The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 1

XV.

MARY

I

  She sitteth at the Master's feet       In motionless employ;   Her ears, her heart, her soul complete       Drinks in the tide of joy.   Ah! who but she the glory knows       Of life, pure, high, intense,   In whose eternal silence blows       The wind beyond the sense!   In her still ear, God's perfect grace       Incarnate is in voice;   Her thoughts, the people of the place,       Receive it, and rejoice.   Her eyes, with heavenly reason bright,       Are on the ground cast low;   His words of spirit, life, and light—       They set them shining so.   But see! a face is at the door       Whose eyes are not at rest;   A voice breaks on divinest lore       With petulant request.   "Master," it said, "dost thou not care       She lets me serve alone?   Tell her to come and take her share."       But Mary's eyes shine on.   She lifts them with a questioning glance,       Calmly to him who heard;   The merest sign, she'll rise at once,       Nor wait the uttered word.   His "Martha, Martha!" with it bore       A sense of coming nay;   He told her that her trouble sore       Was needless any day.   And he would not have Mary chid       For want of needless care;   The needful thing was what she did,       At his feet sitting there.   Sure, joy awoke in her dear heart       Doing the thing it would,   When he, the holy, took her part,       And called her choice the good!   Oh needful thing, Oh Mary's choice,       Go not from us away!   Oh Jesus, with the living voice,       Talk to us every day!

II

  Not now the living words are poured       Into one listening ear;   For many guests are at the board,       And many speak and hear.   With sacred foot, refrained and slow,       With daring, trembling tread,   She comes, in worship bending low       Behind the godlike head.   The costly chrism, in snowy stone,       A gracious odour sends;   Her little hoard, by sparing grown,       In one full act she spends.   She breaks the box, the honoured thing!       See how its riches pour!   Her priestly hands anoint him king       Whom peasant Mary bore. * * * * *   Not so does John the tale repeat:       He saw, for he was there,   Mary anoint the Master's feet,       And wipe them with her hair.   Perhaps she did his head anoint,       And then his feet as well;   And John this one forgotten point       Loved best of all to tell.   'Twas Judas called the splendour waste,       'Twas Jesus said—Not so;   Said that her love his burial graced:       "Ye have the poor; I go."   Her hands unwares outsped his fate,       The truth-king's felon-doom;   The other women were too late,       For he had left the tomb.

XVI.

THE WOMAN THAT WAS A SINNER

  His face, his words, her heart awoke;       Awoke her slumbering truth;   She judged him well; her bonds she broke,       And fled to him for ruth.   With tears she washed his weary feet;       She wiped them with her hair;   Her kisses—call them not unmeet,       When they were welcome there.   What saint a richer crown could throw       At his love-royal feet!   Her tears, her lips, her hair, down go,       His reign begun to greet.   His holy manhood's perfect worth       Owns her a woman still;   It is impossible henceforth       For her to stoop to ill.   Her to herself his words restore,       The radiance to the day;   A horror to herself no more,       Not yet a cast-away!   Her hands and kisses, ointment, tears,       Her gathered wiping hair,   Her love, her shame, her hopes, her fears,       Mingle in worship rare.   Thou, Mary, too, thy hair didst spread       To wipe the anointed feet;   Nor didst thou only bless his head       With precious spikenard sweet.   But none say thou thy tears didst pour       To wash his parched feet first;   Of tears thou couldst not have such store       As from this woman burst!   If not in love she first be read,       Her queen of sorrow greet;   Mary, do thou anoint his head,       And let her crown his feet.   Simon, her kisses will not soil;       Her tears are pure as rain;   The hair for him she did uncoil       Had been baptized in pain.   Lo, God hath pardoned her so much,       Love all her being stirs!   His love to his poor child is such       That it hath wakened hers!   But oh, rejoice, ye sisters pure,       Who scarce can know her case—   There is no sin but has its cure,       Its all-consuming grace!   He did not leave her soul in hell,       'Mong shards the silver dove;   But raised her pure that she might tell       Her sisters how to love!   She gave him all your best love can!       Despised, rejected, sad—   Sure, never yet had mighty man       Such homage as he had!   Jesus, by whose forgiveness sweet,       Her love grew so intense,   Earth's sinners all come round thy feet:       Lord, make no difference!

