Two forms of darkness are there. One is Night ..

And one is Blindness.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Doubt

 

PROLOGUE

Wounds of the heart are often fatal,

but not necessarily so.

Henry Gray FRS, Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 1

Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,

And hold your breath between?

In all the ages this can never be

As if it had not been.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, A Moment

 

Chapter 2

Come let me talk with thee, allotted part

Of immortality – my own deep heart!

Maria Jane Jewsbury, To My Own Heart

 

Chapter 3

Eyes with the glow and hue of wine

Like yours, can daze a man outright

Emily Pfeiffer, A Rhyme for the Time

 

Chapter 4

Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.

Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,

The winter is the winter’s own release.

Helen Jackson, January

 

PART 1

The heart is the central organ of the entire system

and consists of a hollow muscle;

by its contraction the blood is pumped to all parts of the body

through a complicated series of tubes ..

Henry Gray FRS, Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 5

‘Tis a strange mystery, the power of words!

Life is in them, and death. A word can send

The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek,

Hurrying with many meanings, or can turn

The current cold and deadly to the heart.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Power of Words

 

Chapter 6

Thou shalt have fame! – Oh, mockery! give the reed

From storms a shelter – give the drooping vine

Something round which its tendrils may entwine

Give the parch’d flower a rain-drop, and the meed

Of love’s kind words to woman! Worthless fame!

Felicia Hemans, Properzia Rossi

 

Chapter 7

Still she flees, and ever fiercer tear the hungry hounds behind.

Still she flees, and ever faster follow there the huntsmen on …

Amy Levy, Run to Death

 

Chapter 8

She was a careless, fearless girl ..

Kindhearted in the main,

But somewhat heedless with her tongue,

And apt at causing pain.

Christina Rossetti, Jessie Cameron

 

Chapter 9

The pale queen’s honour!

A low laugh scathing and sereing

A mumbling as made by the dead in the tombs .

Jean Ingelow, The Sleep of Sigismund

 

Chapter 10

The ground is hollow in the path of mirth …

Felicia Hemans, The Festal Hour

 

Chapter 11

But should the play

Prove piercing earnest,

Should the glee glaze

In death’s stiff stare,

Would not the fun

Look too expensive?

Would not the jest

Have crawled too far?

Emily Dickinson, LV

 

Chapter 12

I, who should have known,

Forereckoned mischief!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 13

But when thy friends are in distress,

Thou’lt laugh and chuckle ne’er the less ..

Joanna Baillie, A Mother to her Waking Infant

 

Chapter 14

Low lies she in her grave!

Speak not to me of pleasure,

For her I could not save.

Christina Rossetti, Despair

 

PART 2

The arteries undergo enormous ramification in their course

throughout the body,

and end in very minute vessels, called arterioles, which in

their turn open

into a close-meshed network of microscopic vessels, termed

capillaries.

Henry Gray FRS, Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 15

Who spoke of evil, when young feet were flying

In fairy rings around the echoing hall?

Felicia Hemans, Pauline

 

Chapter 16

We must arise and go:

The world is cold without

And dark and hedged about

With mystery and enmity and doubt,

But we must go …

Charlotte Mew, The Call

 

Chapter 17

Is this a stupid thing to say

Not having spent with you one day?

No matter; I shall never touch your hair

Or hear the little tick behind your breast ..

Charlotte Mew, On the Road to the Sea

 

Chapter 18

Well of blackness, all defiling,

Full of flattery and reviling,

Ah, what mischief hast thou wrought

Out of what was airy thought,

What beginnings and what ends,

Making and dividing friends!

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, The Contents of an Ink Bottle

 

Chapter 19

Yes; I was tired, but not at heart;

No-that beats full of sweet content,

For now I have my natural part

Of action with adventure blent;

Cast forth on the wide world with thee,

And all my once waste energy

To weighty purpose bent.

Charlotte Brontë, The Wood

 

Chapter 20

I have forged me in sevenfold heats

A shield from foes and lovers,

And no one knows the heart that beats

Beneath the shield that covers.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, The Shield

 

Chapter 21

From sleepless beds unquiet spirits rise,

And cunning wags put on their borrow’d guise

And harmless plotters slyly take the road

Joanna Baillie, An Address to the Night – A Joyful Mind

 

Chapter 22

… a stunted child,

Her sunk eyes sharpened with precocious care .

Christina Rossetti, Behold, I Stand At the Door and Knock

 

Chapter 23

And there is neither false nor true;

But in a hideous masquerade

All things dance on …

Amy Levy, Magdalene

 

Chapter 24

A silent envy nursed within,

A selfish, souring discontent

Pride-born, the devil’s sin.

Christina Rossetti, The Lowest Room

 

Chapter 25

in truth now have you seen

Ever anywhere such beauty, such a stature, such a mien?

