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

THE CLOCK OF THE UNIVERSE

 
  A clock aeonian, steady and tall,
With its back to creation's flaming wall,
Stands at the foot of a dim, wide stair.
Swing, swang, its pendulum goes,
Swing—swang—here—there!
Its tick and its tack like the sledge-hammer blows
Of Tubal Cain, the mighty man!
But they strike on the anvil of never an ear,
On the heart of man and woman they fall,
With an echo of blessing, an echo of ban;
For each tick is a hope, each tack is a fear,
Each tick is a Where, each tack a Not here,
Each tick is a kiss, each tack is a blow,
Each tick says Why, each tack I don't know.
Swing, swang, the pendulum!
Tick and tack, and go and come,
With a haunting, far-off, dreamy hum,
With a tick, tack, loud and dumb,
Swings the pendulum.
 
 
  Two hands, together joined in prayer,
With a roll and a volley of spheric thunder;
Two hands, in hope spread half asunder,
An empty gulf of longing embrace;
Two hands, wide apart as they can fare
In a fear still coasting not touching Despair,
But turning again, ever round to prayer:
Two hands, human hands, pass with awful motion
From isle to isle of the sapphire ocean.
 
 
  The silent, surfaceless ocean-face
Is filled with a brooding, hearkening grace;
The stars dream in, and sink fainting out,
And the sun and the moon go walking about,
Walking about in it, solemn and slow,
Solemn and slow, at a thinking pace,
Walking about in it to and fro,
Walking, walking about.
 
 
  With open beak and half-open wing
Ever with eagerness quivering,
On the peak of the clock
Stands a cock:
Tip-toe stands the cock to crow—
Golden cock with silver call
Clear as trumpet tearing the sky!
No one yet has heard him cry,
Nor ever will till the hour supreme
When Self on itself shall turn with a scream,
What time the hands are joined on high
In a hoping, despairing, speechless sigh,
The perfect groan-prayer of the universe
When the darkness clings and will not disperse
Though the time is come, told ages ago,
For the great white rose of the world to blow:
—Tick, tack, to the waiting cock,
Tick, tack, goes the aeon-clock!
 
 
  A polar bear, golden and gray,
Crawls and crawls around the top.
Black and black as an Ethiop
The great sea-serpent lies coiled beneath,
Living, living, but does not breathe.
For the crawling bear is so far away
That he cannot hear, by night or day,
The bourdon big of his deep bear-bass
Roaring atop of the silent face,
Else would he move, and none knows then
What would befall the sons of men!
 
 
  Eat up old Time, O raging Bear;
Take Bald-head, and the children spare!
Lie still, O Serpent, nor let one breath
Stir thy pool and stay Time's death!
Steady, Hands! for the noon is nigh:
See the silvery ghost of the Dawning shy
Low on the floor of the level sky!
Warn for the strike, O blessed Clock;
Gather thy clarion breath, gold Cock;
Push on the month-figures, pale, weary-faced Moon;
Tick, awful Pendulum, tick amain;
And soon, oh, soon,
Lord of life, and Father of boon,
Give us our own in our arms again!
 
 
  Then the great old clock to pieces will fall
Sans groaning of axle or whirring of wheel.
And away like a mist of the morning steal,
To stand no more in creation's hall;
Its mighty weights will fall down plumb
Into the regions where all is dumb;
No more will its hands, in horror or prayer,
Be lifted or spread at the foot of the stair
That springs aloft to the Father's room;
Its tick and its tack, When?—Not now,
Will cease, and its muffled groan below;
Its sapphire face will dissolve away
In the dawn of the perfect, love-potent day;
The serpent and bear will be seen no more,
Growling atop, or prone on the floor;
And up the stair will run as they please
The children to clasp the Father's knees.
 
 
O God, our father, Allhearts' All,
Open the doors of thy clockless hall!
 

THE THORN IN THE FLESH

 
Within my heart a worm had long been hid.
I knew it not when I went down and chid
Because some servants of my inner house
Had not, I found, of late been doing well,
But then I spied the horror hideous
Dwelling defiant in the inmost cell—
No, not the inmost, for there God did dwell!
But the small monster, softly burrowing,
Near by God's chamber had made itself a den,
And lay in it and grew, the noisome thing!
Aghast I prayed—'twas time I did pray then!
But as I prayed it seemed the loathsome shape
Grew livelier, and did so gnaw and scrape
That I grew faint. Whereon to me he said—
Some one, that is, who held my swimming head,
"Lo, I am with thee: let him do his worst;
The creature is, but not his work, accurst;
Thou hating him, he is as a thing dead."
Then I lay still, nor thought, only endured.
At last I said, "Lo, now I am inured
A burgess of Pain's town!" The pain grew worse.
Then I cried out as if my heart would break.
But he, whom, in the fretting, sickening ache,
I had forgotten, spoke: "The law of the universe
Is this," he said: "Weakness shall be the nurse
Of strength. The help I had will serve thee too."
So I took courage and did bear anew.
At last, through bones and flesh and shrinking skin,
Lo, the thing ate his way, and light came in,
And the thing died. I knew then what it meant,
And, turning, saw the Lord on whom I leant.
 

