Thus, even thus, He too received his sacramental gift With eucharistic meanings for he loved.Īnd thus beloved, she died. whether men should pay The unpopular but necessary tax With left or right hand-in the alien sun In that great square of the Santissima, There drifted past him (scarcely marked enough To move his comfortable island-scorn,) A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm,- The white-veiled rose-crowned maidens holding up Tall tapers, weighty for such wrists, aslant To the blue luminous tremor of the air, And letting drop the white wax as they went To eat the bishop’s wafer at the church From which long trail of chanting priests and girls, A face flashed like a cymbal on his face, And shook with silent clangour brain and heart, Transfiguring him to music. As he stood In Florence, where he had come to spend a month And note the secret of Da Vinci’s drains, He musing somewhat absently perhaps Some English question. My father was an austere Englishman, Who, after a dry life-time spent at home In college-learning, law, and parish talk, Was flooded with a passion unaware, His whole provisioned and complacent past Drowned out from him that moment. Fathers love as well -Mine did, I know,-but still with heavier brains, And wills more consciously responsible, And not as wisely, since less foolishly So mothers have God’s licence to be missed. Women know The way to rear up children, (to be just,) They know a simple, merry, tender knack Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, And stringing pretty words that make no sense, And kissing full sense into empty words Which things are corals to cut life upon, Although such trifles: children learn by such, Love’s holy earnest in a pretty play, And get not over-early solemnised,- But seeing, as in a rose-bush, Love’s Divine, Which burns and hurts not,-not a single bloom,- Become aware and unafraid of Love. I, Aurora Leigh, was born To make my father sadder, and myself Not overjoyous, truly.

As it was, indeed, I felt a mother-want about the world, And still went seeking, like a bleating lamb Left out at night, in shutting up the fold,- As restless as a nest-deserted bird Grown chill through something being away, though what It knows not. If her kiss Had left a longer weight upon my lips, It might have steadied the uneasy breath, And reconciled and fraternised my soul With the new order. She was weak and frail She could not bear the joy of giving life- The mother’s rapture slew her.

My mother was a Florentine, Whose rare blue eyes were shut from seeing me When scarcely I was four years old my life, A poor spark snatched up from a failing lamp Which went out therefore.

Incidental Fate Book 1 by Summer Leigh