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

now were ringing
The distance with thy throng! And that the stars were singing
To us a human song!

Courage! for life is hasting
To endless life away; The inward fire, unwasting,
Transfigures our dull clay! See the stars melting, sinking
In life-wine golden-bright! We, of the splendour drinking,
Shall grow to stars of light.

Lost, lost are all our losses!
Love is for ever free! The full life heaves and tosses
Like an unbounded sea! One live, eternal story!
One poem high and broad! And sun of all our glory
The countenance of God!


WHAT MAN IS THERE OF YOU?

The homely words how often read!
How seldom fully known! "Which father of you, asked for bread,
Would give his son a stone?"

How oft has bitter tear been shed,
And heaved how many a groan, Because thou wouldst not give for bread
The thing that was a stone!

How oft the child thou wouldst have fed,
Thy gift away has thrown! He prayed, thou heard'st, and gav'st the bread:
He cried, "It is a stone!"

Lord, if I ask in doubt and dread
Lest I be left to moan, Am I not he who, asked for bread,
Would give his son a stone?


O WIND OF GOD.

O wind of God, that blowest in the mind,
Blow, blow and wake the gentle spring in me; Blow, swifter blow, a strong warm summer wind,
Till all the flowers with eyes come out to see;
Blow till the fruit hangs red on every tree, And our high-soaring song-larks meet thy dove- High the imperfect soars, descends the perfect love!

Blow not the less though winter cometh then;
Blow, wind of God, blow hither changes keen; Let the spring creep into the ground again,
The flowers close all their eyes and not be seen:
All lives in thee that ever once hath been! Blow, fill my upper air with icy storms; Breathe cold, O wind of God, and kill my cankerworms.


SHALL THE DEAD PRAISE THEE?

I cannot praise thee. By his instrument
The master sits, and moves nor foot nor hand; For see the organ-pipes this, that way bent,
Leaning, o'erthrown, like wheat-stalks tempest-fanned!

I well could praise thee for a flower, a dove,
But not for life that is not life in me; Not for a being that is less than love-
A barren shoal half lifted from a sea!

Unto a land where no wind bloweth ships
Thy wind one day will blow me to my own: Rather I'd kiss no more their loving lips
Than carry them a heart so poor and prone!

I bless thee, Father, thou art what thou art,
That thou dost know thyself what thou dost know- A perfect, simple, tender, rhythmic heart,
Beating its blood to all in bounteous flow.

And I can bless thee too for every smart,
For every disappointment, ache, and fear; For every hook thou fixest in my heart,
For every burning cord that draws me near.

But prayer these wake, not song. Thyself I crave.
Come thou, or all thy gifts away I fling. Thou silent, I am but an empty grave:
Think to me, Father, and I am a king!

My organ-pipes will then stand up awake,
Their life soar, as from smouldering wood the blaze; And swift contending harmonies shall shake
Thy windows with a storm of jubilant praise.


A YEAR SONG.

Sighing above,
Rustling below, Thorough the woods
The winds go. Beneath, dead crowds;
Above, life bare; And the besom tempest
Sweeps the air:
Heart, leave thy woe: Let the dead things go.

Through the brown
Gold doth push; Misty green
Veils the bush. Here a twitter,
There a croak! They are coming-
The spring-folk!
Heart, be not numb; Let the live things come.

Through the beech
The winds go, With gentle speech,
Long and slow. The grass is fine,
And soft to lie in: The sun doth shine
The blue sky in:
Heart, be alive; Let the new things thrive.

Round again!
Here art thou, A rimy fruit
On a bare bough! Winter comes,
Winter and snow; And a weary sighing
To fall and go!
Heart, thy hour shall be; Thy dead will comfort thee.


SONG .

Why do the houses stand
When they that built them are gone;
When remaineth even of one That lived there and loved and planned Not a face, not an eye, not a hand,
Only here and there a bone? Why do the houses stand
When they who built them are gone?

Oft in the moonlighted land
When the day is overblown,
With happy memorial moan Sweet ghosts in a loving band Roam through the houses that stand-
For the builders are not gone.


FOR WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE WILL YOUR HEART BE ALSO.

