Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/265

All of you? am I wicked, do you think?
God knows me, trusts me with a child! but you,
You think me really wicked?’
⁠‘Complaisant,’
I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done,
Because of certain profits,—which is wrong
Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left
The pure place and the noble heart, to take
The hand of a seducer’ . .
⁠‘Whom? whose hand?
I took the hand of’ . .
⁠Springing up erect,
And lifting up the child at full arm’s length,
As if to bear him like an oriflamme
Unconquerable to armies of reproach,—
‘By him,’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls,
By those blue eyes no woman born could dare
A perjury on, I make my mother’s oath,
That if I left that Heart, to lighten it,
The blood of mine was still, except for grief!
No cleaner maid than I was, took a step
To a sadder cup,—no matron-mother now
Looks backwards to her early maidenhood
Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily:
And if I lie so, . . if, being fouled in will
And paltered with in soul by devil’s lust,
I dare to bid this angel take my part, . .
Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven,
Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak:
He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’ ’s your word?