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

MY HEART

I

  Night, with her power to silence day,       Filled up my lonely room,   Quenching all sounds but one that lay       Beyond her passing doom,   Where in his shed a workman gay       Went on despite the gloom.   I listened, and I knew the sound,       And the trade that he was plying;   For backwards, forwards, bound on bound,       A shuttle was flying, flying—   Weaving ever—till, all unwound,       The weft go out a sighing.

II

  As hidden in thy chamber lowest       As in the sky the lark,   Thou, mystic thing, on working goest       Without the poorest spark,   And yet light's garment round me throwest,       Who else, as thou, were dark.   With body ever clothing me,       Thou mak'st me child of light;   I look, and, Lo, the earth and sea,       The sky's rejoicing height,   A woven glory, globed by thee,       Unknowing of thy might!   And when thy darkling labours fail,       And thy shuttle moveless lies,   My world will drop, like untied veil       From before a lady's eyes;   Or, all night read, a finished tale       That in the morning dies.

III

  Yet not in vain dost thou unroll       The stars, the world, the seas—   A mighty, wonder-painted scroll       Of Patmos mysteries,   Thou mediator 'twixt my soul       And higher things than these!   Thy holy ephod bound on me,       I pass into a seer;   For still in things thou mak'st me see,       The unseen grows more clear;   Still their indwelling Deity       Speaks plainer in mine ear.   Divinely taught the craftsman is       Who waketh wonderings;   Whose web, the nursing chrysalis       Round Psyche's folded wings,   To them transfers the loveliness       Of its inwoven things.   Yet joy when thou shalt cease to beat!—       For a greater heart beats on,   Whose better texture follows fleet       On thy last thread outrun,   With a seamless-woven garment, meet       To clothe a death-born son.

THE FLOWER-ANGELS

  Of old, with goodwill from the skies—     God's message to them given—   The angels came, a glad surprise,     And went again to heaven.   But now the angels are grown rare,     Needed no more as then;   Far lowlier messengers can bear     God's goodwill unto men.   Each year, the snowdrops' pallid dawn     Breaks from the earth below;   Light spreads, till, from the dark updrawn,     The noontide roses glow.   The snowdrops first—the dawning gray;     Then out the roses burn!   They speak their word, grow dim—away     To holy dust return.   Of oracles were little dearth,     Should heaven continue dumb;   From lowliest corners of the earth     God's messages will come.   In thy face his we see, O Lord,     And are no longer blind;   Need not so much his rarer word,     In flowers even read his mind.

TO MY SISTER,

ON HER TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY

I

  Old fables are not all a lie     That tell of wondrous birth,   Of Titan children, father Sky,     And mighty mother Earth.   Yea, now are walking on the ground     Sons of the mingled brood;   Yea, now upon the earth are found     Such daughters of the Good.   Earth-born, my sister, thou art still     A daughter of the sky;   Oh, climb for ever up the hill     Of thy divinity!   To thee thy mother Earth is sweet,     Her face to thee is fair;   But thou, a goddess incomplete,     Must climb the starry stair.

II

  Wouldst thou the holy hill ascend,     Wouldst see the Father's face?   To all his other children bend,     And take the lowest place.   Be like a cottage on a moor,     A covert from the wind,   With burning fire and open door,     And welcome free and kind.   Thus humbly doing on the earth     The things the earthly scorn,   Thou shalt declare the lofty birth     Of all the lowly born.

III

  Be then thy sacred womanhood     A sign upon thee set,   A second baptism—understood—     For what thou must be yet.   For, cause and end of all thy strife,     And unrest as thou art,   Still stings thee to a higher life     The Father at thy heart.

OH THOU OF LITTLE FAITH!

  Sad-hearted, be at peace: the snowdrop lies     Buried in sepulchre of ghastly snow;   But spring is floating up the southern skies,     And darkling the pale snowdrop waits below.   Let me persuade: in dull December's day     We scarce believe there is a month of June;   But up the stairs of April and of May     The hot sun climbeth to the summer's noon.   Yet hear me: I love God, and half I rest.     O better! God loves thee, so all rest thou.   He is our summer, our dim-visioned Best;—     And in his heart thy prayer is resting now.

