George

MacDonald

LONGING.

My heart is full of inarticulate pain,

And beats laborious. Cold, ungenial looks

Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain,

Wise in success, well read in feeble books,
No nigher come, I pray: your air is drear;
'Tis winter and low skies when ye appear.

Beloved, who love beauty and fair truth!

Come nearer me; too near ye cannot come;
Make me an atmosphere sweet with your youth;
Give me your souls to breathe in, a large room;
Speak not a word, for see, my spirit lies
Helpless and dumb; shine on me with your eyes!

O all wide places, far from feverous towns!

Great shining seas! pine forests! mountains wild! Rock-bosomed shores! rough heaths! and sheep-cropt downs!

Vast pallid clouds !"blue spaces undefiled!

Room! give me room! give loneliness and air!

Free things and plenteous in your regions fair.

White dove of David, flying overhead,
Golden with sunlight on thy snowy wings,
Outspeeding thee, my longing thoughts are fled
To find a home afar from men and things;
Where in his temple, earth o'erarched with sky,
God's heart to mine may speak, my heart reply.

O God of mountains, stars and boundless spaces!
O God of freedom and of joyous hearts!
When thy face looketh forth from all men's faces,
There will be room enough in crowded marts;
Brood thou around me and the noise is o'er;
Thy universe my closet with shut door.

Heart, heart, awake! The love that loveth all

Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave.

God in thee, can his children's folly gall?

Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?

Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm;

Thou art my solitude, my mountain calm.

LIGHT.

First-born of the creating voice!

Minister of God's spirit, who wast sent
Waiting upon him first, what time he went
Moving about 'mid the tumultuous noise
Of each unpiloted element

Upon the face of the void formless deep!
Thou who didst come unbodied and alone,
Ere yet the sun was set his rule to keep

Or ever the moon shone, *

Or e'er the wandering star-flocks forth were driven! Thou garment of the Invisible, whose skirt

Sweeps, glory-giving, over earth and heaven!

Thou comforter, be with me as thou wert
When first I longed for words, to be

A radiant garment for my thought, like thee!

We lay us down in sorrow,

Wrapped in the old mantle of our mother Night:
In vexing dreams we strive until the morrow;
Grief lifts our eyelids up—and lo, the light!
The sunlight on the wall! And visions rise
Of shining leaves that make sweet melodies;
Of wind-borne waves with thee upon their crests;
Of rippled sands on which thou rainest down;
Of quiet lakes that smooth for thee their breasts;
Of clouds that show thy glory as their own;
O joy! O joy! the visions are gone by;
Light, gladness, motion, are reality!

Thou art the God of earth. The skylark springs
Far up to catch thy glory on his wings;
And thou dost bless him first that highest soars.
The bee comes forth to see thee and the flowers
Worship thee all day long, and through the skies
Follow thy journey with their earnest eyes.
River of life, thou pourest on the woods,
And on thy waves float out the wakening buds.
The trees lean towards thee, and in loving pain,
Keep turning still to see thee yet again.

And nothing in thy eyes is mean or low
Where'er thou art, on every side,

All things are glorified;

And where thou canst not come, there thou dost throw

Beautiful shadows made out of the dark,

That else were shapeless; now it bears thy mark.

And men have worshiped thee.

The Persian on his mountain-top

Waits kneeling till thy sun go up,

God-like in his serenity.

All giving, and none-gifted, he draws near,
And the wide earth waits till his face appear—

Long patient. And the herald glory leaps

Along the ridges of the outlying clouds,

Climbing the heights of all their towering steeps,

Till a quiet multitudinous laughter crowds

The universal face, and silently

Up cometh he, the never-closing eye.

Symbol of Deity! men could not be

Farthest from truth when they were kneeling unto thee,

Thou plaything of the child,

When from the water's surface thou dost spring,

Thyself upon his chamber ceiling fling,

And there, in mazy dance and motion wild,

Disport thyself-ethereal, undefiled,

Capricious like the thinkings of the child!

I am a child again, to think of thee

In thy consummate glee.

Or, through the gray dust darting in long streams,
How I would play with thee, athirst to climb

On sloping ladders of thy moted beams!
How marvel at thy dusky glimmering red
With which my closed fingers thou hast made
Like rainy clouds that curtain the sun's bed;
And how I loved thee always in the moon!
But most about the harvest-time,

When corn and moonlight made a mellow tune,
And thou wert grave and tender as a cooing dove!
And then the stars that flashed cold deathless love!
And the ghost-stars that shimmered in the tide !
And more mysterious earthly stars,

That shone from windows of the hill and glen

Thee prisoned in with lattice-bars,

Mingling with household love and rest of weary men!

And still I am a child, thank God!-to spy

Thee starry stream from bit of broken glass,
Upon the brown earth undescried,

Is a fond thing to me, a gladness high,
A spark that lights joy's altar-fire within,
A thought of hope to prophecy akin,
And from my spirit fruitless will not pass.

Thou art the joy of age:

Thy sun is dear when long the shadow falls.
Forth to its friendliness the old man crawls,
And, like the bird hung out in his poor cage
To gather song from radiance, in his chair
Sits by the door; and sitteth there
His soul within him, like a child that lies
Half dreaming, with half-open eyes,
At close of a long afternoon in summer—
High ruins round him, ancient ruins, where
The raven is almost the only comer;
Half dreams, half broods, in wonderment
At thy celestial descent,

Through rifted loops alighting on the gold
That waves its bloom in many an airy rent:
So dreams the old man's soul that is not old,
But sleepy 'mid the ruins that enfold.
What soul-like changes, evanescent moods,
Upon the face of the still passive earth,

Its hills, and fields, and woods,

Thou with thy seasons and thy hours art ever calling forth!

Even like a lord of music bent

Over his instrument,

Who gives to tears and smiles an equal birth!

When clear as holiness the morning ray