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

TO A. J. SCOTT

  When, long ago, the daring of my youth   Drew nigh thy greatness with a little thing,   Thou didst receive me; and thy sky of truth   Has domed me since, a heaven of sheltering,   Made homely by the tenderness and grace   Which round thy absolute friendship ever fling   A radiant atmosphere. Turn not thy face   From that small part of earnest thanks, I pray,   Which, spoken, leaves much more in speechless case.   I see thee far before me on thy way   Up the great peaks, and striding stronger still;   Thy intellect unrivalled in its sway,   Upheld and ordered by a regnant will;   Thy wisdom, seer and priest of holy fate,   Searching all truths its prophecy to fill;   But this my joy: throned in thy heart so great,   High Love is queen, and sits without a mate. May, 1857.

I WOULD I WERE A CHILD

    I would I were a child,   That I might look, and laugh, and say, My Father!   And follow thee with running feet, or rather       Be led through dark and wild!       How I would hold thy hand,   My glad eyes often to thy glory lifting!   Should darkness 'twixt thy face and mine come drifting,       My heart would but expand.       If an ill thing came near,   I would but creep within thy mantle's folding,   Shut my eyes close, thy hand yet faster holding,       And soon forget my fear.       O soul, O soul, rejoice!   Thou art God's child indeed, for all thy sinning;   A poor weak child, yet his, and worth the winning       With saviour eyes and voice.       Who spake the words? Didst Thou?   They are too good, even for such a giver:   Such water drinking once, I should feel ever       As I had drunk but now.       Yet sure the Word said so,   Teaching our lips to cry with his, Our Father!   Telling the tale of him who once did gather       His goods to him, and go!       Ah, thou dost lead me, God!   But it is dark and starless, the way dreary;   Almost I sleep, I am so very weary       Upon this rough hill-road.       Almost! Nay, I do sleep;   There is no darkness save in this my dreaming;   Thy fatherhood above, around, is beaming;       Thy hand my hand doth keep.       With sighs my soul doth teem;   I have no knowledge but that I am sleeping;   Haunted with lies, my life will fail in weeping;       Wake me from this my dream.       How long shall heavy night   Deny the day? How long shall this dull sorrow   Say in my heart that never any morrow       Will bring the friendly light?       Lord, art thou in the room?   Come near my bed; oh, draw aside the curtain!   A child's heart would say Father, were it certain       That it would not presume.       But if this dreary sleep   May not be broken, help thy helpless sleeper   To rest in thee; so shall his sleep grow deeper—       For evil dreams too deep.       Father! I dare at length;   My childhood sure will hold me free from blaming:   Sinful yet hoping, I to thee come, claiming       Thy tenderness, my strength.

A PRAYER FOR THE PAST

    All sights and sounds of day and year,   All groups and forms, each leaf and gem,   Are thine, O God, nor will I fear   To talk to thee of them.       Too great thy heart is to despise,   Whose day girds centuries about;   From things which we name small, thine eyes   See great things looking out.       Therefore the prayerful song I sing   May come to thee in ordered words:   Though lowly born, it needs not cling   In terror to its chords.       I think that nothing made is lost;   That not a moon has ever shone,   That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed   But to my soul is gone.       That all the lost years garnered lie   In this thy casket, my dim soul;   And thou wilt, once, the key apply,   And show the shining whole.       But were they dead in me, they live   In thee, whose Parable is—Time,   And Worlds, and Forms—all things that give   Me thoughts, and this my rime.       And after what men call my death,   When I have crossed the unknown sea,   Some heavenly morn, on hopeful breath,   Shall rise this prayer to thee.       Oh let me be a child once more,   And dream fine glories in the gloom,   Of sun and moon and stars in store   To ceil my humble room.       Oh call again the moons that crossed   Blue gulfs, behind gray vapours crept;   Show me the solemn skies I lost   Because in thee I slept.       Once more let gathering glory swell,   And lift the world's dim eastern eye;   Once more let lengthening shadows tell   Its time is come to die.       But show me first—oh, blessed sight!   The lowly house where I was young;   There winter sent wild winds at night,   And up the snow-heaps flung;       Or soundless brought a chaos fair,   Full, formless, of fantastic forms,   White ghostly trees in sparkling air—   Chamber for slumbering storms.       There sudden dawned a dewy morn;   A man was turning up the mould;   And in our hearts the spring was born,   Crept thither through the cold.       And Spring, in after years of youth,   Became the form of every form   For hearts now bursting into truth,   Now sighing in the storm.       On with the glad year let me go,   With troops of daisies round my feet;   Flying my kite, or, in the glow   Of arching summer heat,       Outstretched in fear upon a bank,   Lest, gazing up on awful space,   I should fall down into the blank,   From off the round world's face.       And let my brothers come with me   To play our old games yet again,   Children on earth, more full of glee   That we in heaven are men.       If then should come the shadowy death,   Take one of us and go,   We left would say, under our breath,   "It is a dream, you know!"       "And in the dream our brother's gone   Upstairs: he heard our father call;   For one by one we go alone,   Till he has gathered all."       Father, in joy our knees we bow:   This earth is not a place of tombs:   We are but in the nursery now;   They in the upper rooms.       For are we not at home in thee,   And all this world a visioned show;   That, knowing what Abroad is, we   What Home is too may know?       And at thy feet I sit, O Lord,   As once of old, in moonlight pale,   I at my father's sat, and heard   Him read a lofty tale.       On with my history let me go,   And reap again the gliding years,   Gather great noontide's joyous glow,   Eve's love-contented tears;       One afternoon sit pondering   In that old chair, in that old room,   Where passing pigeon's sudden wing   Flashed lightning through the gloom;       There try once more, with effort vain,   To mould in one perplexed things;   There find the solace yet again   Hope in the Father brings;       Or mount and ride in sun and wind,   Through desert moors, hills bleak and high,   Where wandering vapours fall, and find   In me another sky!       For so thy Visible grew mine,   Though half its power I could not know;   And in me wrought a work divine,   Which thou hadst ordered so;      Giving me cups that would not spill,   But water carry and yield again;   New bottles with new wine to fill   For comfort of thy men.       But if thou thus restore the past   One hour, for me to wander in,   I now bethink me at the last—   O Lord, leave out the sin.       And with the thought comes doubt, my God:   Shall I the whole desire to see,   And walk once more, of that hill-road   By which I went to thee?

