The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1 - Browning Elizabeth Barrett

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known

      Subduing the unknown and taming it

      From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there,

      Presents a lion, albeit twenty times

      As large as any lion – with a roar

      Set soundless in his vibratory jaws,

      And a strange horror stirring in his mane.

      And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh —

      Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab

      Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws,

      Like a slow blot that spreads, – till all the ground,

      Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself.

      A bull stands hornèd here with gibbous glooms;

      And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes

      Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark.

      This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard;

      And here, fantastic fishes duskly float,

      Using the calm for waters, while their fins

      Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.

      While images more human —

      Eve. How he stands,

      That phantasm of a man – who is not thou!

      Two phantasms of two men!

      Adam. One that sustains,

      And one that strives, – resuming, so, the ends

      Of manhood's curse of labour.2 Dost thou see

      That phantasm of a woman?

      Eve. I have seen;

      But look off to those small humanities3

      Which draw me tenderly across my fear, —

      Lesser and fainter than my womanhood,

      Or yet thy manhood – with strange innocence

      Set in the misty lines of head and hand.

      They lean together! I would gaze on them

      Longer and longer, till my watching eyes,

      As the stars do in watching anything,

      Should light them forward from their outline vague

      To clear configuration.

[Two Spirits, of Organic and Inorganic Nature, arise from the ground

      But what Shapes

      Rise up between us in the open space,

      And thrust me into horror, back from hope!

      Adam. Colossal Shapes – twin sovran images,

      With a disconsolate, blank majesty

      Set in their wondrous faces! with no look,

      And yet an aspect – a significance

      Of individual life and passionate ends,

      Which overcomes us gazing.

      O bleak sound,

      O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!

      How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels,

      Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail

      Around the cyclic zodiac, and gains force,

      And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,

      On the wan faces of these images

      We see before us, – whereby modified,

      It draws a straight line of articulate song

      From out that spiral faintness of lament,

      And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.

      First Spirit.

      I am the spirit of the harmless earth.

      God spake me softly out among the stars,

      As softly as a blessing of much worth;

      And then his smile did follow unawares,

      That all things fashioned so for use and duty

      Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty —

      Yet I wail!

      I drave on with the worlds exultingly,

      Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall;

      Individual aspect and complexity

      Of gyratory orb and interval

      Lost in the fluent motion of delight

      Toward the high ends of Being beyond sight —

      Yet I wail!

      Second Spirit.

      I am the spirit of the harmless beasts,

      Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming;

      Of all the lives, erst set at silent feasts,

      That found the love-kiss on the goblet brimming,

      And tasted in each drop within the measure

      The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure —

      Yet I wail!

      What a full hum of life around his lips

      Bore witness to the fulness of creation!

      How all the grand words were full-laden ships

      Each sailing onward from enunciation

      To separate existence, – and each bearing

      The creature's power of joying, hoping, fearing!

      Yet I wail!

      Eve. They wail, beloved! they speak of glory and God,

      And they wail – wail. That burden of the song

      Drops from it like its fruit, and heavily falls

      Into the lap of silence.

      Adam. Hark, again!

      First Spirit.

      I was so beautiful, so beautiful,

      My joy stood up within me bold to add

      A word to God's, – and, when His work was full,

      To "very good" responded "very glad!"

      Filtered through roses did the light enclose me,

      And bunches of the grape swam blue across me —

      Yet I wail!

      Second Spirit.

      I bounded with my panthers: I rejoiced

      In my young tumbling lions rolled together:

      My stag, the river at his fetlocks, poised

      Then dipped his antlers through the golden weather

      In the same ripple which the alligator

      Left, in his joyous troubling of the water —

      Yet I wail!

      First Spirit.

      O my deep waters, cataract and flood,

      What wordless triumph did your voices render

      O mountain-summits, where the angels stood

      And shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!

      How, with a holy quiet, did your Earthy

      Accept that Heavenly, knowing ye were worthy!

      Yet I wail!

      Second Spirit.

      O my wild wood-dogs, with your listening eyes!

      My

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<p>2</p>

Adam recognizes in Aquarius, the Water-bearer, and Sagittarius, the Archer, distinct types of the man bearing and the man combating, – the passive and active forms of human labour. I hope that the preceding zodiacal signs – transferred to the earthly shadow and representative purpose – of Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Capricornus, and Pisces, are sufficiently obvious to the reader.

<p>3</p>

Her maternal instinct is excited by Gemini.