LYCABAS:

A name of the Year. Some say the word means a march of wolves, which wolves, running in single file, are the Months of the Year. Others say the word means the path of the light.

 
  O ye months of the year,
Are ye a march of wolves?
Lycabas! Lycabas! twelve to growl and slay?
Men hearken at night, and lie in fear,
Some men hearken all day!
 
 
  Lycabas, verily thou art a gallop of wolves,
Gaunt gray wolves, gray months of the year, hunting in twelves,
Running and howling, head to tail,
In a single file, over the snow,
A long low gliding of silent horror and fear!
On and on, ghastly and drear,
Not a head turning, not a foot swerving, ye go,
Twelve making only a one-wolf track!
Onward ye howl, and behind we wail;
Wail behind your narrow and slack
Wallowing line, and moan and weep,
As ye draw it on, straight and deep,
Thorough the night so swart!
Behind you a desert, and eyes a-weary,
A long, bare highway, stony and dreary,
A hungry soul, and a wolf-cub wrapt,
A live wolf-cub, sharp-toothed, steel-chapt,
In the garment next the heart!
 
 
  Lycabas!
One of them hurt me sore!
Two of them hurt and tore!
Three of them made me bleed!
The fourth did a terrible deed,
Rent me the worst of the four!
Rent me, and shook me, and tore,
And ran away with a growl!
Lycabas, if I feared you a jot,
You, and your devils running in twelves,
Black-mouthed, hell-throated, straight-going wolves,
I would run like a wolf, I too, and howl!
I live, and I fear you not.
 
 
  But shall I not hate you, low-galloping wolves
Hunting in ceaseless twelves?
Ye have hunted away my lambs!
Ye ran at them open-mouthed,
And your mouths were gleamy-toothed,
And their whiteness with red foam frothed,
And your throats were a purple-black gulf:
My lambs they fled, and they came not back!
Lovely white lambs they were, alack!
They fled afar and they left a track
Which at night, when the lone sky clears,
Glistens with Nature's tears!
Many a shepherd scarce thinks of a lamb
But he hears behind it the growl of a wolf,
And behind that the wail of its dam!
 
 
  They ran, nor cried, but fled
From day's sweet pasture, from night's soft bed:
Ah me, the look in their eyes!
For behind them rushed the swallowing gulf,
The maw of the growl-throated wolf,
And they fled as the thing that speeds or dies:
They looked not behind,
But fled as over the grass the wind.
 
 
  Oh my lambs, I would drop away
Into a night that never saw day
That so in your dear hearts you might say,
"All is well for ever and aye!"
Yet it was well to hurry away,
To hurry from me, your shepherd gray:
I had no sword to bite and slay,
And the wolfy Months were on your track!
It was well to start from work and play,
It was well to hurry from me away—
But why not once look back?
 
 
  The wolves came panting down the lea—
What was left you but somewhere flee!
Ye saw the Shepherd that never grows old,
Ye saw the great Shepherd, and him ye knew,
And the wolves never once came near to you;
For he saw you coming, threw down his crook,
Ran, and his arms about you threw;
He gathered you into his garment's fold,
He kneeled, he gathered, he lifted you,
And his bosom and arms were full of you.
He has taken you home to his stronghold:
Out of the castle of Love ye look;
The castle of Love is now your home,
From the garden of Love you will never roam,
And the wolves no more shall flutter you.
 
 
  Lycabas! Lycabas!
For all your hunting and howling and cries,
Your yelling of woe! and alas!
For all your thin tongues and your fiery eyes,
Your questing thorough the windy grass,
Your gurgling gnar, and your horrent hair,
And your white teeth that will not spare—
Wolves, I fear you never a jot,
Though you come at me with your mouths red-hot,
Eyes of fury, and teeth that foam:
Ye can do nothing but drive me home!
Wolves, wolves, you will lie one day—
Ye are lying even now, this very day,
Wolves in twelves, gaunt and gray,
At the feet of the Shepherd that leads the dams,
At the feet of the Shepherd that carries the lambs!
 
