Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Lady Geraldine's Courtship lyrics

Dear my friend and fellow-student
I would lean my spirit o'er you!
Down the purple of this chamber tears
Should scarcely run at will
I am humbled who was humble friend
I bow my head before you:
You should lead me to my peasants
But their faces are too still

There's a lady, an earl's daughter, she
Is proud and she is noble
And she treads the crimson carpet and
She breathes the perfumed air
And a kingly blood sends glances up
Her princely eye to trouble
And the shadow of a monarch's crown
Is softened in her hair

She has halls among the woodlands, she
Has castles by the breakers
She has farms and she has manors


She can threaten and command:
And the palpitating engines snort in
Steam across her acres
As they mark upon the blasted heaven
The measure of the land

There are none of England's daughters who
Can show a prouder presence
Upon princely suitors' praying she has
Looked in her disdain
She was sprung of English nobles
I was born of English peasants
What was I that I should love her
Save for competence to pain?

I was only a poor poet, made
For singing at her casement
As the finches or the thrushes
While she thought of other things
Oh, she walked so high above me
She appeared to my abasement
In her lovely silken murmur
Like an angel clad in wings!

Many vassals bow before her as
Her carriage sweeps their doorways
She has blest their little children
As a priest or queen were she:
Far too tender, or too cruel far
Her smile upon the poor was
For I thought it was the same smile
Which she used to smile on me

She has voters in the Commons, she
Has lovers in the palace
And, of all the fair court ladies
Few have jewels half as fine
Oft the Prince has named her beauty 'twixt
The red wine and the chalice:
Oh, and what was I to love her? my beloved
My Geraldine!

Yet I could not choose but love
Her: I was born to poet-uses
To love all things set above me
All of good and all of fair
Nymphs of mountain, not of valley
We are wont to call the Muses
And in nympholeptic climbing
Poets pass from mount to star

And because I was a poet, and
Because the public praised me
With a critical deduction for
The modern writer's fault
I could sit at rich men's tables
Though the courtesies that raised me
Still suggested clear between us the
Pale spectrum of the salt

And they praised me in her presence
"Will your book appear this summer?"
Then returning to each other "Yes
Our plans are for the moors"
Then with whisper dropped behind me "There
He is! the latest comer
Oh, she only likes his verses! what is over
She endures

"Quite low-born
Self-educated! somewhat gifted
Though by nature
And we make a point of asking him
Of being very kind
You may speak, he does not hear you!
And, besides, he writes no satire
All these serpents kept by charmers
Leave the natural sting behind"

I grew scornfuller, grew colder, as I
Stood up there among them
Till as frost intense will burn you
The cold scorning scorched my brow
When a sudden silver speaking
Gravely cadenced, over-rung them
And a sudden silken stirring touched
My inner nature through xI I I

I looked upward and beheld her: with
A calm and regnant spirit
Slowly round she swept her eyelids
And said clear before them all
"Have you such superfluous honour, sir
That able to confer it
You will come down, Mister Bertram
As my guest to Wycombe Hall?"

Here she paused she had been paler at
The first word of her speaking
But, because a silence followed
It, blushed somewhat, as for shame:
Then, as scorning her own feeling
Resumed calmly "I am seeking
More distinction than these gentlemen think
Worthy of my claim

"Ne'ertheless, you see, I seek it not
Because I am a woman, "
(Here her smile sprang like
A fountain and, so, overflowed her mouth)
"But because my woods in Sussex have
Some purple shades at gloaming
Which are worthy of a king in state
Or poet in his youth

"I invite you, Mister Bertram
To no scene for worldly speeches
Sir, I scarce should dare but only
Where God asked the thrushes first:
And if you will sing beside them
In the covert of my beeches
I will thank you for the
Woodlands, for the human world, at worst"

Then she smiled around right childly, then
She gazed around right queenly
And I bowed I could not
Answer alternated light and gloom
While as one who quells the lions
With a steady eye serenely
She, with level fronting eyelids
Passed out stately from the room

Oh, the blessèd woods of Sussex, I
Can hear them still around me
With their leafy tide of greenery
Still rippling up the wind!
Oh, the cursèd woods of Sussex! where
The hunter's arrow found me
When a fair face and a tender voice
Had made me mad and blind!