A BOOK OF SONNETS

THE BURNT-OFFERING

  Thrice-happy he whose heart, each new-born night,   When old-worn day hath vanished o'er earth's brim,   And he hath laid him down in chamber dim,   Straightway begins to tremble and grow bright,   And loose faint flashes toward the vaulted height   Of the great peace that overshadoweth him:   Keen lambent flames of hope awake and swim   Throughout his soul, touching each point with light!   The great earth under him an altar is,   Upon whose top a sacrifice he lies,   Burning in love's response up to the skies   Whose fire descended first and kindled his:   When slow the flickering flames at length expire,   Sleep's ashes only hide a glowing fire.

THE UNSEEN FACE

  "I do beseech thee, God, show me thy face."   "Come up to me in Sinai on the morn!   Thou shall behold as much as may be borne."   And on a rock stood Moses, lone in space.   From Sinai's top, the vaporous, thunderous place,   God passed in cloud, an earthy garment worn   To hide, and thus reveal. In love, not scorn,   He put him in a clift of the rock's base,   Covered him with his hand, his eyes to screen—   Passed—lifted it: his back alone appears!   Ah, Moses, had he turned, and hadst thou seen   The pale face crowned with thorns, baptized with tears,   The eyes of the true man, by men belied,   Thou hadst beheld God's face, and straightway died!