WILD FLOWERS

  Content Primroses,   With hearts at rest in your thick leaves' soft care,   Peeping as from his mother's lap the child   Who courts shy shelter from his own open air!—   Hanging Harebell,   Whose blue heaven to no wanderer ever closes,   Though thou still lookest earthward from thy domed cell!—   Fluttering-wild   Anemone, so well   Named of the Wind, to whom thou, fettered-free,   Yieldest thee, helpless—wilfully,   With Take me or leave me,   Sweet Wind, I am thine own Anemone!—   Thirsty Arum, ever dreaming   Of lakes in wildernesses gleaming!—   Fire-winged Pimpernel,   Communing with some hidden well,   And secrets with the sun-god holding,   At fixed hour folding and unfolding!—   How is it with you, children all,   When human children on you fall,   Gather you in eager haste,   Spoil your plenty with their waste—   Fill and fill their dropping hands?   Feel you hurtfully disgraced   By their injurious demands?   Do you know them from afar,   Shuddering at their merry hum,   Growing faint as near they come?   Blind and deaf they think you are—   Is it only ye are dumb?   You alive at least, I think,   Trembling almost on the brink   Of our lonely consciousness:   If it be so,   Take this comfort for your woe,   For the breaking of your rest,   For the tearing in your breast,   For the blotting of the sun,   For the death too soon begun,   For all else beyond redress—   Or what seemeth so to be—   That the children's wonder-springs   Bubble high at sight of you,   Lovely, lowly, common things:   In you more than you they see!   Take this too—that, walking out,   Looking fearlessly about,   Ye rebuke our manhood's doubt,   And our childhood's faith renew;   So that we, with old age nigh,   Seeing you alive and well   Out of winter's crucible,   Hearing you, from graveyard crept,   Tell us that ye only slept—   Think we die not, though we die.   Thus ye die not, though ye die—   Only yield your being up,   Like a nectar-holding cup:   Deaf, ye give to them that hear,   With a greatness lovely-dear;   Blind, ye give to them that see—   Poor, but bounteous royally.   Lowly servants to the higher,   Burning upwards in the fire   Of Nature's endless sacrifice,   In great Life's ascent ye rise,   Leave the lowly earth behind,   Pass into the human mind,   Pass with it up into God,   Whence ye came though through the clod—   Pass, and find yourselves at home   Where but life can go and come;   Where all life is in its nest,   At loving one with holy Best;—   Who knows?—with shadowy, dawning sense   Of a past, age-long somnolence!

SPRING SONG

      Days of old,   Ye are not dead, though gone from me;         Ye are not cold,   But like the summer-birds fled o'er some sea.   The sun brings back the swallows fast         O'er the sea;   When he cometh at the last,   The days of old come back to me.

SUMMER SONG

  "Murmuring, 'twixt a murmur and moan,   Many a tune in a single tone,   For every ear with a secret true—   The sea-shell wants to whisper to you."   "Yes—I hear it—far and faint,   Like thin-drawn prayer of drowsy saint;   Like the muffled sounds of a summer rain;   Like the wash of dreams in a weary brain."   "By smiling lip and fixed eye,   You are hearing a song within the sigh:   The murmurer has many a lovely phrase—   Tell me, darling, the words it says."   "I hear a wind on a boatless main   Sigh like the last of a vanishing pain;   On the dreaming waters dreams the moon—   But I hear no words in the doubtful tune."   "If it tell thee not that I love thee well,   'Tis a senseless, wrinkled, ill-curved shell:   If it be not of love, why sigh or sing?   'Tis a common, mechanical, stupid thing!"   "It murmurs, it whispers, with prophet voice   Of a peace that comes, of a sealed choice;   It says not a word of your love to me,   But it tells me I love you eternally."

