The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes - Volume 2, George MacDonald [8 ebook reader TXT] 📗

The two are away on their ghastly ride To Death's salt shore!

Where are the love and the grace?
The bridegroom is thirsty and cold! The bride's skull sharpens her face!
But the coachman is driving, jubilant, bold, The devil's pace.

The horses shivered and shook
Waiting gaunt and haggard With sorry and evil look;
But swift as a drunken wind they staggered 'Longst Lethe brook.

Long since, they ran no more;
Heavily pulling they died On the sand of the hopeless shore
Where never swelled or sank a tide, And the salt burns sore.

Flat their skeletons lie,
White shadows on shining sand; The crusted reins go high
To the crumbling coachman's bony hand On his knees awry.

Side by side, jarring no more,
Day and night side by side, Each by a doorless door,
Motionless sit the bridegroom and bride On the Dead-Sea-shore.


A SONG IN THE NIGHT.

A brown bird sang on a blossomy tree, Sang in the moonshine, merrily, Three little songs, one, two, and three, A song for his wife, for himself, and me.

He sang for his wife, sang low, sang high, Filling the moonlight that filled the sky; "Thee, thee, I love thee, heart alive! Thee, thee, thee, and thy round eggs five!"

He sang to himself, "What shall I do With this life that thrills me through and through! Glad is so glad that it turns to ache! Out with it, song, or my heart will break!"

He sang to me, "Man, do not fear Though the moon goes down and the dark is near; Listen my song and rest thine eyes; Let the moon go down that the sun may rise!"

I folded me up in the heart of his tune, And fell asleep with the sinking moon; I woke with the day's first golden gleam, And, lo, I had dreamed a precious dream!


LOVE'S HISTORY .

Love, the baby,
Crept abroad to pluck a flower: One said, Yes, sir; one said, Maybe;
One said, Wait the hour.

Love, the boy,
Joined the youngsters at their play: But they gave him little joy,
And he went away.

Love, the youth,
Roamed the country, quiver-laden; From him fled away in sooth
Many a man and maiden!

Love, the man,
Sought a service all about; But they called him feeble, one
They could do without.

Love, the aged,
Walking, bowed, the shadeless miles, Read a volume many-paged,
Full of tears and smiles.

Love, the weary,
Tottered down the shelving road: At its foot, lo, Night, the starry,
Meeting him from God!

"Love, the holy,"
Sang a music in her dome, Sang it softly, sang it slowly,
"Love is coming home!"


THE LARK AND THE WIND.

In the air why such a ringing?
On the earth why such a droning?

In the air the lark is singing;
On the earth the wind is moaning.

"I am blest, in sunlight swinging!"
"Sad am I: the world lies groaning!"

In the sky the lark kept singing;
On the earth the wind kept moaning.


A DEAD HOUSE.

When the clock hath ceased to tick
Soul-like in the gloomy hall; When the latch no more doth click
Tongue-like in the red peach-wall; When no more come sounds of play,
Mice nor children romping roam, Then looks down the eye of day
On a dead house, not a home!

But when, like an old sun's ghost,
Haunts her vault the spectral moon; When earth's margins all are lost,
Melting shapes nigh merged in swoon, Then a sound-hark! there again!-
No, 'tis not a nibbling mouse! 'Tis a ghost, unseen of men,
Walking through the bare-floored house!

And with lightning on the stair
To that silent upper room, With the thunder-shaken air
Sudden gleaming into gloom, With a frost-wind whistling round,
From the raging northern coasts, Then, mid sieging light and sound,
All the house is live with ghosts!

Brother, is thy soul a cell
Empty save of glittering motes, Where no live loves live and dwell,
Only notions, things, and thoughts? Then thou wilt, when comes a Breath
Tempest-shaking ridge and post, Find thyself alone with Death
In a house where walks no ghost.


'BELL UPON ORGAN.

It's all very well, Said the Bell, To be the big Organ below! But the folk come and go, Said the Bell, And you never can tell What sort of person the Organ will blow! And, besides, it is much at the mercy of the weather For 'tis all made in pieces and glued together!

But up in my cell Next door to the sky, Said the Bell, I dwell Very high; And with glorious go I swing to and fro; I swing swift or slow, I swing as I please, With summons or knell; I swing at my ease, Said the Bell: Not the tallest of men Can reach up to touch me, To smirch me or smutch me, Or make me do what I would not be at! And, then, The weather can't cause me to shrink or increase: I chose to be made in one perfect piece!


MASTER AND BOY.

"WHO is this little one lying,"
Said Time, "at my garden-gate, Moaning and sobbing and crying,
Out in the cold so late?"

