To George Sand
A Recognition
“True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Thy woman’s nature with manly scorn,
And break away the gauds and amulets worn
By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! That revolted cry
is sobbed in by a woman’s voice for
-lorn!–
Thy woman’s hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man’s name! and while
before
The world thou burnest in a poet-fire,
We see the woman heart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer,
heart, and higher,
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly
shore,
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire.”
The Soul’s Expression
“With stammering lips and insufficent
sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature day and night
With dream and thought and feeling
interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and
height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual
ground!
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime
and whole,
And utter all myself into the air.
But if I did it-as the thunder-roll
breaks its own cloud, my flesh would
perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.”
I highly recommend that young women who like poetry get into Mrs Barrett Browning.
Chris Murray 