In that ancient hall of Wycombe
Thronged the numerous guests invited
And the lovely London ladies trod
The floors with gliding feet
And their voices low with
Fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted
All the air about the windows
With elastic laughters sweet

For at eve the open windows flung
Their light out on the terrace
Which the floating orbs of curtains
Did with gradual shadow sweep
While the swans upon the river, fed
At morning by the heiress
Trembled downward through their snowy wings
At music in their sleep

And there evermore was music, both
Of instrument and singing
Till the finches of the shrubberies
Grew restless in the dark
But the cedars stood up motionless
Each in a moonlight's ringing
And the deer, half in the glimmer
Strewed the hollows of the park

And though sometimes she would bind
Me with her silver-corded speeches
To commix my words and laughter with
The converse and the jest
Oft I sat apart and, gazing on
The river through the beeches
Heard, as pure the swans swam down it
Her pure voice o'erfloat the rest

In the morning, horn of huntsman, hoof
Of steed and laugh of rider
Spread out cheery from the courtyard till
We lost them in the hills
While herself and other ladies, and
Her suitors left beside her
Went a-wandering up the gardens through
The laurels and abeles

Thus, her foot upon the
New-mown grass, bareheaded, with the flowing
Of the virginal white vesture gathered
Closely to her throat
And the golden ringlets in her neck
Just quickened by her going
And appearing to breathe sun for air
And doubting if to float

With a bunch of dewy maple, which
Her right hand held above her
And which trembled a green shadow in
Betwixt her and the skies
As she turned her face in going, thus
She drew me on to love her
And to worship the divineness of the
Smile hid in her eyes

For her eyes alone smile constantly
Her lips have serious sweetness
And her front is calm
The dimple rarely ripples on the cheek
But her deep blue eyes smile constantly
As if they in discreetness
Kept the secret of a happy dream
She did not care to speak

Thus she drew me the first morning
Out across into the garden
And I walked among her noble friends
And could not keep behind
Spake she unto all and unto me "Behold
I am the warden
Of the song-birds in these lindens
Which are cages to their mind

"But within this swarded circle into
Which the lime-walk brings us
Whence the beeches, rounded greenly, stand
Away in reverent fear
I will let no music enter
Saving what the fountain sings us
Which the lilies round the basin may
Seem pure enough to hear

"The live air that waves the lilies
Waves the slender jet of water
Like a holy thought sent feebly up
From soul of fasting saint:
Whereby lies a marble Silence, sleeping
(Lough the sculptor wrought her)
So asleep she is forgetting to
Say Hush! a fancy quaint

"Mark how heavy white her eyelids! not
A dream between them lingers
And the left hand's index droppeth from
The lips upon the cheek:
While the right hand, with the symbol-rose
Held slack within the fingers
Has fallen backward in the basin yet
This Silence will not speak!

"That the essential meaning growing may
Exceed the special symbol
Is the thought as I conceive it:
It applies more high and low
Our true noblemen will often through
Right nobleness grow humble
And assert an inward honour
By denying outward show"

"Nay, your Silence, " said I, "truly
Holds her symbol-rose but slackly
Yet she holds it
Or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken:
And your nobles wear their
Ermine on the outside, or walk blackly
In the presence of the social
Law as mere ignoble men

"Let the poets dream such dreaming! madam
In these British islands
'T is the substance that wanes ever
't is the symbol that exceeds
Soon we shall have nought but symbol:
And, for statues like this Silence
Shall accept the rose's image
In another case, the weed's"

"Not so quickly, " she retorted
"I confess, where'er you go, you
Find for things, names shows for actions
And pure gold for honour clear:
But when all is run to symbol in the Social
I will throw you
The world's book which now reads dryly
And sit down with Silence here"

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought
And half in indignation
Friends, who listened, laughed her words off
While her lovers deemed her fair:
A fair woman, flushed with feeling
In her noble-lighted station
Near the statue's white reposing and
Both bathed in sunny air!