CONCERNING JESUS

I   If thou hadst been a sculptor, what a race   Of forms divine had thenceforth filled the land!   Methinks I see thee, glorious workman, stand,   Striking a marble window through blind space—   Thy face's reflex on the coming face,   As dawns the stone to statue 'neath thy hand—   Body obedient to its soul's command,   Which is thy thought, informing it with grace!   So had it been. But God, who quickeneth clay,   Nor turneth it to marble—maketh eyes,   Not shadowy hollows, where no sunbeams play—   Would mould his loftiest thought in human guise:   Thou didst appear, walking unknown abroad,   God's living sculpture, all-informed of God. II   If one should say, "Lo, there thy statue! take   Possession, sculptor; now inherit it;   Go forth upon the earth in likeness fit;   As with a trumpet-cry at morning, wake   The sleeping nations; with light's terror, shake   The slumber from their hearts, that, where they sit,   They leap straight up, aghast, as at a pit   Gaping beneath;" I hear him answer make:   "Alas for me, I cannot nor would dare   Inform what I revered as I did trace!   Who would be fool that he like fool might fare,   With feeble spirit mocking the enorm   Strength on his forehead!" Thou, God's thought thy form,   Didst live the large significance of thy face. III   Men have I seen, and seen with wonderment,   Noble in form, "lift upward and divine,"   In whom I yet must search, as in a mine,   After that soul of theirs, by which they went   Alive upon the earth. And I have bent   Regard on many a woman, who gave sign   God willed her beautiful, when he drew the line   That shaped each float and fold of beauty's tent:   Her soul, alas, chambered in pigmy space,   Left the fair visage pitiful—inane—   Poor signal only of a coming face   When from the penetrale she filled the fane!—   Possessed of thee was every form of thine,   Thy very hair replete with the divine. IV   If thou hadst built a temple, how my eye   Had hungering fed thereon, from low-browed crypt   Up to the soaring pinnacles that, tipt   With stars, gave signal when the sun drew nigh!   Dark caverns in and under; vivid sky   Its home and aim! Say, from the glory slipt,   And down into the shadows dropt and dipt,   Or reared from darkness up so holy-high?—   Thou build'st the temple of thy holy ghost   From hid foundation to high-hidden fate—   Foot in the grave, head at the heavenly gate,   From grave and sky filled with a fighting host!   Man is thy temple; man thy work elect;   His glooms and glory thine, great architect! V   If thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks,   What outbursts of pent glories, what new grace   Had shone upon us from the great world's face!   How had we read, as in eternal books,   The love of God in loneliest shiest nooks!   A lily, in merest lines thy hand did trace,   Had plainly been God's child of lower race!   And oh how strong the hills, songful the brooks!   To thee all nature's meanings lie light-bare,   Because thy heart is nature's inner side;   Clear as, to us, earth on the dawn's gold tide,   Her notion vast up in thy soul did rise;   Thine is the world, thine all its splendours rare,   Thou Man ideal, with the unsleeping eyes! VI   But I have seen pictures the work of man,   In which at first appeared but chaos wild:   So high the art transcended, they beguiled   The eye as formless, and without a plan.   Not soon, the spirit, brooding o'er, began   To see a purpose rise, like mountain isled,   When God said, Let the Dry appear! and, piled   Above the waves, it rose in twilight wan.   So might thy pictures then have been too strange   For us to pierce beyond their outmost look;   A vapour and a darkness; a sealed book;   An atmosphere too high for wings to range;   And so we could but, gazing, pale and change,   And tremble as at a void thought cannot brook. VII   But earth is now thy living picture, where   Thou shadowest truth, the simple and profound   By the same form in vital union bound:   Where one can see but the first step of thy stair,   Another sees it vanish far in air.   When thy king David viewed the starry round,   From heart and fingers broke the psaltery-sound:   Lord, what is man, that thou shouldst mind his prayer!   But when the child beholds the heavens on high,   He babbles childish noises—not less dear   Than what the king sang praying—to the ear   Of him who made the child and king and sky.   Earth is thy picture, painter great, whose eye   Sees with the child, sees with the kingly seer. VIII   If thou hadst built some mighty instrument,   And set thee down to utter ordered sound,   Whose faithful billows, from thy hands unbound,   Breaking in light, against our spirits went,   And caught, and bore above this earthly tent,   The far-strayed back to their prime natal ground,   Where all roots fast in harmony are found,   And God sits thinking out a pure consent;—   Nay, that thou couldst not; that was not for thee!   Our broken music thou must first restore—   A harder task than think thine own out free;   And till thou hast done it, no divinest score,   Though rendered by thine own angelic choir,   Can lift one human spirit from the mire. IX   If thou hadst been a poet! On my heart   The thought flashed sudden, burning through the weft   Of life, and with too much I sank bereft.   Up to my eyes the tears, with sudden start,   Thronged blinding: then the veil would rend and part!   The husk of vision would in twain be cleft!   Thy hidden soul in naked beauty left,   I should behold thee, Nature, as thou art!   O poet Jesus! at thy holy feet   I should have lien, sainted with listening;   My pulses answering ever, in rhythmic beat,   The stroke of each triumphant melody's wing,   Creating, as it moved, my being sweet;   My soul thy harp, thy word the quivering string. X   Thee had we followed through the twilight land   Where thought grows form, and matter is refined   Back into thought of the eternal mind,   Till, seeing them one, Lo, in the morn we stand!—   Then started fresh and followed, hand in hand,   With sense divinely growing, till, combined,   We heard the music of the planets wind   In harmony with billows on the strand!