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: Marian’s Child

THERE he lay upon his back,

The yearling creature, warm and moist with life

To the bottom of his dimples,—to the ends

Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;

For since he had been covered over-much

To keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks

Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose

The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into

The faster for his love. And love was here

As instant; in the pretty baby-mouth,

Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked,

The little naked feet, drawn up the way

Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft

And tender,—to the tiny holdfast hands,

Which, closing on a finger into sleep,

Had kept the mould of ’t.
While we stood there dumb,

For oh, that it should take such innocence

To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb,—

The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,

And, staring out at us with all their blue,

As half perplexed between the angelhood

He had been away to visit in his sleep,

And our most mortal presence, gradually

He saw his mother’s face, accepting it

In change for heaven itself with such a smile

As might have well been learnt there,—never moved,

But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy,

So happy (half with her and half with heaven)

He could not have the trouble to be stirred,

But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said?

As red and still indeed as any rose,

That blows in all the silence of its leaves,

Content in blowing to fulfil its life.