We parted so. I held him in respect. I comprehended what he was in heart And sacrificial greatness. Ay, but _he_ Supposed me a thing too small to deign to know: He blew me, plainly, from the crucible, As some intruding, interrupting fly Not worth the pains of his analysis Absorbed on nobler subjects. Hurt a fly! He would not for the world: he’s pitiful To flies even. ‘Sing,’ says he, ‘and teaze me still, If that’s your way, poor insect.’ That's your way! FIFTH BOOK. AURORA LEIGH, be humble. Shall I hope To speak my poems in mysterious tune With man and nature,—with the lava-lymph That trickles from successive galaxies Still drop by drop adown the finger of God, In still new worlds?—with summer-days in this, That scarce dare breathe, they are so beautiful?— With spring’s delicious trouble in the ground Tormented by the quickened blood of roots, And softly pricked by golden crocus-sheaves In token of the harvest-time of flowers?— With winters and with autumns,—and beyond, With the human heart’s large seasons,—when it hopes And fears, joys, grieves, and loves?—with all that strain Of sexual passion, which devours the flesh In a sacrament of souls? with mother’s breasts, Which, round the new-made creatures hanging there, Throb luminous and harmonious like pure spheres?— With multitudinous life, and finally With the great out-goings of ecstatic souls, Who, in a rush of too long prisoned flame, Their radiant faces upward, burn away This dark of the body, issuing on a world Beyond our mortal?—can I speak my verse So plainly in tune to these things and the rest, That men shall feel it catch them on the quick, As having the same warrant over them To hold and move them, if they will or no, Alike imperious as the primal rhythm Of that theurgic nature? I must fail, Who fail at the beginning to hold and move One man,—and he my cousin, and he my friend, And he born tender, made intelligent, Inclined to ponder the precipitous sides Of difficult questions; yet, obtuse to _me_,— Of _me_, incurious! likes me very well, And wishes me a paradise of good, Good looks, good means, and good digestion!—ay, But otherwise evades me, puts me off With kindness, with a tolerant gentleness,— Too light a book for a grave man’s reading! Go, Aurora Leigh: be humble. There it is; We women are too apt to look to one, Which proves a certain impotence in art. We strain our natures at doing something great, Far less because it’s something great to do, Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves As being not small, and more appreciable To some one friend. We must have mediators Betwixt our highest conscience and the judge; Some sweet saint’s blood must quicken in our palms,