THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND
T DEN FOUNDATIONS

AURORA LEIGH.

BOOK SECOND.

TIMES followed one another.

Came a morn

I stood upon the brink of twenty years,
And looked before and after, as I stood
Woman and artist, either incomplete,
Both credulous of completion. There I held
The whole creation in my little cup,

And smiled with thirsty lips before I drank
'Good health to you and me, sweet neighbour mine,
And all these peoples.'

I was glad, that day;

The June was in me, with its multitudes
Of nightingales all singing in the dark,
And rosebuds reddening where the calyx split.
I felt so young, so strong, so sure of God!
So glad, I could not choose be very wise!
And, old at twenty, was inclined to pull
My childhood backward in a childish jest
To see the face of't once more, and farewell!
In which fantastic mood I bounded forth