With the trees round, not so distant
But you heard their vernal murmur
And beheld in light and shadow the
Leaves in and outward move
And the little fountain leaping toward the
Sun heart to be warmer
Then recoiling in a tremble from
The too much light above

'T is a picture for remembrance
And thus, morning after morning
Did I follow as she drew me
By the spirit to her feet
Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs we
Both were dogs for scorning
To be sent back when she please
D it and her path lay through the wheat

And thus, morning after morning, spite of
Vows and spite of sorrow
Did I follow at her drawing, while
The week days passed along
Just to feed the swans this noontide
Or to see the fawns to-morrow
Or to teach the hill-side echo some
Sweet Tuscan in a song

Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while
We sate down in the gowans
With the forest green behind us
And it's shadow cast before
And the river running under
And across it from the rowans
A brown partridge whirring near us till
We felt the air it bore

There, obedient to her praying
Did I read aloud the poems
Made to Tuscan flutes
Or instruments more various of our own
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser
Or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets here's the book
The leaf is folded down!

Or at times a modern
Volume, Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl
Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's
Enchanted reverie
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate, " which
If cut deep down the middle
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured
Of a veined humanity

Or at times I read there, hoarsely
Some new poem of my making:
Poets ever fail in reading their
Own verses to their worth
For the echo in you breaks upon
The words which you are speaking
And the chariot wheels jar in the gate
Through which you drive them forth

After, when we were grown tired of books
The silence round us flinging
A slow arm of sweet compression
Felt with beatings at the breast
She would break out on a sudden
In a gush of woodland singing
Like a child's emotion in a god
A naiad tired of rest

Oh, to see or hear her singing!
Scarce I know which is divinest
For her looks sing too she modulates
Her gestures on the tune
And her mouth stirs with the song, like
Song and when the notes are finest
'T is the eyes that shoot out vocal
Light and seem to swell them on

Then we talked oh, how we talked! her
Voice, so cadenced in the talking
Made another singing of the soul!
A music without bars:
While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming
Round where we were walking
Brought interposition worthy-sweet
As skies about the stars

And she spake such good thoughts natural
As if she always thought them
She had sympathies so rapid, open
Free as bird on branch
Just as ready to fly east as
West, whichever way besought them
In the birchen-wood a chirrup
Or a cock-crow in the grange

In her utmost lightness there is truth
And often she speaks lightly
Has a grace in being gay
Which even mournful souls approve
For the root of some grave earnest
Thought is understruck so rightly
As to justify the foliage and
The waving flowers above

And she talked on we talked, rather!
Upon all things, substance, shadow
Of the sheep that browsed the grasses
Of the reapers in the corn
Of the little children from the schools
Seen winding through the meadow
Of the poor rich world beyond them
Still kept poorer by it's scorn

So, of men, and so, of letters
Books are men of higher stature
And the only men that speak aloud
For future times to hear
So, of mankind in the abstract
Which grows slowly into nature
Yet will lift the cry of "progress
" as it trod from sphere to sphere

And her custom was to praise me when
I said, "The Age culls simples
With a broad clown's back turned broadly
To the glory of the stars
We are gods by our own reck'ning, and
May well shut up the temples
And wield on, amid the incense-steam
The thunder of our cars

"For we throw out acclamations
Of self-thanking, self admiring
With, at every mile run faster
'O the wondrous wondrous age!'
Little thinking if we work our SOULS
As nobly as our iron
Or if angels will commend us
At the goal of pilgrimage

"Why, what is this patient entrance
Into nature's deep resources
But the child's most gradual learning
To walk upright without bane?
When we drive out, from the cloud
Of steam, majestical white horses
Are we greater than the first men who
Led black ones by the mane?

"If we trod the deeps of ocean, if
We struck the stars in rising
If we wrapped the globe intensely
With one hot electric breath
'T were but power within our tether
No new spirit power comprising
And in life we were not greater men
Nor bolder men in death"

She was patient with my talking
And I loved her, loved her certes
As I loved all heavenly objects
With uplifted eyes and hands
As I loved pure inspirations, loved
The graces, loved the virtues
In a Love content with writing his
Own name on desert sands

Or at least I thought so
Purely thought no idiot Hope was raising
Any crown to crown Love's silence
Silent Love that sate alone:
Out, alas! the stag is like me
He that tries to go on grazing
With the great deep gun-wound in his neck
Then reels with sudden moan

It was thus I reeled i told you
That her hand had many suitors
But she smiles them down imperially
As Venus did the waves
And with such a gracious coldness that
They cannot press their futures
On the present of her courtesy
Which yieldingly enslaves

