The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2

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 cell
Smiles with an unsuspected loveliness.
 
 
—"A prison—and yet from door and window-bar
  I catch a thousand breaths of his sweet air!
  Even to me his days and nights are fair!
He shows me many a flower and many a star!
And though I mourn and he is very far,
  He does not kill the hope that reaches there!"
 

SHEW US THE FATHER

 
"Shew us the Father." Chiming stars of space,
  And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers,
  A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours—
A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace.
And, looking out from sweetest Nature's face,
  From sunsets, moonlights, rivers, hills, and flowers,
  Infinite love and beauty, all the hours,
Woo men that love them with divinest grace;
And to the depths of all the answering soul
  High Justice speaks, and calls the world her own;
  And yet we long, and yet we have not known
The very Father's face who means the whole!
  Shew us the Father! Nature, conscience, love
  Revealed in beauty, is there One above?
 

THE PINAFORE

 
When peevish flaws his soul have stirred
  To fretful tears for crossed desires,
Obedient to his mother's word
  My child to banishment retires.
 
 
As disappears the moon, when wind
  Heaps miles of mist her visage o'er,
So vanisheth his face behind
  The cloud of his white pinafore.
 
 
I cannot then come near my child—
  A gulf between of gainful loss;
He to the infinite exiled—
  I waiting, for I cannot cross.
 
 
Ah then, what wonder, passing show,
  The Isis-veil behind it brings—
Like that self-coffined creatures know,
  Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!
 
 
Mysterious moment! When or how
  Is the bewildering change begun?
Hid in far deeps the awful now
  When turns his being to the sun!
 
 
A light goes up behind his eyes,
  A still small voice behind his ears;
A listing wind about him sighs,
  And lo the inner landscape clears!
 
 
Hid by that screen, a wondrous shine
  Is gathering for a sweet surprise;
As Moses grew, in dark divine,
  Too radiant for his people's eyes.
 
 
For when the garment sinks again,
  Outbeams a brow of heavenly wile,
Clear as a morning after rain,
  And sunny with a perfect smile.
 
 
Oh, would that I the secret knew
  Of hiding from my evil part,
And turning to the lovely true
  The open windows of my heart!
 
 
Lord, in thy skirt, love's tender gaol,
  Hide thou my selfish heart's disgrace;
Fill me with light, and then unveil
  To friend and foe a friendly face.
 

THE PRISM

I

 
A pool of broken sunbeams lay
  Upon the passage-floor,
Radiant and rich, profound and gay
  As ever diamond bore.
 
 
Small, flitting hands a handkerchief
  Spread like a cunning trap:
Prone lay the gorgeous jewel-sheaf
  In the glory-gleaner's lap!
 
 
Deftly she folded up the prize,
  With lovely avarice;
Like one whom having had made wise,
  She bore it off in bliss.
 
 
But ah, when for her prisoned gems
  She peeped, to prove them there,
No glories broken from their stems
  Lay in the kerchief bare!
 
 
For still, outside the nursery door,
  The bright persistency,
A molten diadem on the floor,
  Lay burning wondrously.
 

II

 
How oft have I laid fold from fold
  And peered into my mind—
To see of all the purple and gold
  Not one gleam left behind!
 
 
The best of gifts will not be stored:
  The manna of yesterday
Has filled no sacred miser-hoard
  To keep new need away.
 
 
Thy grace, O Lord, it is thyself;
  Thy presence is thy light;
I cannot lay it on my shelf,
  Or take it from thy sight.
 
 
For daily bread we daily pray—
  The want still breeds the cry;
And so we meet, day after day,
  Thou, Father in heaven, and I.
 
 
Is my house dreary, wall and floor,
  Will not the darkness flit,
I go outside my shadowy door
  And in thy rainbow sit.
 

SLEEP

 
Oh! is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
  To-night the planets and the stars
  Will glimmer through my window-bars
But will not shine upon my soul!
 
 
For I shall lie as dead
Though yet I am above the ground;
  All passionless, with scarce a breath,
  With hands of rest and eyes of death,
I shall be carried swiftly round.
 
 
Or if my life should break
The idle night with doubtful gleams,
  Through mossy arches will I go,
  Through arches ruinous and low,
And chase the true and false in dreams.
 
 
Why should I fall asleep?
When I am still upon my bed
  The moon will shine, the winds will rise
  And all around and through the skies
The light clouds travel o'er my head!
 
 
O busy, busy things,
Ye mock me with your ceaseless life!
  For all the hidden springs will flow
  And all the blades of grass will grow
When I have neither peace nor strife.
 
 
And all the long night through
The restless streams will hurry by;
  And round the lands, with endless roar,
  The white waves fall upon the shore,
And bit by bit devour the dry.
 
 
Even thus, but silently,
Eternity, thy tide shall flow,
  And side by side with every star
  Thy long-drawn swell shall bear me far,
An idle boat with none to row.
 
 
My senses fail with sleep;
My heart beats thick; the night is noon;
  And faintly through its misty folds
  I hear a drowsy clock that holds
Its converse with the waning moon.
 
 
Oh, solemn mystery
That I should be so closely bound
  With neither terror nor constraint,
  Without a murmur of complaint,
And lose myself upon such ground!
 

SHARING

 
On the far horizon there
Heaps of cloudy darkness rest;
Though the wind is in the air
There is stupor east and west.
 
 
For the sky no change is making,
Scarce we know it from the plain;
Droop its eyelids never waking,
Blinded by the misty rain;
 
 
Save on high one little spot,
Round the baffled moon a space
Where the tumult ceaseth not:
Wildly goes the midnight race!
 
 
And a joy doth rise in me
Upward gazing on the sight,
When I think that others see
In yon clouds a like delight;
 
 
How perchance an aged man
Struggling with the wind and rain,
In the moonlight cold and wan
Feels his heart grow young again;
 
 
As the cloudy rack goes by,
How the life-blood mantles up
Till the fountain deep and dry
Yields once more a sparkling cup.
 
 
Or upon the gazing child
Cometh down a thought of glory
Which will keep him undefiled
Till his head is old and hoary.
 
 
For it may be he hath woke
And hath raised his fair young form;
Strangely on his eyes have broke
All the splendours of the storm;
 
 
And his young soul forth doth leap
With the storm-clouds in the moon;
And his heart the light will keep
Though the vision passeth soon.
 
 
Thus a joy hath often laughed
On my soul from other skies,
Bearing on its wings a draught
From the wells of Paradise,
 
 
For that not to me alone
Comes a splendour out of fear;
Where the light of heaven hath shone
There is glory far and near.