The miser lay on his lonely bed;
Life's candle was burning dim. His heart in an iron chest was hid Under heaps of gold and an iron lid;
And whether it were alive or dead
It never troubled him.

Slowly out of his body he crept.
He said, "I am just the same! Only I want my heart in my breast; I will go and fetch it out of my chest!"
Through the dark a darker shadow he leapt,
Saying "Hell is a fabled flame!"

He opened the lid. Oh, Hell's own night!
His ghost-eyes saw no gold!- Empty and swept! Not a gleam was there! In goes his hand, but the chest is bare!
Ghost-fingers, aha! have only might
To close, not to clasp and hold!

But his heart he saw, and he made a clutch
At the fungous puff-ball of sin: Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust, He grasped a handful of rotten dust,
And shrieked, as ghosts may, at the crumbling touch,
But hid it his breast within.

And some there are who see him sit
Under the church, apart, Counting out coins and coins of gold Heap by heap on the dank death-mould:
Alas poor ghost and his sore lack of wit-
They breed in the dust of his heart!

Another miser has now his chest,
And it hoards wealth more and more; Like ferrets his hands go in and out, Burrowing, tossing the gold about-
Nor heed the heart that, gone from his breast,
Is the cold heap's bloodless core.

Now wherein differ old ghosts that sit
Counting ghost-coins all day From the man who clings with spirit prone To whatever can never be his own?
Who will leave the world with not one whit
But a heart all eaten away?


THE ASTHMATIC MAN TO THE SATAN THAT BINDS HIM .

Satan, avaunt!
Nay, take thine hour, Thou canst not daunt,
Thou hast no power; Be welcome to thy nest, Though it be in my breast.

Burrow amain;
Dig like a mole; Fill every vein
With half-burnt coal; Puff the keen dust about, And all to choke me out.

Fill music's ways
With creaking cries, That no loud praise
May climb the skies; And on my labouring chest Lay mountains of unrest.

My slumber steep
In dreams of haste, That only sleep,
No rest, I taste- With stiflings, rimes of rote, And fingers on my throat.

Satan, thy might
I do defy; Live core of night
I patient lie: A wind comes up the gray Will blow thee clean away.

Christ's angel, Death,
All radiant white, With one cold breath
Will scare thee quite, And give my lungs an air As fresh as answered prayer.

So, Satan, do
Thy worst with me Until the True
Shall set me free, And end what he began, By making me a man.


SONG-SERMON.

Lord, what is man That thou art mindful of him! Though in creation's van, Lord, what is man! He wills less than he can, Lets his ideal scoff him! Lord, what is man That thou art mindful of him!


SHADOWS.

All things are shadows of thee, Lord;
The sun himself is but thy shade; My spirit is the shadow of thy word,
A thing that thou hast said.

Diamonds are shadows of the sun,
They gleam as after him they hark: My soul some arrows of thy light hath won.
And feebly fights the dark!

All knowledges are broken shades,
In gulfs of dark a scattered horde: Together rush the parted glory-grades-
Then, lo, thy garment, Lord!

My soul, the shadow, still is light
Because the shadow falls from thee; I turn, dull candle, to the centre bright,
And home flit shadowy.

Shine, Lord; shine me thy shadow still;
The brighter I, the more thy shade! My motion be thy lovely moveless will!
My darkness, light delayed!


A WINTER PRAYER.

Come through the gloom of clouded skies,
The slow dim rain and fog athwart; Through east winds keen with wrong and lies
Come and lift up my hopeless heart.

Come through the sickness and the pain,
The sore unrest that tosses still; Through aching dark that hides the gain
Come and arouse my fainting will.

Come through the prate of foolish words,
The science with no God behind; Through all the pangs of untuned chords
Speak wisdom to my shaken mind.

Through all the fears that spirits bow
Of what hath been, or may befall, Come down and talk with me, for thou
Canst tell me all about them all.

Hear, hear my sad lone heart entreat,
Heart of all joy, below, above! Come near and let me kiss thy feet,
And name the names of those I love!


SONG OF A POOR PILGRIM .

Roses all the rosy way!
Roses to the rosier west Where the roses of the day
Cling to night's unrosy breast!

Thou who mak'st the roses, why
Give to every leaf a