And this morning as I sat
Alone within the inner chamber
With the great saloon beyond it
Lost in pleasant thought serene
For I had been reading Camoëns
That poem you remember
Which his lady's eyes are praised in
As the sweetest ever seen

And the book lay open, and
My thought flew from it, taking from it
A vibration and impulsion to an
End beyond it's own
As the branch of a green osier
When a child would overcome it
Springs up freely from his claspings and
Goes swinging in the sun

As I mused I heard a murmur it
Grew deep as it grew longer
Speakers using earnest language
"Lady Geraldine, you would!"
And I heard a voice that pleaded
Ever on in accents stronger
As a sense of reason gave it
Power to make it's rhetoric good

Well I knew that voice it was an
Earl's, of soul that matched his station
Soul completed into lordship
Might and right read on his brow
Very finely courteous far too proud
To doubt his domination
Of the common people
He atones for grandeur by a bow

High straight forehead, nose of eagle
Cold blue eyes of less expression
Than resistance, coldly casting off the
Looks of other men, as steel
Arrows unelastic lips which seem
To taste possession
And be cautious lest the common
Air should injure or distrain

For the rest, accomplished, upright, ay
And standing by his order
With a bearing not ungraceful fond
Of art and letters too
Just a good man made a proud man
As the sandy rocks that border
A wild coast, by circumstances
In a regnant ebb and flow

Thus, I knew that voice, I heard it
And I could not help the hearkening:
In the room I stood up blindly
And my burning heart within
Seemed to seethe and fuse my senses till
They ran on all sides darkening
And scorched
Weighed like melted metal round my
Feet that stood therein

And that voice, I heard it pleading
For love's sake, for wealth, position
For the sake of liberal uses and
Great actions to be done:
And she interrupted gently, "Nay, my lord
The old tradition
Of your Normans, by some worthier
Hand than mine is, should be won"

"Ah, that white hand!" he said quickly
And in his he either drew it
Or attempted for with gravity
And instance she replied
"Nay, indeed, my lord, this talk is vain
And we had best eschew it
And pass on, like friends
To other points less easy to decide"

What he said again
I know not: it is likely that his trouble
Worked his pride up to the surface
For she answered in slow scorn
"And your lordship judges rightly whom
I marry shall be noble
Ay, and wealthy i shall never blush
To think how he was born"

There, I maddened! her words stung me
Life swept through me into fever
And my soul sprang up astonished
Sprang full-statured in an hour
Know you what it is when
Anguish, with apocalyptic NEVER
To a Pythian height dilates you
And despair sublimes to power?

From my brain the soul-wings budded, waved
A flame about my body
Whence conventions coiled to ashes i
Felt self-drawn out, as man
From amalgamate false natures
And I saw the skies grow ruddy
With the deepening feet of angels
And I knew what spirit's can

I was mad, inspired say either!
(anguish worketh inspiration)
Was a man or beast perhaps so
For the tiger roars when speared
And I walked on
Step by step along the level of my passion
Oh my soul! and passed the
Doorway to her face, and never feared

He had left her, peradventure, when
My footstep proved my coming
But for her she half arose, then sate
Grew scarlet and grew pale
Oh, she trembled! 't is so always
With a worldly man or woman
In the presence of true spirit's what
Else can they do but quail?

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird
In among it's forest-brothers
Far too strong for it then drooping
Bowed her face upon her hands
And I spake out wildly, fiercely
Brutal truths of her and others:
I, she planted in the
Desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands

I plucked up her social
Fictions, bloody-rooted though leaf-verdant
Trod them down with words of shaming
All the purple and the gold
All the "landed stakes" and lordships
All that spirit's pure and ardent
Are cast out of love and honour
Because chancing not to hold

"For myself I do not argue, " said
I, "though I love you, madam
But for better souls that nearer to
The height of yours have trod:
And this age shows, to my thinking
Still more infidels to Adam
Than directly, by profession
Simple infidels to God

"Yet, O God, " I said, "O grave, "
I said, "O mother's heart and bosom
With whom first and last are equal
Saint and corpse and little child!
We are fools to your deductions
In these figments of heart-closing
We are traitors to your causes
In these sympathies defiled

"Learn more reverence, madam
Not for rank or wealth
That needs no learning:
That comes quickly, quick as sin does, ay
And culminates to sin
But for Adam's seed, MAN! Trust me, 't
Is a clay above your scorning
With God's image stamped upon it
And God's kindling breath within

"What right have you, madam, gazing
In your palace mirror daily
Getting so by heart your beauty
Which all others must adore
While you draw the golden
Ringlets down your fingers, to vow gaily
You will wed no man that's only good to God
And nothing more?