 
  And now that I see you with my mind's eye,
What are you indeed? my mind revolves.
Are you, are you verily wolves?
I saw you only through twilight dark,
Through rain and wind, and ill could mark!
Now I come near—are you verily wolves?
Ye have torn, but I never saw you slay!
Me ye have torn, but I live to-day,
Live, and hope to live ever and aye!
Closer still let me look at you!—
Black are your mouths, but your eyes are true!—
Now, now I know you!—the Shepherd's sheep-dogs!
Friends of us sheep on the moors and bogs,
Lost so often in swamps and fogs!
Dear creatures, forgive me; I did you wrong;
You to the castle of Love belong:
Forgive the sore heart that made sharp the tongue!
Your swift-flying feet the Shepherd sends
To gather the lambs, his little friends,
And draw the sheep after for rich amends!
Sharp are your teeth, my wolves divine,
But loves and no hates in your deep eyes shine!
No more will I call you evil names,
No more assail you with untrue blames!
Wake me with howling, check me with biting,
Rouse up my strength for the holy fighting:
Hunt me still back, nor let me stray
Out of the infinite narrow way,
The radiant march of the Lord of Light
Home to the Father of Love and Might,
Where each puts Thou in the place of I,
And Love is the Law of Liberty.
 

BALLADS

THE UNSEEN MODEL

 
Forth to his study the sculptor goes
  In a mood of lofty mirth:
"Now shall the tongues of my carping foes
  Confess what my art is worth!
In my brain last night the vision arose,
  To-morrow shall see its birth!"
 
 
He stood like a god; with creating hand
  He struck the formless clay:
"Psyche, arise," he said, "and stand;
  In beauty confront the day.
I have sought nor found thee in any land;
  I call thee: arise; obey!"
 
 
The sun was low in the eastern skies
  When spoke the confident youth;
Sweet Psyche, all day, his hands and eyes
  Wiled from the clay uncouth,
Nor ceased when the shadows came up like spies
  That dog the steps of Truth.
 
 
He said, "I will do my will in spite
  Of the rising dark; for, see,
She grows to my hand! The mar-work night
  Shall hurry and hide and flee
From the glow of my lamp and the making might
  That passeth out of me!"
 
 
In the flickering lamplight the figure swayed,
  In the shadows did melt and swim:
With tool and thumb he modelled and made,
  Nor knew that feature and limb
Half-obeying, half-disobeyed,
  And mocking eluded him.
 
 
At the dawning Psyche of his brain
  Joyous he wrought all night:
The oil went low, and he trimmed in vain,
  The lamp would not burn bright;
But he still wrought on: through the high roof-pane
  He saw the first faint light!
 
 
The dark retreated; the morning spread;
  His creatures their shapes resume;
The plaster stares dumb-white and dead;
  A faint blue liquid bloom
Lies on each marble bosom and head;
  To his Psyche clings the gloom.
 
 
Backward he stept to see the clay:
  His visage grew white and sear;
No beauty ideal confronted the day,
  No Psyche from upper sphere,
But a once loved shape that in darkness lay,
  Buried a lonesome year!
 
 
From maidenhood's wilderness fair and wild
  A girl to his charm had hied:
He had blown out the lamp of the trusting child,
  And in the darkness she died;
Now from the clay she sadly smiled,
  And the sculptor stood staring-eyed.
 
 
He had summoned Psyche—and Psyche crept
  From a half-forgotten tomb;
She brought her sad smile, that still she kept,
  Her eyes she left in the gloom!
High grace had found him, for now he wept,
  And love was his endless doom!
 
 
Night-long he pined, all day did rue;
  He haunted her form with sighs:
As oft as his clay to a lady grew
  The carvers, with dim surmise,
Would whisper, "The same shape come to woo,
  With its blindly beseeching eyes!"
 

THE HOMELESS GHOST

 
Through still, bare streets, and cold moonshine
  His homeward way he bent;
The clocks gave out the midnight sign
  As lost in thought he went
Along the rampart's ocean-line,
Where, high above the tossing brine,
  Seaward his lattice leant.
 
 
He knew not why he left the throng,
  Why there he could not rest,
What something pained him in the song
  And mocked him in the jest,
Or why, the flitting crowd among,
A moveless moonbeam lay so long
  Athwart one lady's breast!
 