—   Till, one with earth and all God's utterance,   We hardly knew whether the sun outspake,   Or a glad sunshine from our spirits brake—   Whether we think, or winds and blossoms dance!   Alas, O poet leader, for such good   Thou wast God's tragedy, writ in tears and blood! XI   Hadst thou been one of these, in many eyes,   Too near to be a glory for thy sheen,   Thou hadst been scorned; and to the best hadst been   A setter forth of strange divinities;   But to the few construct of harmonies,   A sudden sun, uplighting the serene   High heaven of love; and, through the cloudy screen   That 'twixt our souls and truth all wretched lies,   Dawning at length, hadst been a love and fear,   Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest,   And all night long symbolled by lamp-flames clear,   Thy sign, a star upon thy people's breast—   Where that strange arbitrary token lies   Which once did scare the sun in noontide skies. XII   But as thou camest forth to bring the poor,   Whose hearts are nearer faith and verity,   Spiritual childhood, thy philosophy—   So taught'st the A B C of heavenly lore;   Because thou sat'st not lonely evermore,   With mighty truths informing language high,   But, walking in thy poem continually,   Didst utter deeds, of all true forms the core—   Poet and poem one indivisible fact;   Because thou didst thine own ideal act,   And so, for parchment, on the human soul   Didst write thine aspirations—at thy goal   Thou didst arrive with curses for acclaim,   And cry to God up through a cloud of shame. XIII   For three and thirty years, a living seed,   A lonely germ, dropt on our waste world's side,   Thy death and rising thou didst calmly bide;   Sore companied by many a clinging weed   Sprung from the fallow soil of evil and need;   Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied;   Pitied of goodness dull, and scorned of pride;   Until at length was done the awful deed,   And thou didst lie outworn in stony bower   Three days asleep—oh, slumber godlike-brief   For man of sorrows and acquaint with grief!   Life-seed thou diedst, that Death might lose his power,   And thou, with rooted stem and shadowy leaf,   Rise, of humanity the crimson flower. XIV   Where dim the ethereal eye, no art, though clear   As golden star in morning's amber springs,   Can pierce the fogs of low imaginings:   Painting and sculpture are a mockery mere.   Where dull to deafness is the hearing ear,   Vain is the poet. Nought but earthly things   Have credence. When the soaring skylark sings   How shall the stony statue strain to hear?   Open the deaf ear, wake the sleeping eye,   And Lo, musicians, painters, poets—all   Trooping instinctive, come without a call!   As winds that where they list blow evermore;   As waves from silent deserts roll to die   In mighty voices on the peopled shore. XV   Our ears thou openedst; mad'st our eyes to see.   All they who work in stone or colour fair,   Or build up temples of the quarried air,   Which we call music, scholars are of thee.   Henceforth in might of such, the earth shall be   Truth's temple-theatre, where she shall wear   All forms of revelation, all men bear   Tapers in acolyte humility.   O master-maker, thy exultant art   Goes forth in making makers! Pictures? No,   But painters, who in love and truth shall show   Glad secrets from thy God's rejoicing heart.   Sudden, green grass and waving corn up start   When through dead sands thy living waters go. XVI   From the beginning good and fair are one,   But men the beauty from the truth will part,   And, though the truth is ever beauty's heart,   After the beauty will, short-breathed, run,   And the indwelling truth deny and shun.   Therefore, in cottage, synagogue, and mart,   Thy thoughts came forth in common speech, not art;   With voice and eye, in Jewish Babylon,   Thou taughtest—not with pen or carved stone,   Nor in thy hand the trembling wires didst take:   Thou of the truth not less than all wouldst make;   For Truth's sake even her forms thou didst disown:   Ere, through the love of beauty, truth shall fail,   The light behind shall burn the broidered veil! XVII   Holy of holies, my bare feet draw nigh:   Jesus, thy body is the shining veil   By which I look on God, nor grow death-pale.   I know that in my verses poor may lie   Things low, for see, the thinker is not high!   But were my song as loud as saints' all-hail,   As pure as prophet's cry of warning wail,   As holy as thy mother's ecstasy—   He sings a better, who, for love or ruth,   Into his heart a little child doth take.   Nor thoughts nor feelings, art nor wisdom seal   The man who at thy table bread shall break.   Thy praise was not that thou didst know, or feel,   Or show, or love, but that thou didst the truth. XVIII   Despised! Rejected by the priest-led roar   Of the multitude! The imperial purple flung   About the form the hissing scourge had stung,   Witnessing naked to the truth it bore!   True son of father true, I thee adore.   Even the mocking purple truthful hung   On thy true shoulders, bleeding its folds among,   For thou wast king, art king for evermore!   I know the Father: he knows me the truth.   Truth-witness, therefore the one essential king,   With thee I die, with thee live worshipping!   O human God, O brother, eldest born,   Never but thee was there a man in sooth,   Never a true crown but thy crown of thorn!

A MEMORIAL OF AFRICA

I

  Upon a rock I sat—a mountain-side,   Far, far forsaken of the old sea's lip;   A rock where ancient waters' rise and dip,   Recoil and plunge, eddy, and oscillant tide,   Had worn and worn, while races lived and died,   Involved channels. Where the sea-weed's drip   Followed the ebb, now crumbling lichens sip   Sparse dews of heaven that down with sunset slide.   I sat long-gazing southward. A dry flow   Of withering wind sucked up my drooping strength,   Itself weak from the desert's burning length.   Behind me piled, away and up did go   Great sweeps of savage mountains—up, away,   Where snow gleams ever, panthers roam, they say.