"Why, what right have you, made
Fair by that same God, the sweetest woman
Of all women He has fashioned
With your lovely spirit-face
Which would seem too near to vanish if
It's smile were not so human
And your voice of holy sweetness
Turning common words to grace

"What right can you have, God's
Other works to scorn, despise, revile them
In the gross, as mere men, broadly
Not as noble men, forsooth
As mere Pariahs of the outer world
Forbidden to assoil them
In the hope of living, dying
Near that sweetness of your mouth?

"Have you any answer, madam? If
My spirit were less earthly
If it's instrument were gifted with
A better silver string
I would kneel down where I stand
And say Behold me! I am worthy
Of thy loving
For I love thee i am worthy as a king

"As it is your ermined pride, I swear
Shall feel this stain upon her
That I, poor, weak, tost with passion
Scorned by me and you again
Love you, madam, dare to love you
To my grief and your dishonour
To my endless desolation
And your impotent disdain!"

More mad words like these
Mere madness! friend
I need not write them fuller
For I hear my hot soul dropping on
The lines in showers of tears
Oh, a woman! friend, a woman! why
A beast had scarce been duller
Than roar bestial loud complaints against
The shining of the spheres

But at last there came a pause
I stood all vibrating with thunder
Which my soul had used the silence drew
Her face up like a call
Could you guess what word she uttered? She
Looked up, as if in wonder
With tears beaded on her lashes
And said "Bertram!" It was all

If she had cursed me, and she
Might have, or if even, with queenly bearing
Which at need is used by women
She had risen up and said
"Sir, you are my guest
And therefore I have given
You a full hearing:
Now, beseech you, choose a
Name exacting somewhat less, instead!"

I had borne it: but that "Bertram" why
It lies there on the paper
A mere word, without her accent
And you cannot judge the weight
Of the calm which crushed my passion:
I seemed drowning in a vapour
And her gentleness destroyed me whom
Her scorn made desolate

So, struck backward and exhausted by
That inward flow of passion
Which had rushed on, sparing nothing
Into forms of abstract truth
By a logic agonizing
Through unseemly demonstration
And by youth's own anguish turning grimly
Grey the hairs of youth

By the sense accursed and instant
That if even I spake wisely
I spake basely using truth, if what
I spake indeed was true
To avenge wrong on a woman her
Who sate there weighing nicely
A poor manhood's worth
Found guilty of such deeds as I could do!

By such wrong and woe exhausted
What I suffered and occasioned
As a wild horse through a city
Runs with lightning in his eyes
And then dashing at a church's
Cold and passive wall, impassioned
Strikes the death into his burning brain
And blindly drops and dies

So I fell, struck down before her
Do you blame me, friend, for weakness?
'T was my strength of passion slew me!
Fell before her like a stone
Fast the dreadful world rolled from me
On it's roaring wheels of blackness:
When the light came I was lying
In this chamber and alone

Oh, of course she charged her lacqueys
To bear out the sickly burden
And to cast it from her scornful sight
But not beyond the gate
She is too kind to be cruel
And too haughty not to pardon
Such a man as I 't were something
To be level to her hate

But for me you now are conscious why
My friend, I write this letter
How my life is read all backward
And the charm of life undone
I shall leave her house at
Dawn I would to-night, if I were better
And I charge my soul to hold
My body strengthened for the sun

When the sun has dyed the oriel
I depart, with no last gazes
No weak moanings
(one word only, left in writing
For her hands)
Out of reach of all derision
And some unavailing praises
To make front against this anguish in
The far and foreign lands

Blame me not i would not squander
Life in grief I am abstemious
I but nurse my spirit's falcon that
It's wing may soar again
There's no room for tears of weakness in
The blind eyes of a Phemius:
Into work the poet kneads them
And he does not die till then