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

Out on the dim lawn gliding That shadowy shadow will flit.

V.

The moon is dreaming upward From a sea of cloud and gleam; She looks as if she had seen me Never but in a dream.

Down the stair I know she is coming, Bare-footed, lifting her train; It creaks not-she hears it creaking Where once there was a brain.

Out at yon side-door she's coming, With a timid glance right and left; Her look is hopeless yet eager, The look of a heart bereft.

Across the lawn she is flitting, Her thin gown feels the wind; Are her white feet bending the grasses? Her hair is lifted behind!

VI.

Shall I stay to look on her nearer? Would she start and vanish away? Oh, no, she will never see me, Stand I near as I may!

It is not this wind she is feeling, Not this cool grass below; 'Tis the wind and the grass of an evening A hundred years ago.

She sees no roses darkling, No stately hollyhocks dim; She is only thinking and dreaming The garden, the night, and him,

The unlit windows behind her, The timeless dial-stone, The trees, and the moon, and the shadows A hundred years agone!

'Tis a night for a ghostly lover To haunt the best-loved spot: Is he come in his dreams to this garden? I gaze, but I see him not.

VII.

I will not look on her nearer, My heart would be torn in twain; From my eyes the garden would vanish In the falling of their rain.

I will not look on a sorrow That darkens into despair, On the surge of a heart that cannot Yet cannot cease to bear.

My soul to hers would be calling: She would hear no word it said! If I cried aloud in the stillness She would never turn her head!

She is dreaming the sky above her, She is dreaming the earth below:- This night she lost her lover A hundred years ago.


A NOONDAY MELODY .

Everything goes to its rest;
The hills are asleep in the noon; And life is as still in its nest
As the moon when she looks on a moon In the depth of a calm river's breast
As it steals through a midnight in June.

The streams have forgotten the sea
In the dream of their musical sound; The sunlight is thick on the tree,
And the shadows lie warm on the ground,- So still, you may watch them and see
Every breath that awakens around.

The churchyard lies still in the heat,
With its handful of mouldering bone, As still as the long stalk of wheat
In the shadow that sits by the stone, As still as the grass at my feet
When I walk in the meadows alone.

The waves are asleep on the main,
And the ships are asleep on the wave; And the thoughts are as still in my brain
As the echo that sleeps in the cave; All rest from their labour and pain-
Then why should not I in my grave?


WHO LIGHTS THE FIRE ?

Who lights the fire-that forth so gracefully
And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke?
Some pretty one who never felt the yoke- Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.

Pedant it cannot, villain cannot be!
Some genius, may-be, his own symbol woke;
But puritan, nor rogue in virtue's cloke, Nor kitchen-maid has done it certainly!

Ha, ha! you cannot find the lighter out
For all the blue smoke's pantomimic gesture-
His name or nature, sex or age or vesture! The fire was lit by human care, no doubt-
But now the smoke is Nature's tributary,
Dancing 'twixt man and nothing like a fairy.


WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT ?

Who would have thought that even an idle song
Were such a holy and celestial thing
That wickedness and envy cannot sing- That music for no moment lives with wrong? I know this, for a very grievous throng,
Dark thoughts, low wishes, round my bosom cling,
And, underneath, the hidden holy spring Stagnates because of their enchantment strong.

Blow, breath of heaven, on all this poison blow!
And, heart, glow upward to this gracious breath!
Between them, vanish, mist of sin and death, And let the life of life within me flow!
Love is the green earth, the celestial air,
And music runs like dews and rivers there!


ON A DECEMBER DAY .

I.

This is the sweetness of an April day;
The softness of the spring is on the face
Of the old year. She has no natural grace, But something comes to her from far away

Out of the Past, and on her old decay
The beauty of her childhood you can trace.-
And yet she moveth with a stormy pace, And goeth quickly.-Stay, old year, oh, stay!