AUTUMN SONG

  Autumn clouds are flying, flying     O'er the waste of blue;   Summer flowers are dying, dying,     Late so lovely new.   Labouring wains are slowly rolling     Home with winter grain;   Holy bells are slowly tolling     Over buried men.   Goldener light sets noon a sleeping     Like an afternoon;   Colder airs come stealing, creeping     From the misty moon;   And the leaves, of old age dying,     Earthy hues put on;   Out on every lone wind sighing     That their day is gone.   Autumn's sun is sinking, sinking     Down to winter low;   And our hearts are thinking, thinking     Of the sleet and snow;   For our sun is slowly sliding     Down the hill of might;   And no moon is softly gliding     Up the slope of night.   See the bare fields' pillaged prizes     Heaped in golden glooms!   See, the earth's outworn sunrises     Dream in cloudy tombs!   Darkling flowers but wait the blowing     Of a quickening wind;   And the man, through Death's door going,     Leaves old Death behind.   Mourn not, then, clear tones that alter;     Let the gold turn gray;   Feet, though feeble, still may falter     Toward the better day!   Brother, let not weak faith linger     O'er a withered thing;   Mark how Autumn's prophet finger     Burns to hues of Spring.

WINTER SONG

  They were parted then at last?     Was it duty, or force, or fate?   Or did a worldly blast     Blow-to the meeting-gate?   An old, short story is this!     A glance, a trembling, a sigh,   A gaze in the eyes, a kiss—     Why will it not go by!

PICTURE SONGS

I

  A pale green sky is gleaming;     The steely stars are few;   The moorland pond is steaming     A mist of gray and blue.   Along the pathway lonely     My horse is walking slow;   Three living creatures only,     He, I, and a home-bound crow!   The moon is hardly shaping     Her circle in the fog;   A dumb stream is escaping     Its prison in the bog.   But in my heart are ringing     Tones of a lofty song;   A voice that I know, is singing,     And my heart all night must long.

II

  Over a shining land—     Once such a land I knew—   Over its sea, by a soft wind fanned,     The sky is all white and blue.   The waves are kissing the shores,     Murmuring love and for ever;   A boat gleams green, and its timeful oars     Flash out of the level river.   Oh to be there with thee     And the sun, on wet sands, my love!   With the shining river, the sparkling sea,     And the radiant sky above!

III

  The autumn winds are sighing     Over land and sea;   The autumn woods are dying     Over hill and lea;   And my heart is sighing, dying,     Maiden, for thee.   The autumn clouds are flying     Homeless over me;   The nestless birds are crying     In the naked tree;   And my heart is flying, crying,     Maiden, to thee.   The autumn sea is crawling     Up the chilly shore;   The thin-voiced firs are calling     Ghostily evermore:   Maiden, maiden! I am falling     Dead at thy door.

IV

  The waters are rising and flowing     Over the weedy stone—   Over it, over it going:     It is never gone.   Waves upon waves of weeping     Went over the ancient pain;   Glad waves go over it leaping—     Still it rises again!

A DREAM SONG

  I dreamed of a song—I heard it sung;   In the ear of my soul its strange notes rung.   What were its words I could not tell,   Only the voice I heard right well,   For its tones unearthly my spirit bound   In a calm delirium of mystic sound—   Held me floating, alone and high,   Placeless and silent, drinking my fill   Of dews that from cloudless skies distil   On desert places that thirst and sigh.   'Twas a woman's voice, deep calling to deep,   Rousing old echoes that all day sleep   In cavern and solitude, each apart,   Here and there in the waiting heart;—   A voice with a wild melodious cry   Reaching and longing afar and high.   Sorrowful triumph, and hopeful strife,   Gainful death, and new-born life,   Thrilled in each note of the prophet-song.   In my heart it said: O Lord, how long   Shall we groan and travail and faint and pray,   Ere thy lovely kingdom bring the day! 1842.

