George Eliot

from Felix Holt, The Radical | from How Lisa Loved The King

From Felix Holt, The Radical

Why, there are maidens of heroic touch
And yet they seem like things of gossamer
You'd pinch the life out of, as out of moths.
O, it is not fond tones and mouthingness,
'Tis not the arms akimbo and large strides,
That makes a woman's force. The tiniest birds,
With softest downy breasts, have passions in them,
And are brave with love.

From How Lisa Loved The King

...She watched all day that shee might see him pass
With knights and ladies: but she said, 'Alas!
Though he should see me, it were all as one
He saw a pigeon sitting on the stone
Of wall or balcony: some coloured spot
His eye just sees, his mind regardeth not.
I have no music-touch that could bring night
My love to his soul's hearing. I shall die,
And he will never know who Lisa was-
The trader's child, whose soarin spirit rose
As hedge-born aloe flowers that rarest years discose...'

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