She may be queen of devils but she’s every inch a queen.

Christina Rossetti, Look On This Picture and On This

 

Chapter 26

And I walked as if apart

From myself, when I could stand,

And I pitied my own heart,

As if I held it in my hand …

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bertha in the Lane

 

Chapter 27

He looks for war, his heart is ready,

His thoughts are bitter, he will not bow.

Jean Ingelow, At One Again

 

Chapter 28

Away, away with loving then,

With hoping and believing;

For what should follow,

But grieving, grieving?

Anne Evans, Outcry

 

Chapter 29

I have been a witch’s prey,

Art mine enemy now by day,

Thou fell Fear? There comes an end

To the day; thou canst not wend

After me where I shall fare …

Jean Ingelow, At One Again

 

Chapter 30

But if I can cheat my heart with the old comfort,

that love can be forgotten,

is it not better?

Adah Isaacs Menken, Myself

 

Chapter 31

The rat is the concisest tenant.

He pays no rent,

Repudiates the obligation,

On schemes intent.

Emily Dickinson, The Rat

 

Chapter 32

And all our observations ran

On Art and Letters,

Life and Man. Proudly we sat, we two, on high,

Throned in our Objectivity;

Scarce friends, not lovers (each avers),

But sexless, safe Philosophers.

Amy Levy, Philosophy

 

Chapter 33

By slow degrees it broke on her slow sense ..

That she too in that Eden of delight

Was out of place, and, like the silly kid,

Still did most mischief where she meant most love.

A thought enough to make a woman mad.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 34

Death sets a thing significant

The eye had hurried by …

Joanna Baillie, London 

 

Chapter 35

By that gate I entered lone

A fair city of white stone

Yet I heard no human sound;

All was still and silent round

As a city of the dead.

Christina Rossetti, The Dead City

 

Chapter 36

And on his shield a bleeding heart he bore…

Mary Tighe, Psyche

 

Chapter 37

…the work was done; the new-made king

Had risen, and set his feet upon his realm,

And it acknowledged him.

Jean Ingelow, A Story of Doom

 

PART 3

If the epicardium and the subjacent fat are removed from a

heart

which has been subjected to prolonged boiling ..

the superficial fibres of the ventridles will be exposed.

Henry Gray FRS

Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 38

I’ve scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,

Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:

But, sift them as I will,

Your ways are secret still.

Christina Rossetti, The Queen of Hearts

 

Chapter 39

I’ll have no traffic with the personal thought

In art’s pure temple.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 40

But I, who am seventeen next year,

Some nights, in bed, have grown cold to hear

That lonely passion of the rain

Which makes you think of being dead,

And of somewhere living to lay your head

As if you were a child again,

Crying for one thing, known and near

Your empty heart, to still the hunger and the fear

That pelts and beats with it against the pane.

Charlotte Mew, The Fête

 

Chapter 41

But there comes an idealess lad,

With a strut, and a stare, and a smirk …

Constance Naden, Natural Selection

 

Chapter 42

Well, he had some right

On his side probably; men always have,

Who go absurdly wrong.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 43

Then cease by stern reproof to load

Fresh sorrows on the opprest;

Strew not with thorns his rugged road

Who fainting pants for rest.

Mary Tighe, To _____

 

Chapter 44

… weary mummers, taking off the mask,

discern that face themselves forgot anon

and, sitting in the lap of sheltering night,

learn their own secrets from her …

Augusta Webster, Medea in Athens

 

Chapter 45

To do good seemed so much his business,

That, having done it, she was fain to think,

Must fill up his capacity for joy.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 46

I dreamed, and saw a modern Hell, more dread

Than Dante’s pageant; not with gloom and glare,

But all new forms of madness and despair

Filled it with complex tortures, some Earth-bred

From thine own Earth and from its happiest lot

Thy lust for pain may draw full nourishment.

Constance Naden, The Pessimist’s Vision

 

Chapter 47

… these blotched souls are eager to infect,

And blow their bad breath in a sister’s face

As if they got some ease by it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 48

Sometimes, as young things will, she vexes me,

Wayward, or too unheeding, or too blind.

Like aimless birds that, flying on a wind,

Strike slant against their own familiar tree .

Augusta Webster

Mother and Daughter

 

Chapter 49

And in her lurid eyes there shone

The dying flame of life’s desire,

Made mad because its hope was gone,

And kindled at the leaping fire

Of jealousy, and fierce revenge,

And strength that could not change nor tire.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

The Other Side of a Mirror

 

Chapter 50

Love, Love, that art more strong than Hate,

More lasting and more full of art;

O blessèd Love, return, return,

Brighten the flame that needs must burn.

Christina Rossetti

What Sappho Would Have Said Had

Her Leap Cured Instead of Killing Her

 

Chapter 51

A wondrous thing

to be so separate having been so near

near by hate last and once by so strong love.

