Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Brother and Sister (1869)George Eliot (Mary Ann Cross) (18191880)
When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss
At lightest thrill from the bee’s swinging chime,
Because the one so near the other is.
Of forty inches, bound to show no dread,
And I the girl that puppy-like now ran,
Now lagged behind my brother’s larger tread.
Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best,
I thought his knowledge marked the boundary
Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest.
Wherever he said “Come!” I stepped in faith.
But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam
Of those young mornings are about me now,
When we two wandered toward the far-off stream
Baked for us only, and I thought with joy
That I should have my share, though he had more,
Because he was the elder and a boy.
Have had those mornings in their opening eyes,
The bunchèd cowslip’s pale transparency
Carries that sunshine of sweet memories,
From those blest hours of infantine content.
Stroked down my tippet, set my brother’s frill,
Then with the benediction of her gaze
Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still
Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound,
So rich for us, we counted them as realms
With varied products: here were earth-nuts found,
Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew,
The large to split for pith, the small to braid;
While over all the dark rooks cawing flew,
A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me.
One where it bridged a tiny rivulet,
Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots;
And all along the waving grasses met
When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew
My wonder downward, seeming all to speak
With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew.
And black-scathed grass betrayed the past abode
Of mystic gypsies, who still lurked between
Me and each hidden distance of the road.
Blotting with her dark smile my sunny day.
And learned the meanings that give words a soul,
The fear, the love, the primal passionate store,
Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole.
My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch,
Took easily as warmth a various food
To nourish the sweet skill of loving much.
Reasons for loving that will strike out love
With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind?
Were reasons sown as thick as stars above,
Day is but Number to the darkened sight.
And on its banks I sat in dreamy peace,
Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought,
Untroubled by the fear that it would cease.
Rounding a grassy hill to me sublime
With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew
The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring time.
The wondrous watery rings that died too soon,
The echoes of the quarry, the still hours
With white robe sweeping-on the shadeless noon,
My present Past, my root of piety.
Had chronicles which yield me many a text;
Where irony still finds an image meet
Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext.
To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait,
And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge,
Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late.
For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide,
Till sky and earth took on a strange new light
And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide
Bearing me onward through the vast unknown.
Nearer and angrier came my brother’s cry,
And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo!
Upon the imperilled line, suspended high,
Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich
Of hugs and praises, and made merry play,
Until my triumph reached its highest pitch
And how the little sister had fished well.
In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet,
I wondered why this happiness befell.
And so I learned, luck was with glory wed.
By loving difference of girl and boy:
The fruit that hung on high beyond my reach
He plucked for me, and oft he must employ
Where lay firm stepping-stones, or call to mind
“This thing I like my sister may not do,
For she is little, and I must be kind.”
Where inward vision over impulse reigns,
Widening its life with separate life discerned,
A Like unlike, a Self that self-restrains.
For those brief days he spent in loving me.
Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame;
My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy
Had any reason when my brother came.
Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop,
Or watched him winding close the spiral string
That looped the orbits of the humming top.
Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil;
My aëry-picturing fantasy was taught
Subjection to the harder, truer skill
And by “What is,” “What will be” to define.
That childish world where our two spirits mingled
Like scents from varying roses that remain
One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled.
Lingered for long about the heart and tongue:
We had been natives of one happy clime,
And its dear accent to our utterance clung.
Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce,
And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range
Two elements which sever their life’s course.
I would be born a little sister there.