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

rain I meet.

The rain pours down. My thoughts awake,
Like flowers that languished long;
From bare cold hills the night-winds break,
From me the unwonted song.


X.

I read the Bible with my eyes,
But hardly with my brain;
Should this the meaning recognize,
My heart yet reads in vain.

These words of promise and of woe
Seem but a tinkling sound;
As through an ancient tomb I go,
With dust-filled urns around.

Or, as a sadly searching child,
Afar from love and home,
Sits in an ancient chamber, piled
With scroll and musty tome,

So I, in these epistles old
From men of heavenly care,
Find all the thoughts of other mould
Than I can love or share.

No sympathy with mine they show,
Their world is not the same;
They move me not with joy or woe,
They touch me not with blame.

I hear no word that calls my life,
Or owns my struggling powers;
Those ancient ages had their strife,
But not a strife like ours.

Oh, not like men they move and speak,
Those pictures in old panes!
They alter not their aspect meek
For all the winds and rains!

Their thoughts are full of figures strange,
Of Jewish forms and rites:
A world of air and sea I range,
Of mornings and of nights!


XI.

I turn me to the gospel-tale:-
My hope is faint with fear
That hungriest search will not avail
To find a refuge here.

A misty wind blows bare and rude
From dead seas of the past;
And through the clouds that halt and brood,
Dim dawns a shape at last:

A sad worn man who bows his face,
And treads a frightful path,
To save an abject hopeless race
From an eternal wrath.

Kind words he speaks-but all the time
As from a formless height
To which no human foot can climb-
Half-swathed in ancient night.

Nay, sometimes, and to gentle heart,
Unkind words from him go!
Surely it is no saviour's part
To speak to women so!

Much rather would I refuge take
With Mary, dear to me,
To whom that rough hard speech he spake-
What have I to do with thee ?

Surely I know men tenderer,
Women of larger soul,
Who need no prayer their hearts to stir,
Who always would make whole!

Oftenest he looks a weary saint,
Embalmed in pallid gleam;
Listless and sad, without complaint,
Like dead man in a dream.

And, at the best, he is uplift
A spectacle, a show:-
The worth of such an outworn gift
I know too much to know!

How find the love to pay my debt?-
He leads me from the sun!-
Yet it is hard men should forget
A good deed ever done!-

Forget that he, to foil a curse,
Did, on that altar-hill,
Sun of a sunless universe,
Hang dying, patient, still!

But what is He, whose pardon slow
At so much blood is priced?-
If such thou art, O Jove, I go
To the Promethean Christ!


XII.

A word within says I am to blame,
And therefore must confess;
Must call my doing by its name,
And so make evil less.

"I could not his false triumph bear,
For he was first in wrong."
"Thy own ill-doings are thy care,
His to himself belong."

"To do it right, my heart should own
Some sorrow for the ill."
"Plain, honest words will half atone,
And they are in thy will."

The struggle comes. Evil or I
Must gain the victory now.
I am unmoved and yet would try:
O God, to thee I bow.

The skies are brass; there falls no aid;
No wind of help will blow.
But I bethink me:-I am made
A man: I rise and go.


XIII.

To Christ I needs must come, they say;
Who went to death for me:
I turn aside; I come, I pray,
My unknown God, to thee.

He is afar; the story old
Is blotted, worn, and dim;
With thee, O God, I can be bold-
I cannot pray to him.

Pray ! At the word a cloudy grief
Around me folds its pall:
Nothing I have to call belief!
How can I pray at all?

I know not if a God be there
To heed my crying sore;
If in the great world anywhere
An ear keeps open door!

An unborn faith I will not nurse,
Pursue an endless task;
Loud out into its universe
My soul shall call and ask!

Is there no God-earth, sky, and sea
Are but a chaos wild!
Is there a God-I know that he
Must hear his calling child!


XIV.

I kneel. But all my soul is dumb
With hopeless misery:
Is he a friend who will not come,
Whose face I must not see?

I do not think of broken laws,
Of judge's damning word;
My heart is all one ache, because
I call and am not heard.

A cry where there is none to hear,
Doubles the lonely pain;
Returns in silence on the ear,
In torture on the brain.

No look of love a smile can bring,
No kiss wile back the breath
To cold lips: I no answer wring
From this great face of death.


XV.

Yet sometimes when the agony
Dies of its own excess,
A dew-like calm descends on me,
A shadow of tenderness;

A sense of bounty and of grace,
A cool air in my breast,
As if my soul were yet a place
Where peace might one day rest.

God! God! I say, and cry no more,
But rise, and think to stand
Unwearied at the closed door
Till comes the opening hand.


XVI.

But is it God?-Once more the fear
Of No God loads my breath:
Amid a sunless atmosphere
I fight again with death.

Such rest may be like that which lulls
The man who fainting lies:
His bloodless brain his spirit dulls,
Draws darkness o'er his eyes.

But even such sleep, my heart responds,
May be the ancient rest
Rising released from bodily bonds,
And flowing unreprest.

The o'ertasked will falls down aghast
In individual death;
God puts aside the severed past,
Breathes-in a primal breath.

For how should torture breed a calm?
Can death to life give birth?
No labour can create the balm
That soothes the sleeping earth!

I yet will hope the very One
Whose love is life in me,
Did, when my strength was overdone,
Inspire serenity.

XVII.

When the hot sun's too urgent might
Hath shrunk the tender leaf,
Water comes sliding down the night,
And makes its sorrow brief.

When poet's heart is in eclipse,
A glance from childhood's eye,
A smile from passing maiden's lips,
Will clear a glowing sky.

Might not from God such influence come
A dying hope to lift?
Might he not send to poor heart some
Unmediated gift?

My child lies moaning, lost in dreams,
Abandoned, sore dismayed;