The third of our weekly extracts from Aurora Leigh.
In this extract, taken from Book One of Aurora Leigh, Aurora describes her experiences when she first comes across poetry in her father’s library:
As the earth
Plunges in fury, when the internal fires
Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat
The marts and temples, the triumphal gates
And towers of observation, clears herself
To elemental freedom – thus, my soul,
At poetry’s divine first finger-touch
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,
Convicted of the great eternities
Before two worlds.(Aurora Leigh Book One, ll. 845-54)
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