A Hidden Life and Other Poems. George MacDonald

      God, and not woman, is the heart of all.

      But she, as priestess of the visible earth,

      Holding the key, herself most beautiful,

      Had come to him, and flung the portals wide.

      He entered in: each beauty was a glass

      That gleamed the woman back upon his view.

      Already in these hours his growing soul

      Put forth the white tip of a floral bud,

      Ere long to be a crown-like, shadowy flower.

      For, by his songs, and joy in ancient tales,

      He showed the seed lay hidden in his heart,

      A safe sure treasure, hidden even from him,

      And notwithstanding mellowing all his spring;

      Until, like sunshine with its genial power,

      Came the fair maiden's face: the seed awoke.

      I need not follow him through many days;

      Nor tell the joys that rose around his path,

      Ministering pleasure for his labour's meed;

      Nor how each morning was a boon to him;

      Nor how the wind, with nature's kisses fraught,

      Flowed inward to his soul; nor how the flowers

      Asserted each an individual life,

      A separate being, for and in his thought;

      Nor how the stormy days that intervened

      Called forth his strength, and songs that quelled their force;

      Nor how in winter-time, when thick the snow

      Armed the sad fields from gnawing of the frost,

      And the low sun but skirted his far realms,

      And sank in early night, he took his place

      Beside the fire; and by the feeble lamp

      Head book on book; and lived in other lives,

      And other needs, and other climes than his;

      And added other beings thus to his.

      But I must tell that love of knowledge grew

      Within him to a passion and a power;

      Till, through the night (all dark, except the moon

      Shone frosty o'er the lea, or the white snow

      Gave back all motes of light that else had sunk

      Into the thirsty earth) he bent his way

      Over the moors to where the little town

      Lay gathered in the hollow. There the man

      Who taught the children all the shortened day,

      Taught other scholars in the long fore-night;

      And youths who in the shop, or in the barn,

      Or at the loom, had done their needful work,

      Came to his schoolroom in the murky night,

      And found the fire aglow, the candles lit,

      And the good master waiting for his men.

      Here mathematics wiled him to their heights;

      And strange consent of lines to form and law

      Made Euclid like a great romance of truth.

      The master saw with wonder how the youth

      All eagerly devoured the offered food,

      And straightway longed to lead him; with that hope

      Of sympathy which urges him that knows

      To multiply great knowledge by its gift;

      That so two souls ere long may see one truth,

      And, turning, see each others' faces shine.

      So he proposed the classics; and the youth

      Caught at the offer; and for many a night,

      When others lay and lost themselves in sleep,

      He groped his way with lexicon and rule,

      Through ancient deeds embalmed in Latin old,

      Or poet-woods alive with gracious forms;

      Wherein his knowledge of the English tongue

      (Through reading many books) much aided him—

      For the soul's language is the same in all.

      At length his progress, through the master's word,

      Proud of his pupil, reached the father's ears.

      Great joy arose within him, and he vowed,

      If caring, sparing would accomplish it,

      He should to college, and should have his fill

      Of that same learning.

                            So to school he went,

      Instead of to the plough; and ere a year,

      He wore the scarlet gown with the close sleeves.

      Awkward at first, but with a dignity

      That soon found fit embodiment in speech

      And gesture and address, he made his way,

      Not seeking it, to the respect of youths,

      In whom respect is of the rarer gifts.

      Likewise by the consent of accidents,

      More than his worth, society, so called,

      In that great northern city, to its rooms

      Invited him. He entered. Dazzled first,

      Not only by the brilliance of the show,

      In lights and mirrors, gems, and crowded eyes;

      But by the surface lights of many minds

      Cut like rose-diamonds into many planes,

      Which, catching up the wandering rays of fact,

      Reflected, coloured, tossed them here and there,

      In varied brilliance, as if quite new-born

      From out the centre, not from off the face—

      Dazzled at first, I say, he soon began

      To see how little thought could sparkle well,

      And turn him, even in the midst of talk,

      Back to the silence of his homely toils.

      Around him still and ever hung an air

      Born of the fields, and plough, and cart, and scythe;

      A kind of clumsy grace, in which gay girls

      Saw but the clumsiness; while those with light,

      Instead of glitter, in their quiet eyes,

      Saw the grace too; yea, sometimes, when he talked,

      Saw the grace only;