And so passed Marian’s life from year to year. Her parents took her with them when they tramped, Dodged lanes and heaths, frequented towns and fairs, And once went farther and saw Manchester, And once the sea, that blue end of the world, That fair scroll-finis of a wicked book,— And twice a prison,—back at intervals, Returning to the hills. Hills draw like heaven, And stronger sometimes, holding out their hands To pull you from the vile flats up to them; And though, perhaps, these strollers still strolled back, As sheep do, simply that they knew the way, They certainly felt bettered unawares Emerging from the social smut of towns To wipe their feet clean on the mountain-turf. In which long wanderings, Marian lived and learned, Endured and learned. The people on the roads Would stop and ask her how her eyes outgrew Her cheeks, and if she meant to lodge the birds In all that hair; and then they lifted her, The miller in his cart, a mile or twain, The butcher’s boy on horseback. Often, too, The pedlar stopped, and tapped her on the head With absolute forefinger, brown and ringed, And asked if peradventure she could read; And when she answered ‘ay,’ would toss her down Some stray odd volume from his heavy pack, A Thomson’s Seasons, mulcted of the Spring, Or half a play of Shakspeare’s, torn across: (She had to guess the bottom of a page By just the top sometimes,—as difficult, As, sitting on the moon, to guess the earth!) Or else a sheaf of leaves (for that small Ruth’s Small gleanings) torn out from the heart of books, From Churchyard Elegies and Edens Lost, From Burns, and Bunyan, Selkirk, and Tom Jones. ’Twas somewhat hard to keep the things distinct, And oft the jangling influence jarred the child Like looking at a sunset full of grace Through a pothouse window while the drunken oaths Went on behind her; but she weeded out Her book-leaves, threw away the leaves that hurt, (First tore them small, that none should find a word) And made a nosegay of the sweet and good To fold within her breast, and pore upon At broken moments of the noontide glare, When leave was given her to untie her cloak And rest upon the dusty roadside bank From the highway’s dust. Or oft, the journey done, Some city friend would lead her by the hand To hear a lecture at an institute: And thus she had grown, this Marian Erle of ours, To no book-learning,—she was ignorant Of authors,—not in earshot of the things Out-spoken o’er the heads of common men, By men who are uncommon,—but within The cadenced hum of such, and capable Of catching from the fringes of the wind Some fragmentary phrases, here and there, Of that fine music,—which, being carried in To her soul, had reproduced itself afresh In finer motions of the lips and lids.