Augustus Webster

Medea in Athens

 

Chapter 52

I deck myself with silks and jewelry,

I plume myself like any mated dove;

They praise my rustling show, and never see

My heart is breaking for a little love ..

Christina Rossetti

L.E.L

 

Chapter 53

Sweet is the swamp with its secrets,

Until we meet a snake …

Emily Dickinson

XIX: A Snake

 

Chapter 54

… masks in flocks and shoals;

Flesh-and-bloodless hazy masks surround there,

Ever wavering orbs and poles…

Christina Rossetti

A Castle Builder’s World

 

Chapter 55

.. no, dull heart, you were too small,

Thinking to hide the ugly doubt behind that hurried

puzzled little smile:

Only the shade, was it, you saw? but still the shade of

something vile ..

Charlotte Mew

Ne Me Tangito

 

Chapter 56

Sense failed in the mortal strife:

Like the watch-tower of a town

Which an earthquake shatters down,

Like a lightning-stricken mast…

Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

 

Chapter 57

Slouch back to your haunts of crime.

Ye do not know me, neither do ye see me.

Adah Isaacs Menken

Judith

 

PART 4

Fibres of the Ventridles.

These are arranged in an exceedingly complex manner,

and the accounts given by various anatomists differ

considerably.

Henry Gray FRS

Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 58

O shame!

To utter the thought into flame

Which burns at your heart.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Curse for a Nation

 

Chapter 59

Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn

Indicative that suns go down;

The notice to the startled grass

That darkness is about to pass.

Emily Dickinson

XVI

 

Chapter 60

Oh, give me the friend from whose warm faithful breast

The sigh breathes responsive to mine .

Mary Tighe

A Faithful Friend Is the Medicine of Life

 

Chapter 61

Thus drive thou hence the phantoms; cleanse my soul!

Thou sweet enchantress, with the magic spells!

Mathilde Blind

To Hope

 

Chapter 62

He left her, but she followed him-

She thought he could not bear,

When she had left her home for him,

To look on her despair.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

She Sat Alone Beside Her Hearth

 

Chapter 63

Behold the agony

In that most hidden chamber of the heart,

Where darkly sits remorse ..

Felicia Hemans

Arabella Stuart

 

Chapter 64

.. he was glad to have an ear

That he could grumble to, and half in jest

Rail at entails, deplore the fate of heirs,

And the misfortune of a good estate ..

Jean Ingelow

Brothers, and a Sermon

 

Chapter 65

Weeds triumphant ranged,

Strangers strolled and spelled

At the lone orthography

Of the elder dead.

Emily Dickinson, XLI: The Forgotten Grave 

Chapter 66

One of the children hanging about Pointed at the whole dreadful heap and smiled… There is something terrible about a child. Charlotte Mew In Nunhead Cemetery

 

Chapter 67

Now he sets me down as vexed. I think I’ve draped myself in woman’s pride To a perfect purpose. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 68

The jealous doubt, the burning pain,

That rack the lover’s heart and brain;

The fear that will not own it fear,

The hope that cannot disappear.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

The Troubadour, Canto 2

 

Chapter 69

She served him meekly, anxiously,

With love–half faith-

-half fear.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

She Sat Alone Beside Her Hearth

 

Chapter 70

While I was fearing it, it came…

Emily Dickinson, XCVIII

 

Chapter 71

These monsters, set out in the open sun,

Of course throw monstrous shadows: those who think

Awry, will scarce act straightly.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 72

You face, today … mark me, not

A woman who wants protection. As to a man,

Show manhood, speak out plainly, be precise

With facts and dates.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 73

My rival his mischief devises

What matter? his treachery’s void.

I scorn him: I know whose the prize is.

May Kendall

The Last Performance

 

Chapter 74

Yet-sayst thou, spies around us roam ..

That there is risk our mutual blood

May redden in some lonely wood

The knife of treachery?

Charlotte Brontë, The Wood

 

Chapter 75

It gave your curses strength, it warmed

Your bones the coldest night,

To feel you were not all alone

Again the world to fight.

Emily Pfeiffer

The Witch’s Last Ride

 

Chapter 76

What inn is this

Where for the night

Peculiar traveller comes?

Emily Dickinson, XXXIV

 

Chapter 77

You weep:

‘I had such lofty aims.

My soul had yearnings truly great.

Than broken altars, dying flames,

I had deserved a better fate …’

May Kendall, Failures

 

Chapter 78

Why should I praise thee, blissful Aphrodite?

Thou dost not guide,

Rather with conflict dire my mind divide .

Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper

Chapter 79

Love never comes but at love’s call.

And pity asks for him in vain;

Because I cannot give you all,

You give me nothing back again.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar

 

Chapter 80

I know not what can ease my pains,

Nor what it is I wish;

The passion at my heart-strings strains

Like a tiger in a leash.