"They lurked until we came near,
Master and I," the child said, "Then caught me, with 'Welcome, New-year!
Happy Year! Golden-head!'

"See Christmas-day, my Master,
On the meadow a mile away! Father Time, make me run faster!
I'm the Shadow of Christmas-day!"

"Run, my child; still he's in sight!
Only look well to his track; Little Shadow, run like the light,
He misses you at his back!"

Old Time sat down in the sun
On a grave-stone-his legs were numb: "When the boy to his master has run,"
He said, "Heaven's New Year is come!"


THE CLOCK OF THE UNIVERSE .

A clock aeonian, steady and tall, With its back to creation's flaming wall, Stands at the foot of a dim, wide stair. Swing, swang, its pendulum goes, Swing-swang-here-there! Its tick and its tack like the sledge-hammer blows Of Tubal Cain, the mighty man! But they strike on the anvil of never an ear, On the heart of man and woman they fall, With an echo of blessing, an echo of ban; For each tick is a hope, each tack is a fear, Each tick is a Where , each tack a Not here , Each tick is a kiss, each tack is a blow, Each tick says Why , each tack I don't know . Swing, swang, the pendulum! Tick and tack, and go and come , With a haunting, far-off, dreamy hum, With a tick, tack, loud and dumb, Swings the pendulum.

Two hands, together joined in prayer, With a roll and a volley of spheric thunder; Two hands, in hope spread half asunder, An empty gulf of longing embrace; Two hands, wide apart as they can fare In a fear still coasting not touching Despair, But turning again, ever round to prayer: Two hands, human hands, pass with awful motion From isle to isle of the sapphire ocean.

The silent, surfaceless ocean-face Is filled with a brooding, hearkening grace; The stars dream in, and sink fainting out, And the sun and the moon go walking about, Walking about in it, solemn and slow, Solemn and slow, at a thinking pace, Walking about in it to and fro, Walking, walking about.

With open beak and half-open wing Ever with eagerness quivering, On the peak of the clock Stands a cock: Tip-toe stands the cock to crow- Golden cock with silver call Clear as trumpet tearing the sky! No one yet has heard him cry, Nor ever will till the hour supreme When Self on itself shall turn with a scream, What time the hands are joined on high In a hoping, despairing, speechless sigh, The perfect groan-prayer of the universe When the darkness clings and will not disperse Though the time is come, told ages ago, For the great white rose of the world to blow: -Tick, tack, to the waiting cock, Tick, tack, goes the aeon-clock!

A polar bear, golden and gray, Crawls and crawls around the top. Black and black as an Ethiop The great sea-serpent lies coiled beneath, Living, living, but does not breathe. For the crawling bear is so far away That he cannot hear, by night or day, The bourdon big of his deep bear-bass Roaring atop of the silent face, Else would he move, and none knows then What would befall the sons of men!

Eat up old Time, O raging Bear; Take Bald-head, and the children spare! Lie still, O Serpent, nor let one breath Stir thy pool and stay Time's death! Steady, Hands! for the noon is nigh: See the silvery ghost of the Dawning shy Low on the floor of the level sky! Warn for the strike, O blessed Clock; Gather thy clarion breath, gold Cock; Push on the month-figures, pale, weary-faced Moon; Tick, awful Pendulum, tick amain; And soon, oh, soon, Lord of life, and Father of boon, Give us our own in our arms again!

Then the great old clock to pieces will fall Sans groaning of axle or whirring of wheel. And away like a mist of the morning steal, To stand no more in creation's hall; Its mighty weights will fall down plumb Into the regions where all is dumb; No more will its hands, in horror or prayer, Be lifted or spread at the foot of the stair That springs aloft to the Father's room; Its tick and its tack, When?-Not now , Will cease, and its muffled groan below; Its sapphire face will dissolve away In the dawn of the perfect, love-potent day; The serpent and bear will be seen no more, Growling atop, or prone on the floor; And up the stair will run as they please The children to clasp the Father's knees.

O God, our father, Allhearts' All, Open the doors of thy clockless hall!


THE THORN IN THE FLESH.

Within my heart a worm had long been hid. I knew it not when I went down and chid Because some servants of my inner house Had not, I found, of late been doing well, But then I spied the horror hideous Dwelling defiant in the inmost cell- No, not the inmost, for there God did dwell! But the small monster, softly burrowing, Near by God's chamber had made itself a den, And lay in it and grew, the noisome thing! Aghast I prayed-'twas time I did pray then! But as I prayed it seemed the loathsome shape Grew livelier, and did so gnaw and scrape That I grew faint. Whereon to me he said- Some one, that is, who held my swimming head, "Lo, I am with thee: let him do