And I, I was a good child on the whole, A meek and manageable child. Why not? I did not live, to have the faults of life: There seemed more true life in my father’s grave Than in all England. Since _that_ threw me off Who fain would cleave, (his latest will, they say, Consigned me to his land) I only thought Of lying quiet there where I was thrown Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her To prick me to a pattern with her pin, Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf, And dry out from my drowned anatomy The last sea-salt left in me. So it was. I broke the copious curls upon my head In braids, because she liked smooth-ordered hair. I left off saying my sweet Tuscan words Which still at any stirring of the heart Came up to float across the English phrase, As lilies, (_Bene_ ... or _che ch’è_) because She liked my father’s child to speak his tongue. I learnt the collects and the catechism, The creeds, from Athanasius back to Nice, The Articles ... the Tracts _against_ the times, (By no means Buonaventure’s ‘Prick of Love,’) And various popular synopses of Inhuman doctrines never taught by John, Because she liked instructed piety. I learnt my complement of classic French (Kept pure of Balzac and neologism,) And German also, since she liked a range Of liberal education,—tongues, not books. I learnt a little algebra, a little Of the mathematics,—brushed with extreme flounce The circle of the sciences, because She misliked women who are frivolous. I learnt the royal genealogies Of Oviedo, the internal laws Of the Burmese empire, ... by how many feet Mount Chimborazo outsoars Himmeleh, What navigable river joins itself To Lara, and what census of the year five Was taken at Klagenfurt,—because she liked A general insight into useful facts. I learnt much music,—such as would have been As quite impossible in Johnson’s day As still it might be wished—fine sleights of hand And unimagined fingering, shuffling off The hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes To a noisy Tophet; and I drew ... costumes From French engravings, nereids neatly draped, With smirks of simmering godship,—I washed in From nature, landscapes, (rather say, washed out.) I danced the polka and Cellarius, Spun glass, stuffed birds, and modelled flowers in wax, Because she liked accomplishments in girls. I read a score of books on womanhood To prove, if women do not think at all, They may teach thinking, (to a maiden-aunt Or else the author)—books demonstrating Their right of comprehending husband’s talk When not too deep, and even of answering With pretty ‘may it please you,’ or ‘so it is,’— Their rapid insight and fine aptitude, Particular worth and general missionariness,