Amy Levy, Oh, Is It Love?

 

Chapter 81

…golden gates between us stretch.

Truth opens her forbidding eyes …

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar

 

Chapter 82

Girls blush sometimes because they are alive,

Half wishing they were dead to save the shame .

They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,

And flare up bodily, wings and all.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 83

They are all of them so faithless, Their torment is your gain; Would you keep your own heart scathless, Be the one to give the pain. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Cottage Courtship

 

Chapter 84

What was my sin, to merit this? Christina Rossetti, Zara

 

PART 5

At the apex the fibres turn suddenly inwards, into the interior of the ventricle, forming what is called the vortex. Henry Gray FRS Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 85

I thought my spirit and my heart were tamed To deadness; dead the pangs that agonise. Amy Levy, The Old House

 

Chapter 86

Oh weary impatient patience of my lot!—Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you? Christina Rossetti, Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets

 

Chapter 87

Great loves, to the last, have pulses red;

All great loves that have ever died dropped dead.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Dropped Dead

 

Chapter 88

Behold, how quickly melted from your sight

The promised objects you esteemed so bright ..

Mary Tighe

Sonnet

 

Chapter 89

The mighty are brought low by many a thing

Too small to name …

Helen Murphy Hunt

Danger

 

Chapter 90

We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:

Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.

We see the things we do not yearn to see

Around us: and what see we glancing back?

Christina Rossetti

Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets

 

Chapter 91

Her hair stood back on either side

A face bereft of loveliness.

It had no envy now to hide

What once no man on earth could guess.

It formed the thorny aureole

Of hard unsanctified distress.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

The Other Side of a Mirror

 

Chapter 92

To-night again the moon’s white mat

Stretches across the dormitory floor

While outside, like an evil cat

The pion prowls down the dark corridor,

Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite

For getting leave to sleep in town last night.

Charlotte Mew

The Fête

 

Chapter 93

My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set, And the way was hard and long… Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door! Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, The Witch

 

Chapter 94

And that was when I thrust you down, And stabbed you twice and twice again, Because you dared take off your crown, And be a man like other men. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Mortal Combat

 

Chapter 95

But this place is grey, And much too quiet. No one here, Why, this is awful, this is fear! Nothing to see, no face. Nothing to hear except your heart beating in space As if the world was ended. Charlotte Mew, Madeleine in Church

 

Chapter 96

Work man, work woman, since there’s work to do In this beleaguered earth, for head and heart… Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 97

Was she a wicked girl? What then? She didn’t care a pin! She was not worse than all those men Who looked so shocked in public, when They made and shared her sin. Mathilde Blind, The Message

 

Chapter 98

Leering at each other, Brother with queer brother; Signalling each other, Brother with sly brother. Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

 

Chapter 99

We never know how high we are Till we are called to rise… Emily Dickinson, Aspiration

 

Chapter 100

But a wild courage sits triumphant there,

The stormy grandeur of a proud despair;

A daring spirit, in its woes elate,

Mightier than death, untameable by fate.

Felicia Hemans,

The Wife of Asdrubal

 

Chapter 101

My men and women of disordered lives ..

Broke up those waxen masks I made them wear,

With fierce contortions of the natural face-

And cursed me for my tyrannous constraint . .

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 102

. and since you’re proved so vile,

Ay, vile, I say we’ll show it presently ..

you tricked poor Marian Erle,

And set her own love digging its own grave

Within her green hope’s pretty garden-ground..

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 103

Much is finished known or unknown: Lives are finished; time diminished; Was the fallow field left unsown? Will these buds be always unblown? Christina Rossetti, Amen

 

Chapter 104

Death’s black dust, being blown,

Infiltrated through every secret fold

Of this sealed letter by a puff of fate,

Dried up for ever the fresh-written ink .

Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

Aurora Leigh

 

Chapter 105

When mysteries shall be revealed; All secrets be unsealed; When things of night, when things of shame, Shall find at last a name… Christina Rossetti, Sooner or Later: Yet at Last

 

Chapter 106

Bid me defend thee!

Thy danger over-human strength shall lend me,

A hand of iron and a heart of steel,

To strike, to wound, to slay, and not to feel.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge,

Affection

 

CODA

The heart continues increasing in weight,

and also in length, breadth and thickness,

up to an advanced period of life:

this increase is more marked in men than in women.

Henry Gray FRS

Gray’s Anatomy

 

Chapter 107

Oh foolishest fond folly of a heart

Divided, neither here nor there at rest!

That hankers after Heaven, but dings to earth

That neither here nor there knows thorough mirth,

Half-choosing, wholly missing, the good part:

Oh fool among the foolish, in thy quest.

Christina Rossetti

Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets