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

        What life it is, and how that all these lives do gather—

        With outward maker's force, or like an inward father.

        Receive thine own; for I and it are thine.

        Thou know'st its story; how for forty days—

        Weary with sickness and with social haze,

        (After thy hands and lips with love divine

        Had somewhat soothed me, made the glory shine,

        Though with a watery lustre,) more delays

        Of blessedness forbid—I took my ways

        Into a solitude, Invention's mine;

        There thought and wrote, afar, and yet with thee.

        Those days gone past, I came, and brought a book;

        My child, developed since in limb and look.

        It came in shining vapours from the sea,

        And in thy stead sung low sweet songs to me,

        When the red life-blood labour would not brook.

        Go thou into thy closet; shut thy door;

        And pray to Him in secret: He will hear.

        But think not thou, by one wild bound, to clear

        The numberless ascensions, more and more,

        Of starry stairs that must be climbed, before

        Thou comest to the Father's likeness near,

        And bendest down to kiss the feet so dear

        That, step by step, their mounting flights passed o'er.

        Be thou content if on thy weary need

        There falls a sense of showers and of the spring;

        A hope that makes it possible to fling

        Sickness aside, and go and do the deed;

        For highest aspiration will not lead

        Unto the calm beyond all questioning.

        Julian.

        Evening again slow creeping like a death!

        And the red sunbeams fading from the wall,

        On which they flung a sky, with streaks and bars

        Of the poor window-pane that let them in,

        For clouds and shadings of the mimic heaven!

        Soul of my cell, they part, no more to come.

        But what is light to me, while I am dark!

        And yet they strangely draw me, those faint hues,

        Reflected flushes from the Evening's face,

        Which as a bride, with glowing arms outstretched,

        Takes to her blushing heaven him who has left

        His chamber in the dim deserted east.

        Through walls and hills I see it! The rosy sea!

        The radiant head half-sunk! A pool of light,

        As the blue globe had by a blow been broken,

        And the insphered glory bubbled forth!

        Or the sun were a splendid water-bird,

        That flying furrowed with its golden feet

        A flashing wake over the waves, and home!

        Lo there!—Alas, the dull blank wall!—High up,

        The window-pane a dead gray eye! and night

        Come on me like a thief!—Ah, well! the sun

        Has always made me sad! I'll go and pray:

        The terror of the night begins with prayer.

        (Vesper bell.)

        Call them that need thee; I need not thy summons;

        My knees would not so pain me when I kneel,

        If only at thy voice my prayer awoke.

        I will not to the chapel. When I find Him,

        Then will I praise him from the heights of peace;

        But now my soul is as a speck of life

        Cast on the deserts of eternity;

        A hungering and a thirsting, nothing more.

        I am as a child new-born, its mother dead,

        Its father far away beyond the seas.

        Blindly I stretch my arms and seek for him:

        He goeth by me, and I see him not.

        I cry to him: as if I sprinkled ashes,

        My prayers fall back in dust upon my soul.

        (Choir and organ-music.)

        I bless you, sweet sounds, for your visiting.

        What friends I have! Prismatic harmonies

        Have just departed in the sun's bright coach,

        And fair, convolved sounds troop in to me,

        Stealing my soul with faint deliciousness.

        Would they took shapes! What levees I should hold!

        How should my cell be filled with wavering forms!

        Louder they grow, each swelling higher, higher;

        Trembling and hesitating to float off,

        As bright air-bubbles linger, that a boy

        Blows, with their interchanging, wood-dove-hues,

        Just throbbing to their flight,