The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 1

SCENE VII.—Julian's room. Noon. LILIA at work; LILY playing in a closet

 
  Lily
  (running up to her mother).
  Sing me a little song; please, mother dear.
 

  [LILIA, looking off her work, and thinking with fixed eyes for a few moments, sings.]

SONG

 
      Once I was a child,
          Oimè!
      Full of frolic wild;
          Oimè!
      All the stars for glancing,
      All the earth for dancing;
          Oimè! Oimè!
 
 
      When I ran about,
          Oimè!
  All the flowers came out,
          Oimè!
      Here and there like stray things,
      Just to be my playthings.
          Oimè! Oimè!
 
 
      Mother's eyes were deep,
          Oimè!
      Never needing sleep.
          Oimè!
      Morning—they're above me!
      Eventide—they love me!
          Oimè! Oimè!
 
 
      Father was so tall!
          Oimè!
      Stronger he than all!
          Oimè!
      On his arm he bore me,
      Queen of all before me.
          Oimè! Oimè!
 
 
      Mother is asleep;
          Oimè!
      For her eyes so deep,
          Oimè!
      Grew so tired and aching,
      They could not keep waking.
          Oimè! Oimè!
 
 
      Father, though so strong,
          Oimè!
      Laid him down along—
          Oimè!
      By my mother sleeping;
      And they left me weeping,
          Oimè! Oimè!
 
 
      Now nor bird, nor bee,
          Oimè!
      Ever sings to me!
          Oimè!
      Since they left me crying,
      All things have been dying.
          Oimè! Oimè!
 

  [LILY looks long in her mother's face, as if wondering what the song could be about; then turns away to the closet. After a little she comes running with a box in her hand.]

 
  Lily.
  O mother, mother! there's the old box I had
  So long ago, and all my cups and saucers,
  And the farm-house and cows.—Oh! some are broken.
  Father will mend them for me, I am sure.
  I'll ask him when he comes to-night—I will:
  He can do everything, you know, dear mother.
 

SCENE VIII.—A merchants counting-house. JULIAN preparing to go home

 
  Julian.
  I would not give these days of common toil,
  This murky atmosphere that creeps and sinks
  Into the very soul, and mars its hue—
  Not for the evenings when with gliding keel
  I cut a pale green track across the west—
  Pale-green, and dashed with snowy white, and spotted
  With sunset crimson; when the wind breathed low,
  So low it hardly swelled my xebec's sails,
  That pointed to the south, and wavered not,
  Erect upon the waters.—Jesus said
  His followers should have a hundred fold
  Of earth's most precious things, with suffering.—
  In all the labourings of a weary spirit,
  I have been bless'd with gleams of glorious things.
  The sights and sounds of nature touch my soul,
  No more look in from far.—I never see
  Such radiant, filmy clouds, gathered about
  A gently opening eye into the blue,
  But swells my heart, and bends my sinking knee,
  Bowing in prayer. The setting sun, before,
  Signed only that the hour for prayer was come,
  But now it moves my inmost soul to pray.
 
 
  On this same earth He walked; even thus he looked
  Upon its thousand glories; read them all;
  In splendour let them pass on through his soul,
  And triumph in their new beatitude,
  Finding a heaven of truth to take them in;
  But walked on steadily through pain to death.
 
 
  Better to have the poet's heart than brain,
  Feeling than song; but better far than both,
  To be a song, a music of God's making;
  A tablet, say, on which God's finger of flame,
  In words harmonious, of triumphant verse,
  That mingles joy and sorrow, sets down clear,
  That out of darkness he hath called the light.
  It may be voice to such is after given,
  To tell the mighty tale to other worlds.
 
 
  Oh! I am blest in sorrows with a hope
  That steeps them all in glory; as gray clouds
  Are bathed in light of roses; yea, I were
  Most blest of men, if I were now returning
  To Lilia's heart as presence. O my God,
  I can but look to thee. And then the child!—
  Why should my love to her break out in tears?
  Why should she be only a consolation,
  And not an added joy, to fill my soul
  With gladness overflowing in many voices
  Of song, and prayer—and weeping only when
  Words fainted 'neath the weight of utterance?
 

SCENE IX.—LILIA preparing to go out. LILY

 
  Lily.
  Don't go to-night again.
 
 
  Lilia.
                       Why, child, your father
  Will soon be home; and then you will not miss me.
 
