The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes - Volume 1, George MacDonald [universal ebook reader txt] 📗

But when He came in poverty, and low,
A real man to half-unreal men,
A man whose human thoughts were all divine,
The head and upturned face of human kind-
Then God shone forth from all the lowly earth,
And men began to read their maker there.
Now the Divine descends, pervading all.
Earth is no more a banishment from heaven;
But a lone field among the distant hills,
Well ploughed and sown, whence corn is gathered home.
Now, now we feel the holy mystery
That permeates all being: all is God's;
And my poor life is terribly sublime.
Where'er I look, I am alone in God,
As this round world is wrapt in folding space;
Behind, before, begin and end in him:
So all beginnings and all ends are hid;
And he is hid in me, and I in him.

Oh, what a unity, to mean them all!-
The peach-dyed morn; cold stars in colder blue
Gazing across upon the sun-dyed west,
While the dank wind is running o'er the graves;
Green buds, red flowers, brown leaves, and ghostly snow;
The grassy hills, breeze-haunted on the brow;
And sandy deserts hung with stinging stars!
Half-vanished hangs the moon, with daylight sick,
Wan-faced and lost and lonely: daylight fades-
Blooms out the pale eternal flower of space,
The opal night, whose odours are gray dreams-
Core of its petal-cup, the radiant moon!
All, all the unnumbered meanings of the earth,
Changing with every cloud that passes o'er;
All, all, from rocks slow-crumbling in the frost
Of Alpine deserts, isled in stormy air,
To where the pool in warm brown shadow sleeps,
The stream, sun-ransomed, dances in the sun;
All, all, from polar seas of jewelled ice,
To where she dreams out gorgeous flowers-all, all
The unlike children of her single womb!
Oh, my heart labours with infinitude!
All, all the messages that these have borne
To eyes and ears, and watching, listening souls;
And all the kindling cheeks and swelling hearts,
That since the first-born, young, attempting day,
Have gazed and worshipped!-What a unity,
To mean each one, yet fuse each in the all!
O centre of all forms! O concord's home!
O world alive in one condensed world!
O face of Him, in whose heart lay concealed
The fountain-thought of all this kingdom of heaven!
Lord, thou art infinite, and I am thine!

I sought my God; I pressed importunate;
I spoke to him, I cried, and in my heart
It seemed he answered me. I said-"Oh! take
Me nigh to thee, thou mighty life of life!
I faint, I die; I am a child alone
'Mid the wild storm, the brooding desert-night."

"Go thou, poor child, to him who once, like thee,
Trod the highways and deserts of the world."

"Thou sendest me then, wretched, from thy sight!
Thou wilt not have me-I am not worth thy care!"

"I send thee not away; child, think not so;
From the cloud resting on the mountain-peak,
I call to guide thee in the path by which
Thou may'st come soonest home unto my heart.
I, I am leading thee. Think not of him
As he were one and I were one; in him
Thou wilt find me, for he and I are one.
Learn thou to worship at his lowly shrine,
And see that God dwelleth in lowliness."

I came to Him; I gazed upon his face;
And Lo! from out his eyes God looked on me!-
Yea, let them laugh! I will sit at his feet,
As a child sits upon the ground, and looks
Up in his mother's face. One smile from him,
One look from those sad eyes, is more to me
Than to be lord myself of hearts and thoughts.
O perfect made through the reacting pain
In which thy making force recoiled on thee!
Whom no less glory could make visible
Than the utter giving of thyself away;
Brooding no thought of grandeur in the deed,
More than a child embracing from full heart!
Lord of thyself and me through the sore grief
Which thou didst bear to bring us back to God,
Or rather, bear in being unto us
Thy own pure shining self of love and truth!
When I have learned to think thy radiant thoughts,
To love the truth beyond the power to know it,
To bear my light as thou thy heavy cross,
Nor ever feel a martyr for thy sake,
But an unprofitable servant still,-
My highest sacrifice my simplest duty
Imperative and unavoidable,
Less than which All , were nothingness and waste;
When I have lost myself in other men,
And found myself in thee-the Father then
Will come with thee, and will abide with me.


* * * * *

SCENE XI.-LILIA teaching LADY GERTRUDE. Enter LORD SEAFORD. LILIA rises . He places her a chair, and seats himself at the instrument; plays a low, half-melancholy, half-defiant prelude, and sings .

SONG.

Look on the magic mirror;
A glory thou wilt spy;

Be with thine heart a sharer,
But go not thou too nigh;
Else thou wilt rue thine error,
With a tear-filled, sleepless eye.

The youth looked on the mirror,
And he went not too nigh;
And yet he rued his error,
With a tear-filled, sleepless eye;
For he could not be a sharer
In what he there did spy.

He went to the magician
Upon the morrow morn.
"Mighty," was his petition,
"Look not on me in scorn;
But one last gaze elision,
Lest I should die forlorn!"

He saw her in her glory,
Floating upon the main.
Ah me! the same sad story!
The darkness and the rain!
If I live till I am hoary,
I shall never laugh again.

She held the youth enchanted,
Till his trembling lips were pale,
And his full heart heaved and panted
To utter all its tale:
Forward he rushed, undaunted-
And the shattered mirror fell.

[ He rises and leaves the room. LILIA weeping .]


PART IV.


And should the twilight darken into night,
And sorrow grow to anguish, be thou strong;
Thou art in God, and nothing can go wrong
Which a fresh life-pulse cannot set aright.
That thou dost know the darkness, proves the light.
Weep if thou wilt, but weep not all too long;
Or weep and work, for work will lead to song.
But search thy heart, if, hid from all thy sight,
There lies no cause for beauty's slow decay;
If for completeness and diviner youth,
And not for very love, thou seek'st the truth;
If thou hast learned to give thyself away
For love's own self, not for thyself, I say:
Were God's love less, the world were lost, in sooth!


SCENE I.- Summer. Julian's room. JULIAN is reading out of a book of poems .


Love me, beloved; the thick clouds lower;
A sleepiness filleth the earth and air;
The rain has been falling for many an hour;
A weary look the summer doth wear:
Beautiful things that cannot be so;
Loveliness clad in the garments of woe.

Love me, beloved; I hear the birds;
The clouds are lighter; I see the blue;
The wind in the leaves is like gentle words
Quietly passing 'twixt me and you;
The evening air will bathe the buds
With the soothing coolness of summer floods.

Love me, beloved; for, many a day,
Will the mist of the morning pass away;
Many a day will the brightness of noon
Lead to a night that hath lost her moon;
And in joy or in sadness, in autumn or spring,
Thy love to my soul is a needful thing.

Love me, beloved; for thou mayest lie
Dead in my sight, 'neath the same blue sky;
Love me, O love me, and let me know
The love that within thee moves to and fro;
That many a form of thy love may be
Gathered around thy memory.

Love me, beloved; for I may lie
Dead in thy sight, 'neath the same blue sky;
The more thou hast loved me, the less thy pain,
The stronger thy hope till we meet again;
And forth on the pathway we do not know,
With a load of love, my soul would go.

Love me, beloved; for one must lie
Motionless, lifeless, beneath the sky;
The pale stiff lips return no kiss
To the lips that never brought love amiss;
And the dark brown earth be heaped above
The head that lay on the