 
He watched, but saw her speak to none,
  Saw no one speak to her;
Like one decried, she stood alone,
  From the window did not stir;
Her hair by a haunting gust was blown,
Her eyes in the shadow strangely shown,
  She looked a wanderer.
 
 
He reached his room, he sought a book
  His brooding to beguile;
But ever he saw her pallid look,
  Her face too still to smile.
An hour he sat in his fireside nook,
The time flowed past like a silent brook,
  Not a word he read the while.
 
 
Vague thoughts absorbed his passive brain
  Of love that bleeding lies,
Of hoping ever and hoping in vain,
  Of a sorrow that never dies—
When a sudden spatter of angry rain
Smote against every window-pane,
  And he heard far sea-birds' cries.
 
 
He looked from the lattice: the misty moon
  Hardly a glimmer gave;
The wind was like one that hums a tune,
  The first low gathering stave;
The ocean lay in a sullen swoon,
With a moveless, monotonous, murmured croon
  Like the moaning of a slave.
 
 
Sudden, with masterful, angry blare
  It howled from the watery west:
The storm was up, he had left his lair!
  The night would be no jest!
He turned: a lady sat in his chair!
Through her loose dim robe her arm came bare,
  And it lay across her breast.
 
 
She sat a white queen on a ruined throne,
  A lily bowed with blight;
In her eyes the darkness about was blown
  By flashes of liquid light;
Her skin with very whiteness shone;
Back from her forehead loosely thrown
  Her hair was dusk as night.
 
 
Wet, wet it hung, and wept like weeds
  Down her pearly shoulders bare;
The pale drops glistened like diamond beads
  Caught in a silken snare;
As the silver-filmy husk to its seeds
Her dank robe clings, and but half recedes
  Her form so shadowy fair.
 
 
Doubting she gazed in his wondering face,
  Wonder his utterance ties;
She searches, like one in forgetful case,
  For something within his eyes,
For something that love holds ever in chase,
For something that is, and has no place,
  But away in the thinking lies.
 
 
Speechless he ran, brought a wrap of wool,
  And a fur that with down might vie;
Listless, into the gathering pool
  She dropped them, and let them lie.
He piled the hearth with fagots so full
That the flames, as if from the log of Yule,
  Up the chimney went roaring high.
 
 
Then she spoke, and lovely to heart and ear
  Was her voice, though broke by pain;
Afar it sounded, though sweet and clear,
  As if from out of the rain;
As if from out of the night-wind drear
It came like the voice of one in fear
  Lest she should no welcome gain.
 
 
"I am too far off to feel the cold,
  Too cold to feel the fire;
It cannot get through the heap of mould
  That soaks in the drip from the spire:
Cerement of wax 'neath cloth of gold,
'Neath fur and wool in fold on fold,
  Freezes in frost so dire."
 
 
Her voice and her eyes and her cheek so white
  Thrilled him through heart and brain;
Wonder and pity and love unite
  In a passion of bodiless pain;
Her beauty possessed him with strange delight:
He was out with her in the live wan night,
  With her in the blowing rain!
 
 
Sudden she rose, she kneeled, she flung
  Her loveliness at his feet:
"I am tired of being blown and swung
  In the rain and the snow and the sleet!
But better no rest than stillness among
Things whose names would defile my tongue!
  How I hate the mouldy sheet!
 
 
"Ah, though a ghost, I'm a lady still!"
  The youth recoiled aghast.
Her eyes grew wide and pale and chill
  With a terror that surpassed.
He caught her hand: a freezing thrill
Stung to his wrist, but with steadfast will
  He held it warm and fast.
 
 
"What can I do to save thee, dear?"
  At the word she sprang upright;
On tiptoe she stood, he bent his ear,
  She whispered, whispered light.
She withdrew; she gazed with an asking fear:
Like one that looks on his lady's bier
  He stood, with a face ghost-white.
 
 
"Six times—in vain, oh hapless maid!—
  I have humbled myself to sue!
This is the last: as the sunset decayed,
  Out with the twilight I grew,
And about the city flitted and strayed,
A wandering, lonely, forsaken shade:
  No one saw me but you."
 
 
He shivered, he shook, he had turned to clay,
  Vile fear had gone into his blood;
His face was a dismal ashy gray,
  Through his heart crept slime and mud;
The lady stood in a still dismay,
She drooped, she shrank, she withered away
  Like a half-blown frozen bud.
 
 
"Speak once more. Am I frightful then?
  I live, though they call it death;
I am only cold! Say dear again."
  But scarce could he heave a breath;
Over a dank and steaming fen
He floated astray from the world of men,
  A lost, half-conscious wraith.
 