 
  Lily.
  Oh, but I shall though! and he looks so sad
  When you're not here!
 
 
  Lilia
  (aside).
               He cannot look much sadder
  Than when I am. I am sure 'tis a relief
  To find his child alone when he returns.
 
 
  Lily.
  Will you go, mother? Then I'll go and cry
  Till father comes. He'll take me on his knee,
  And tell such lovely tales: you never do—
  Nor sing me songs made all for my own self.
  He does not kiss me half so many times
  As you do, mother; but he loves me more.
  Do you love father, too? I love him so!
 
 
  Lilia
  (ready).
  There's such a pretty book! Sit on the stool,
  And look at the pictures till your father comes.
 

[Goes.]

 
  Lily
  (putting the book down, and going to the window).
  I wish he would come home. I wish he would.
 

Enter JULIAN.

 
Oh, there he is!
 

[Running up to him.]

 
Oh, now I am so happy!
 

[Laughing.]

 
I had not time to watch before you came.
 
 
  Julian
  (taking her in his arms).
  I am very glad to have my little girl;
  I walked quite fast to come to her again.
 
 
  Lily.
  I do, do love you. Shall I tell you something?
  Think I should like to tell you. Tis a dream
  That I went into, somewhere in last night.
  I was alone—quite;—you were not with me,
  So I must tell you. 'Twas a garden, like
  That one you took me to, long, long ago,
  When the sun was so hot. It was not winter,
  But some of the poor leaves were growing tired
  With hanging there so long. And some of them
  Gave it up quite, and so dropped down and lay
  Quiet on the ground. And I was watching them.
  I saw one falling—down, down—tumbling down—
  Just at the earth—when suddenly it spread
  Great wings and flew.—It was a butterfly,
  So beautiful with wings, black, red, and white—
 

[Laughing heartily.]

 
  I thought it was a crackly, withered leaf.
  Away it flew! I don't know where it went.
  And so I thought, I have a story now
  To tell dear father when he comes to Lily.
 
 
  Julian.
  Thank you, my child; a very pretty dream.
  But I am tired—will you go find another—
  Another dream somewhere in sleep for me?
 
 
  Lily.
  O yes, I will.—Perhaps I cannot find one.
 

[He lays her down to sleep; then sits musing.]

 
  Julian.
  What shall I do to give it life again?
  To make it spread its wings before it fall,
  And lie among the dead things of the earth?
 
 
  Lily.
  I cannot go to sleep. Please, father, sing
  The song about the little thirsty lily.
 

[JULIAN sings.]

SONG

 
      Little white Lily
      Sat by a stone,
      Drooping and waiting
      Till the sun shone.
      Little white Lily
      Sunshine has fed;
      Little white Lily
      Is lifting her head.
 
 
      Little white Lily
      Said, "It is good:
      Little white Lily's
      Clothing and food!
      Little white Lily
      Drest like a bride!
      Shining with whiteness,
      And crowned beside!"
 
 
      Little white Lily
      Droopeth in pain,
      Waiting and waiting
      For the wet rain.
      Little white Lily
      Holdeth her cup;
      Rain is fast falling,
      And filling it up.
 
 
      Little white Lily
      Said, "Good again,
      When I am thirsty
      To have nice rain!
      Now I am stronger,
      Now I am cool;
      Heat cannot burn me,
      My veins are so full!"
 
 
      Little white Lily
      Smells very sweet:
      On her head sunshine,
      Rain at her feet.
      "Thanks to the sunshine!
      Thanks to the rain!
      Little white Lily
      Is happy again!"
 

[He is silent for a moment; then goes and looks at her.]

 
  Julian.
  She is asleep, the darling! Easily
  Is Sleep enticed to brood on childhood's heart.
  Gone home unto thy Father for the night!
 

[He returns to his seat.]

 
  I have grown common to her. It is strange—
  This commonness—that, as a blight, eats up
  All the heart's springing corn and promised fruit.
 

[Looking round.]

