我说，他们告诉我的，我亲爱的爸爸。更宽的眉毛，在纤细的矮树丛上，精致的容貌，——更苍白，近乎严肃;但母亲的微笑打破了这一切，有时使它变得比它本身更美好。就这样，整整九年，我们的日子和上帝一起隐藏在他的群山之中:我才十三岁，还像植物一样从看不见的根中生长在结舌的泉中，——突然醒来，面对着充实的生活、生活的需要和痛苦，带着一颗强烈、坚强、挣扎的心，站在死石般的父亲身旁。生命在死亡的猛烈打击下，发出可怕的闪电。他的最后一句话是:“爱——”“爱，我的孩子，爱，爱!”“爱你，我的孩子。在我回答之前，他已经走了，世界上没有人留下爱。在那里，童年结束了。接下来发生的事，我还记得，在发烧之后，人们在神志不清的状态中往回走，仍然没有转弯，被门挡住了去路; Smooth endless days, notched here and there with knives ; A weary, wormy darkness, spurr'd i'the flank With flame, that it should eat and end itself Like some tormented scorpion. Then at last I do remember clearly, how there came A stranger with authority, not right, (I thought not) who commanded, caught me up From old Assunta's neck ; how, with a shriek, She let me go, -- while I, with ears too full Of my father's silence, to shriek back a word, In all a child's astonishment at grief Stared at the wharf-edge where she stood and moaned, My poor Assunta, where she stood and moaned ! The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy, Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck, Like one in anger drawing back her skirts Which supplicants catch at. Then the bitter sea Inexorably pushed between us both, And sweeping up the ship with my despair Threw us out as a pasture to the stars. Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep ; Ten nights and days, without the common face Of any day or night ; the moon and sun Cut off from the green reconciling earth, To starve into a blind ferocity And glare unnatural ; the very sky (Dropping its bell-net down upon the sea As if no human heart should 'scape alive,) Bedraggled with the desolating salt, Until it seemed no more that holy heaven To which my father went. All new and strange The universe turned stranger, for a child. Then, land ! -- then, England ! oh, the frosty cliffs Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home Among those mean red houses through the fog ? And when I heard my father's language first From alien lips which had no kiss for mine I wept aloud, then laughed, then wept, then wept, And some one near me said the child was mad Through much sea-sickness. The train swept us on. Was this my father's England ? the great isle ? The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship Of verdure, field from field, as man from man ; The skies themselves looked low and positive, As almost you could touch them with a hand, And dared to do it they were so far off From God's celestial crystals ; all things blurred And dull and vague. Did Shakspeare and his mates Absorb the light here ? -- not a hill or stone With heart to strike a radiant colour up Or active outline on the indifferent air. I think I see my father's sister stand Upon the hall-step of her country-house To give me welcome. She stood straight and calm, Her somewhat narrow forehead braided tight As if for taming accidental thoughts From possible pulses ; brown hair pricked with grey By frigid use of life, (she was not old Although my father's elder by a year) A nose drawn sharply yet in delicate lines ; A close mild mouth, a little soured about The ends, through speaking unrequited loves Or peradventure niggardly half-truths ; Eyes of no colour, -- once they might have smiled, But never, never have forgot themselves In smiling ; cheeks, in which was yet a rose Of perished summers, like a rose in a book, Kept more for ruth than pleasure, -- if past bloom, Past fading also. She had lived, we'll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all, (But that, she had not lived enough to know) Between the vicar and the country squires, The lord-lieutenant looking down sometimes From the empyrean to assure their souls Against chance-vulgarisms, and, in the abyss The apothecary, looked on once a year To prove their soundness of humility. The poor-club exercised her Christian gifts Of knitting stockings, stitching petticoats, Because we are of one flesh after all And need one flannel (with a proper sense Of difference in the quality) -- and still The book-club, guarded from your modern trick Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease, Preserved her intellec