 
"Ah, 'tis the last time! Save me!" Her cry
  Entered his heart, and lay.
But he loved the sunshine, the golden sky,
  And the ghosts' moonlight is gray!—
As feverous visions flit and fly
And without a motion elude the eye,
  She stood three steps away.
 
 
But oh, her eyes!—refusal base
  Those live-soul-stars had slain!
Frozen eyes in an icy face
  They had grown. Like a ghost of the brain,
Beside the lattice, thought-moved in space,
She stood with a doleful despairing grace:
  The fire burned! clanged the rain!
 
 
Faded or fled, she had vanished quite!
  The loud wind sank to a sigh;
Pale faces without paled the face of night,
  Sweeping the window by;
Some to the glass pressed a cheek of fright,
Some shot a gleam of decaying light
  From a flickering, uncertain eye.
 
 
Whence did it come, from the sky or the deep,
  That faint, long-cadenced wail?
From the closing door of the down-way steep,
  His own bosom, or out of the gale?
From the land where dead dreams, or dead maidens sleep?
Out of every night to come will creep
  That cry his heart to quail!
 
 
The clouds had broken, the wind was at rest,
  The sea would be still ere morn,
The moon had gone down behind its breast
  Save the tip of one blunt horn:
Was that the ghost-angel without a nest—
Across the moonset far in the west
 That thin white vapour borne?
 
 
He turned from the lattice: the fire-lit room
  With its ghost-forsaken chair
Was cold and drear as a rifled tomb,
  Shameful and dreamless and bare!
Filled it was with his own soul's gloom,
With the sense of a traitor's merited doom,
  With a lovely ghost's despair!
 
 
He had driven a lady, and lightly clad,
  Out in the stormy cold!
Was she a ghost?—Divinely sad
  Are the people of Hades old!
A wandering ghost? Oh, self-care bad,
Caitiff and craven and cowering, which had
  Refused her an earthly fold!
 
 
Ill had she fared, his lovely guest!—
  A passion of wild self-blame
Tore the heart that failed in the test
  With a thousand hooks of shame,
Bent his proud head on his heaving breast,
Shore the plume from his ancient crest,
  Puffed at his ancient name.
 
 
He sickened with scorn of a fallen will,
  With love and remorse he wept;
He sank and kissed her footprints chill
  And the track by her garment swept;
He kneeled by her chair, all ice-cold still,
Dropped his head in it, moaned until
  For weariness he slept.
 
 
He slept until the flaming sun
  Laughed at the by-gone dark:
"A frightful dream!—but the night is done,"
  He said, "and I hear the lark!"
All day he held out; with the evening gun
A booming terror his brain did stun,
  And Doubt, the jackal, gan bark.
 
 
Followed the lion, Conviction, fast,
  And the truth no dream he knew!
Night after night raved the conscience-blast,
  But stilled as the morning grew.
When seven slow moons had come and passed
His self-reproach aside he cast,
  And the truth appeared untrue.
 
 
A lady fair—old story vile!—
  Would make his heart her boast:
In the growing glamour of her smile
  He forgot the lovely ghost:
Forgot her for bitterness wrapt in wile,
For the lady was false as a crocodile,
  And her heart was a cave of frost.
 
 
Then the cold white face, with its woe divine,
  Came back in the hour of sighs:
Not always with comfort to those that pine
  The dear true faces arise!
He yearned for her, dreamed of her, prayed for a sign;
He wept for her pleading voice, and the shine
  Of her solitary eyes.
 
 
"With thy face so still, which I made so sad—
  Ah me! which I might have wooed—
Thou holdest my heart in a love not glad,
  Sorrowful, shame-subdued!
Come to me, lady, in pardon clad;
Come to my dreams, white Aidead,
  For on thee all day I brood!"
 
 
She came not. He sought her in churchyards old,
  In churchyards by the sea;
And in many a church, when the midnight tolled
  And the moon shone eerily,
Down to the crypt he crept, grown bold,
Sat all night in the dead men's cold,
  And called to her: never came she.
 
 
Praying forgiveness more and more,
  And her love at any cost,
Pining and sighing and longing sore
  He grew like a creature lost;
Thin and spectral his body wore,
He faded out at the ghostly door,
  And was himself a ghost.
 
 
But if he found the lady then,
  So sorrowfully lost
For lack of the love 'mong earthly men
  That was ready to brave love's cost,
I know not till I drop my pen,
Wander away from earthly ken,
  And am myself a ghost.