 
  This room is very common: everything
  Has such a well-known look of nothing in it;
  And yet when first I called it hers and mine,
  There was a mystery inexhaustible
  About each trifle on the chimney-shelf:
  The gilding now is nearly all worn off.
  Even she, the goddess of the wonder-world,
  Seems less mysterious and worshipful:
  No wonder I am common in her eyes.
  Alas! what must I think? Is this the true?
  Was that the false that was so beautiful?
  Was it a rosy mist that wrapped it round?
  Or was love to the eyes as opium,
  Making all things more beauteous than they were?
  And can that opium do more than God
  To waken beauty in a human brain?
  Is this the real, the cold, undraperied truth—
  A skeleton admitted as a guest
  At life's loud feast, wearing a life-like mask?
  No, no; my heart would die if I believed it.
  A blighting fog uprises with the days,
  False, cold, dull, leaden, gray. It clings about
  The present, far dragging like a robe; but ever
  Forsakes the past, and lets its hues shine out:
  On past and future pours the light of heaven.
  The Commonplace is of the present mind.
  The Lovely is the True. The Beautiful
  Is what God made. Men from whose narrow bosoms
  The great child-heart has withered, backward look
  To their first-love, and laugh, and call it folly,
  A mere delusion to which youth is subject,
  As childhood to diseases. They know better!
  And proud of their denying, tell the youth,
  On whom the wonder of his being shines,
  That will be over with him by and by:
  "I was so when a boy—look at me now!"
  Youth, be not one of them, but love thy love.
  So with all worship of the high and good,
  And pure and beautiful. These men are wiser!
  Their god, Experience, but their own decay;
  Their wisdom but the gray hairs gathered on them.
  Yea, some will mourn and sing about their loss,
  And for the sake of sweet sounds cherish it,
  Nor yet believe that it was more than seeming.
  But he in whom the child's heart hath not died,
  But grown a man's heart, loveth yet the Past;
  Believes in all its beauty; knows the hours
  Will melt the mist; and that, although this day
  Cast but a dull stone on Time's heaped-up cairn,
  A morning light will break one morn and draw
  The hidden glories of a thousand hues
  Out from its diamond-depths and ruby-spots
  And sapphire-veins, unseen, unknown, before.
  Far in the future lies his refuge. Time
  Is God's, and all its miracles are his;
  And in the Future he overtakes the Past,
  Which was a prophecy of times to come:
  There lie great flashing stars, the same that shone
  In childhood's laughing heaven; there lies the wonder
  In which the sun went down and moon arose;
  The joy with which the meadows opened out
  Their daisies to the warming sun of spring;
  Yea, all the inward glory, ere cold fear
  Froze, or doubt shook the mirror of his soul:
  To reach it, he must climb the present slope
  Of this day's duty—here he would not rest.
  But all the time the glory is at hand,
  Urging and guiding—only o'er its face
  Hangs ever, pledge and screen, the bridal veil:
  He knows the beauty radiant underneath;
  He knows that God who is the living God,
  The God of living things, not of the dying,
  Would never give his child, for God-born love,
  A cloud-made phantom, fading in the sun.
  Faith vanishes in sight; the cloudy veil
  Will melt away, destroyed of inward light.
 
 
  If thy young heart yet lived, my Lilia, thou
  And I might, as two children, hand in hand,
  Go home unto our Father.—I believe
  It only sleeps, and may be wakened yet.
 

SCENE X.—Julian's room. Christmas Day; early morn. JULIAN

 
  Julian.
  The light comes feebly, slowly, to the world
  On this one day that blesses all the year,
  Just as it comes on any other day:
  A feeble child he came, yet not the less
  Brought godlike childhood to the aged earth,
  Where nothing now is common any more.
  All things had hitherto proclaimed God:
  The wide spread air; the luminous mist that hid
  The far horizon of the fading sea;
  The low persistent music evermore
  Flung down upon the sands, and at the base
  Of the great rocks that hold it as a cup;
  All things most common; the furze, now golden, now
  Opening dark pods in music to the heat
  Of the high summer-sun at afternoon;
  The lone black tarn upon the round hill-top,
  O'er which the gray clouds brood like rising smoke,
  Sending its many rills, o'erarched and hid,
  Singing like children down the rocky sides;—
  Where shall I find the most unnoticed thing,
  For that sang God with all its voice of song?
  But men heard not, they knew not God in these;
  To their strange speech unlistening ears were strange;
  For with a stammering tongue and broken words,
  With mingled falsehoods and denials loud,
  Man witnessed God unto his fellow man:
  How then himself the voice of Nature hear?
  Or how himself he heeded, when, the leader,
  He in the chorus sang a discord vile?
  When prophet lies, how shall the people preach?
  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.
 

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