

Yet the twin habit of that early time

Lingered for long about the heart and tongue:

We had been natives of one happy clime,

And its dear accent to our utterance clung.

Till the dire years whose awful name is Change

Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce,

And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range

Two elements which sever their life’s course.

But were another childhood-world my share,

I would be born a little sister there.