As long as they keep quiet by the fire And never say ‘no’ when the world says ‘ay,’ For that is fatal,—their angelic reach Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn, And fatten household sinners,—their, in brief, Potential faculty in everything Of abdicating power in it: she owned She liked a woman to be womanly, And English women, she thanked God and sighed, (Some people always sigh in thanking God) Were models to the universe. And last I learnt cross-stitch, because she did not like To see me wear the night with empty hands, A-doing nothing. So, my shepherdess Was something after all, (the pastoral saints Be praised for’t) leaning lovelorn with pink eyes To match her shoes, when I mistook the silks; Her head uncrushed by that round weight of hat So strangely similar to the tortoise-shell Which slew the tragic poet. By the way, The works of women are symbolical. We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight, Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir, To put on when you’re weary—or a stool To stumble over and vex you ... ‘curse that stool!’ Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean And sleep, and dream of something we are not, But would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps. In looking down Those years of education, (to return) I wonder if Brinvilliers suffered more In the water-torture, ... flood succeeding flood To drench the incapable throat and split the veins ... Than I did. Certain of your feebler souls Go out in such a process; many pine To a sick, inodorous light; my own endured: I had relations in the Unseen, and drew The elemental nutriment and heat From nature, as earth feels the sun at nights, Or as a babe sucks surely in the dark. I kept the life, thrust on me, on the outside Of the inner life, with all its ample room For heart and lungs, for will and intellect, Inviolable by conventions. God, I thank thee for that grace of thine! At first, I felt no life which was not patience,—did The thing she bade me, without heed to a thing Beyond it, sate in just the chair she placed, With back against the window, to exclude The sight of the great lime-tree on the lawn, Which seemed to have come on purpose from the woods To bring the house a message,—ay, and walked Demurely in her carpeted low rooms, As if I should not, harkening my own steps, Misdoubt I was alive. I read her books, Was civil to her cousin, Romney Leigh, Gave ear to her vicar, tea to her visitors, And heard them whisper, when I changed a cup, (I blushed for joy at that)—‘The Italian child, For all her blue eyes and her quiet ways,