A PRAYER FOR THE PAST

    Now far from my old northern land,   I live where gentle winters pass;   Where green seas lave a wealthy strand,   And unsown is the grass;       Where gorgeous sunsets claim the scope   Of gazing heaven to spread their show,   Hang scarlet clouds in the topmost cope,   With fringes flaming low;       With one beside me in whose eyes   Once more old Nature finds a home;   There treasures up her changeful skies,   Her phosphorescent foam.       O'er a new joy this day we bend,   Soft power from heaven our souls to lift;   A wondering wonder thou dost lend   With loan outpassing gift—       A little child. She sees the sun—   Once more incarnates thy old law:   One born of two, two born in one,   Shall into one three draw.       But is there no day creeping on   Which I should tremble to renew?   I thank thee, Lord, for what is gone—   Thine is the future too!       And are we not at home in Thee,   And all this world a visioned show,   That, knowing what Abroad is, we   What Home is too may know?

LONGING

  My heart is full of inarticulate pain,       And beats laborious. Cold ungenial looks   Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain,       Wise in success, well-read in feeble books,   No nigher come, I pray: your air is drear;   'Tis winter and low skies when ye appear.   Beloved, who love beauty and fair truth,       Come nearer me; too near ye cannot come;   Make me an atmosphere with your sweet youth;       Give me your souls to breathe in, a large room;   Speak not a word, for, see, my spirit lies   Helpless and dumb; shine on me with your eyes.   O all wide places, far from feverous towns;       Great shining seas; pine forests; mountains wild;   Rock-bosomed shores; rough heaths, and sheep-cropt downs;       Vast pallid clouds; blue spaces undefiled—   Room! give me room! give loneliness and air—   Free things and plenteous in your regions fair!   White dove of David, flying overhead,       Golden with sunlight on thy snowy wings,   Outspeeding thee my longing thoughts are fled       To find a home afar from men of things;   Where in his temple, earth o'erarched with sky,   God's heart to mine may speak, my heart reply.   O God of mountains, stars, and boundless spaces,       O God of freedom and of joyous hearts,   When thy face looketh forth from all men's faces,       There will be room enough in crowded marts!   Brood thou around me, and the noise is o'er,   Thy universe my closet with shut door.   Heart, heart, awake! The love that loveth all       Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave.   God in thee, can his children's folly gall?       Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?—   Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;   Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm!

I KNOW WHAT BEAUTY IS

  I know what beauty is, for thou       Hast set the world within my heart;       Of me thou madest it a part;   I never loved it more than now.   I know the Sabbath afternoons;       The light asleep upon the graves:       Against the sky the poplar waves;   The river murmurs organ tunes.   I know the spring with bud and bell;       The hush in summer woods at night;       Autumn, when trees let in more light;   Fantastic winter's lovely spell.   I know the rapture music gives,       Its mystery of ordered tones:       Dream-muffled soul, it loves and moans,   And, half-alive, comes in and lives.   And verse I know, whose concord high       Of thought and music lifts the soul       Where many a glimmering starry shoal   Glides through the Godhead's living sky.   Yea, Beauty's regnant All I know—       The imperial head, the thoughtful eyes;       The God-imprisoned harmonies   That out in gracious motions go.   But I leave all, O Son of man,       Put off my shoes, and come to thee!       Most lovely thou of all I see,   Most potent thou of all that can!   As child forsakes his favourite toy,       His sisters' sport, his new-found nest,       And, climbing to his mother's breast,   Enjoys yet more his late-left joy—   I lose to find. On fair-browed bride       Fair pearls their fairest light afford;       So, gathered round thy glory, Lord,   All glory else is glorified.

