Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/364

Nor chosen from a pretty pattern-book
Of some domestic idealogue, who sits
And coldly chooses empire, where as well
He might republic. Genuine government
Is but the expression of a nation, good
Or less good,—even as all society,
Howe’er unequal, monstrous, crazed and cursed,
Is but the expression of men’s single lives,
The loud sum of the silent units. What,
We’d change the aggregate and yet retain
Each separate figure? Whom do we cheat by that?
Now, not even Romney.’
⁠‘Cousin, you are sad.
Did all your social labour at Leigh Hall
And elsewhere, come to nought then?’
⁠‘It was nought,’
He answered mildly. ‘There is room indeed,
For statues still, in this large world of God’s,
But not for vacuums,—so I am not sad:
Not sadder than is good for what I am.
My vain phalanstery dissolved itself;
My men and women of disordered lives,
I brought in orderly to dine and sleep,
Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,
With fierce contortions of the natural face;
And cursed me for my tyrannous constraint
In forcing crooked creatures to live straight;
And set the country hounds upon my back
To bite and tear me for my wicked deed
Of trying to do good without the church