AT MY WINDOW AFTER SUNSET

  Heaven and the sea attend the dying day,     And in their sadness overflow and blend—   Faint gold, and windy blue, and green and gray:     Far out amid them my pale soul I send.   For, as they mingle, so mix life and death;     An hour draws near when my day too will die;   Already I forecast unheaving breath,     Eviction on the moorland of yon sky.   Coldly and sadly lone, unhoused, alone,     Twixt wind-broke wave and heaven's uncaring space!   At board and hearth from this time forth unknown!     Refuge no more in wife or daughter's face!   Cold, cold and sad, lone as that desert sea!     Sad, lonely, as that hopeless, patient sky!   Forward I cannot go, nor backward flee!     I am not dead; I live, and cannot die!   Where are ye, loved ones, hither come before?     Did you fare thus when first ye came this way?   Somewhere there must be yet another door!—     A door in somewhere from this dreary gray!   Come walking over watery hill and glen,     Or stoop your faces through yon cloud perplext;   Come, any one of dearest, sacred ten,     And bring me patient hoping for the next.   Maker of heaven and earth, father of me,     My words are but a weak, fantastic moan!   Were I a land-leaf drifting on the sea,     Thou still wert with me; I were not alone!   I am in thee, O father, lord of sky,     And lord of waves, and lord of human souls!   In thee all precious ones to me more nigh     Than if they rushing came in radiant shoals!   I shall not be alone although I die,     And loved ones should delay their coming long;   Though I saw round me nought but sea and sky,     Bare sea and sky would wake a holy song.   They are thy garments; thou art near within,     Father of fathers, friend-creating friend!   Thou art for ever, therefore I begin;     Thou lov'st, therefore my love shall never end!   Let loose thy giving, father, on thy child;     I pray thee, father, give me everything;   Give me the joy that makes the children wild;     Give throat and heart an old new song to sing.   Ye are my joy, great father, perfect Christ,     And humble men of heart, oh, everywhere!   With all the true I keep a hoping tryst;     Eternal love is my eternal prayer. 1890.

A FATHER TO A MOTHER

  When God's own child came down to earth,     High heaven was very glad;   The angels sang for holy mirth;     Not God himself was sad!   Shall we, when ours goes homeward, fret?     Come, Hope, and wait on Sorrow!   The little one will not forget;     It's only till to-morrow!

THE TEMPLE OF GOD

  In the desert by the bush,   Moses to his heart said Hush.   David on his bed did pray;   God all night went not away.   From his heap of ashes foul   Job to God did lift his soul,   God came down to see him there,   And to answer all his prayer.   On a dark hill, in the wind,   Jesus did his father find,   But while he on earth did fare,   Every spot was place of prayer;   And where man is any day,   God can not be far away.   But the place he loveth best,   Place where he himself can rest,   Where alone he prayer doth seek,   Is the spirit of the meek.   To the humble God doth come;   In his heart he makes his home.

GOING TO SLEEP

  Little one, you must not fret     That I take your clothes away;   Better sleep you so will get,     And at morning wake more gay—       Saith the children's mother.   You I must unclothe again,     For you need a better dress;   Too much worn are body and brain;     You need everlastingness—       Saith the heavenly father.   I went down death's lonely stair;     Laid my garments in the tomb;   Dressed again one morning fair;     Hastened up, and hied me home—       Saith the elder brother.   Then I will not be afraid     Any ill can come to me;   When 'tis time to go to bed,     I will rise and go with thee—       Saith the little brother.

TO-MORROW

  My TO-MORROW is but a flitting     Fancy of the brain;   God's TO-MORROW an angel sitting,     Ready for joy or pain.   My TO-MORROW has no soul,     Dead as yesterdays;   God's—a brimming silver bowl     Of life that gleams and plays.   My TO-MORROW, I mock you away!     Shadowless nothing, thou!   God's TO-MORROW, come, dear day,     For God is in thee now.

FOOLISH CHILDREN