SYMPATHY

  Grief held me silent in my seat;       I neither moved nor smiled:   Joy held her silent at my feet,       My shining lily-child.   She raised her face and looked in mine;       She deemed herself denied;   The door was shut, there was no shine;       Poor she was left outside!   Once, twice, three times, with infant grace       Her lips my name did mould;   Her face was pulling at my face—       She was but ten months old.   I saw; the sight rebuked my sighs;       It made me think—Does God   Need help from his poor children's eyes       To ease him of his load?   Ah, if he did, how seldom then       The Father would be glad!   If comfort lay in the eyes of men,       He little comfort had!   We cry to him in evil case,       When comfort sore we lack;   And when we troubled seek his face,       Consoled he sends us back;   Nor waits for prayer to rise and climb—       He wakes the sleeping prayer;   He is our father all the time,       And servant everywhere.   I looked not up; foreboding hid       Kept down my heart the while;   'Twas he looked up; my Father did       Smile in my infant's smile.

THE THANK-OFFERING

  My Lily snatches not my gift;       Glad is she to be fed,   But to her mouth she will not lift       The piece of broken bread,   Till on my lips, unerring, swift,       The morsel she has laid.   This is her grace before her food,       This her libation poured;   Even thus his offering, Aaron good       Heaved up to thank the Lord,   When for the people all he stood,       And with a cake adored.   So, Father, every gift of thine       I offer at thy knee;   Else take I not the love divine       With which it comes to me;   Not else the offered grace is mine       Of sharing life with thee.   Yea, all my being I would bring,       Yielding it utterly,   Not yet a full-possessed thing       Till heaved again to thee:   Away, my self! away, and cling       To him that makes thee be!

PRAYER

  We doubt the word that tells us: Ask,       And ye shall have your prayer;   We turn our thoughts as to a task,       With will constrained and rare.   And yet we have; these scanty prayers       Yield gold without alloy:   O God, but he that trusts and dares       Must have a boundless joy!

REST

I

  When round the earth the Father's hands       Have gently drawn the dark;   Sent off the sun to fresher lands,       And curtained in the lark;   'Tis sweet, all tired with glowing day,       To fade with fading light,   And lie once more, the old weary way,       Upfolded in the night.   If mothers o'er our slumbers bend,       And unripe kisses reap,   In soothing dreams with sleep they blend,       Till even in dreams we sleep.   And if we wake while night is dumb,       'Tis sweet to turn and say,   It is an hour ere dawning come,       And I will sleep till day.

II

  There is a dearer, warmer bed,       Where one all day may lie,   Earth's bosom pillowing the head,       And let the world go by.   There come no watching mother's eyes,       The stars instead look down;   Upon it breaks, and silent dies,       The murmur of the town.   The great world, shouting, forward fares:       This chamber, hid from none,   Hides safe from all, for no one cares       For him whose work is done.   Cheer thee, my friend; bethink thee how       A certain unknown place,   Or here or there, is waiting now,       To rest thee from thy race.

III

  Nay, nay, not there the rest from harms,       The still composed breath!   Not there the folding of the arms,       The cool, the blessed death!   That needs no curtained bed to hide       The world with all its wars,   No grassy cover to divide       From sun and moon and stars.   It is a rest that deeper grows       In midst of pain and strife;   A mighty, conscious, willed repose,       The death of deepest life.   To have and hold the precious prize       No need of jealous bars;   But windows open to the skies,       And skill to read the stars!

IV

  Who dwelleth in that secret place,       Where tumult enters not,   Is never cold with terror base,       Never with anger hot.   For if an evil host should dare       His very heart invest,   God is his deeper heart, and there       He enters in to rest.   When mighty sea-winds madly blow,       And tear the scattered waves,   Peaceful as summer woods, below       Lie darkling ocean caves:   The wind of words may toss my heart,       But what is that to me!   Tis but a surface storm—thou art       My deep, still, resting sea.

O DO NOT LEAVE ME

  O do not leave me, mother, lest I weep;   Till I forget, be near me in that chair.   The mother's presence leads her down to sleep—   Leaves her contented there.   O do not leave me, lover, brother, friends,   Till I am dead, and resting in my place.   Love-compassed thus, the girl in peace ascends,   And leaves a raptured face.   Leave me not, God, until—nay, until when?   Not till I have with thee one heart, one mind;   Not till the Life is Light in me, and then   Leaving is left behind.