Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

Extracts from Aurora Leigh: A Simile

EVERY age,

Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned

By those who have not lived past it. We ’ll suppose

Mount Athos carved, as Alexander schemed,

To some colossal statue of a man.

The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,

Had guessed as little as the browsing goats

Of form or feature of humanity

Up there,—in fact, had travelled five miles off

Or ere the giant image broke on them,

Full human profile, nose and chin distinct,

Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky

And fed at evening with the blood of suns;

Grand torso,—hand, that flung perpetually

The largesse of a silver river down

To all the country pastures. ’Tis even thus

With times we live in,—evermore too great

To be apprehended near.