We do not like new friends, we love the old;
With young, fierce, hopeful hearts we ill agree; But thou art patient, stagnant, calm, and cold,
And not like that new year that is to be;-
Life, promise, love, her eyes may fill, fair child!
We know the past, and will not be beguiled.

II.

Yet the free heart will not be captive long;
And if she changes often, she is free.
But if she changes: One has mastery Who makes the joy the last in every song. And so to-day I blessed the breezes strong
That swept the blue; I blessed the breezes free
That rolled wet leaves like rivers shiningly; I blessed the purple woods I stood among.

"And yet the spring is better!" Bitterness
Came with the words, but did not stay with them.
"Accomplishment and promise! field and stem New green fresh growing in a fragrant dress!
And we behind with death and memory!"
-Nay, prophet-spring! but I will follow thee.


CHRISTMAS DAY, 1850 .

Beautiful stories wed with lovely days
Like words and music:-what shall be the tale
Of love and nobleness that might avail To express in action what this sweetness says-

The sweetness of a day of airs and rays
That are strange glories on the winter pale?
Alas, O beauty, all my fancies fail! I cannot tell a story in thy praise!

Thou hast, thou hast one-set, and sure to chime
With thee, as with the days of "winter wild;"
For Joy like Sorrow loves his blessed feet Who shone from Heaven on Earth this Christmas-time
A Brother and a Saviour, Mary's child!-
And so, fair day, thou hast thy story sweet.


TO A FEBRUARY PRIMROSE .

I know not what among the grass thou art,
Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power To send thine image through them to the heart; But when I push the frosty leaves apart
And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower
Thou growest up within me from that hour, And through the snow I with the spring depart.

I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
Pale beauty, of thy second life within. There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
But thou a life immortal dost begin, Where in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!


IN FEBRUARY .

Now in the dark of February rains,
Poor lovers of the sunshine, spring is born,
The earthy fields are full of hidden corn, And March's violets bud along the lanes;

Therefore with joy believe in what remains.
And thou who dost not feel them, do not scorn
Our early songs for winter overworn, And faith in God's handwriting on the plains.

"Hope" writes he, "Love" in the first violet,
"Joy," even from Heaven, in songs and winds and trees;
And having caught the happy words in these While Nature labours with the letters yet,
Spring cannot cheat us, though her hopes be broken,
Nor leave us, for we know what God hath spoken.


THE TRUE .

I envy the tree-tops that shake so high
In winds that fill them full of heavenly airs;
I envy every little cloud that shares With unseen angels evening in the sky; I envy most the youngest stars that lie
Sky-nested, and the loving heaven that bears,
And night that makes strong worlds of them unawares; And all God's other beautiful and nigh!

Nay, nay, I envy not! And these are dreams,
Fancies and images of real heaven!
My longings, all my longing prayers are given For that which is, and not for that which seems.
Draw me, O Lord, to thy true heaven above,
The Heaven of thy Thought, thy Rest, thy Love.


THE DWELLERS THEREIN .

Down a warm alley, early in the year,
Among the woods, with all the sunshine in
And all the winds outside it, I begin To think that something gracious will appear, If anything of grace inhabit here,
Or there be friendship in the woods to win.
Might one but find companions more akin To trees and grass and happy daylight clear, And in this wood spend one long hour at home!
The fairies do not love so bright a place, And angels to the forest never come,
But I have dreamed of some harmonious race, The kindred of the shapes that haunt the shore Of Music's flow and flow for evermore.


AUTUMN'S GOLD .

Along the tops of all the yellow trees,
The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies;
And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses; And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze,
Cometh more joy of light for Poet's eyes-
Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies, And shining houses and blue distances.

By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore
That make the western river-beds so bright,
The briar and the furze are all alight! Perhaps the year will be so fair no more,
But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay,
And autumn old has shone into a Day!


PUNISHMENT .

Mourner, that dost deserve thy mournfulness,
Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell;
Say, "God is angry, and I earned it well- I would not have him smile on wickedness:"

Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less:-
"God rules at least, I find as prophets tell,
And proves it in this prison!"-then thy