Rampolli - George MacDonald (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📗

I not echoing footfalls
Hither adown the pleach'd walk?
No; the over-ripened fruit falls,
Heavy-swollen, from off its stalk!

Day's flaming eye at last is quenchéd quite; In gentle death its colours all are paling; Now boldly open in the fair twilight The cups which in his blaze had long been quailing; Slow lifts the moon her visage calmly bright; Into great masses molten, earth sinks failing; From every charm the zone drops unaware, And shrouded beauty dawns upon me bare.

Yonder I see a white shimmer-
Silky-of robe or of shawl?
No; it is the column's glimmer
'Gainst the clipt yews' gloomy wall!

O longing heart, no more thyself befool, Flouted by Fancy's loveliness unreal! The empty arm no burning heart will cool, No shadow-joy hold place for Love's Ideal! O bring my live love all my heart to rule! Give me her hand to hold, my every weal! Or but the shadow of her mantle's hem- And straight my dreams shall live, and I in them!

And soft as, from hills rosy-golden
The dews of still gladness descend,
So had she drawn nigh unbeholden,
And wakened with kisses her friend.

* * * * *

HOPE .

Men talk with their lips and dream with their soul
Of better days hitherward pacing; To a happy, a glorious, golden goal
See them go running and chasing! The world grows old and to youth returns, But still for the Better man's bosom burns.

It is Hope leads him into life and its light;
She haunts the little one merry; The youth is inspired by her magic might;
Her the graybeard cannot bury: When he finds at the grave his ended scope, On the grave itself he planteth Hope.

She was never begotten in Folly's brain,
An empty illusion, to flatter; In the Heart she cries, aloud and plain:
We are born to something better! And that which the inner voice doth say The hoping spirit will not betray.


THE WORDS OF FAITH .

Three words I will tell you, of meaning full:
The lips of the many shout them; Yet were they born of no sect or school,
The heart only knows about them:
That man is of everything worth bereft
Who in those three words has no faith left:

Man is born free-and is free alway
Even were he born in fetters! Let not the mob's cry lead you astray,
Or the misdeeds of frantic upsetters:
Fear not the slave when he breaks his bands;
Fear nothing from any free man's hands.

And Virtue -it is no empty sound;
That a man can obey her, no folly; Even if he stumble all over the ground
He yet can follow the Holy;
And what never wisdom of wise man knew
A child-like spirit can simply do.

And a God there is-a steadfast Will,
However the human shrinketh! High over space and time He still,
The live Thought, doth what He thinketh;
And though all things keep circling, to change confined,
He keeps, in all changes, a changeless mind.

These three words cherish-of meaning full:
From mouth to mouth send them faring; For, although they spring from no sect or school,
Your hearts them witness are bearing;
And man is never of worth bereft
While yet he has faith in those three words left.

Three words there are of weighty sound,
And from good men's lips they hail us; But a tinkling cymbal, a drum's rebound,
For help or for comfort they fail us!
His Life's fruit away he forfeit flings
Who catches after those shadows of things;

Who still believes in a Golden Age,
Where the Right and the Good reign in splendour: The Right and the Good war ever must wage-
Their foe will never surrender;
And chok'st thou him not in the upper air,
His strength he will still on the earth repair.

Who yet believes that Fortune, the jilt,
To the noble will bind herself ever: Her love-looks follow the man of guilt;
The world to the good belongs never;
He is in it a stranger; he wanders away
Seeking a house that will not decay.

Who still believes that no human gaze
Truth ever her visage discloses: Her veil no mortal hand shall raise;
Man only thinks and supposes:
Thou mayst prison the spirit in sounding form,
But the Fetterless walks away on the storm.

Then, noble spirit, from folly break free,
This heav'nly faith holding and handing: What the ear never heard, what no eye can see,
Is the lovely, the true, notwithstanding;
Outside, the fool seeks for it evermore;
The wise man finds it with closed door!


THE METAPHYSICIAN.

"How far the world lies under me! Scarce can I see the men below there crawling! How high it bears me up, my lofty calling! How near the heavenly canopy!" Thus, from tower-roof where he doth clamber, Calls out the slater; and with him the small big man, Jack Metaphysicus, down in his writing-chamber! Tell me, thou little great big man,- The tower, whence thou so grandly all things hast inspected, Of what is it?-Whereon is it erected? How cam'st thou up thyself? Its heights so smooth and bare- How serve they thee but thence into the vale to stare?


THE PHILOSOPHERS .

The principle whence everything
To life and shape ascended- The pulley whereon Zeus the ring Of Earth, which else in sherds would spring,
Has carefully suspended- To genius I yield him a claim Who fathoms for me what its name,
Save I withdraw its curtain:
It is-ten is not thirteen.

That snow makes cold, that fire burns,
That man on two feet goeth, That in the heavens the sun sojourns- This much the man who logic spurns
Through his own senses knoweth; But metaphysics who has got, Knows he that burneth, freezeth not;
Knows 'tis the moist that wetteth,
And 'tis the rough that fretteth.

Great Homer sings his epic high;
The hero fronts his dangers; The brave his duty still doth ply- And did it while, I won't deny,
Philosophers were strangers: But grant by heart and brain achiev'd What Locke and Des Cartes ne'er conceiv'd-
By them yet, as behovéd,
It possible was provéd.

Strength for the Right is counted still;
Bold laughs the strong hyena; Who rule not, servants' parts must fill; It goes quite tolerably ill
Upon this world's arena; But how it would be, if the plan Of the universe now first began,
In many a moral system
All men may read who list 'em.

"Man needs with man must linked be
To reach the goal of growing; In the whole only worketh he; Many drops go to make the sea;
Much water sets mills going. Then with the wild wolves do not stand, But knit the state's enduring band:"
From doctor's chair thus, tranquil,
Herr Pufendorf and swan-quill.

But since to all, what doctors say
Flies not as soon as spoken, Nature will use her mother-way, See that her chain fly not in tway,
The circle be not broken: Meantime, until the world's great round Philosophy in one hath bound,
She keeps it on the move, sir,
By hunger and by love, sir.


SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS .


I.

Threefold is of Time the tread: Lingering comes the Future pacing hither; Dartlike is the Now gone thither; Stands the Past aye moveless, foot and head.

No impatience wings its idle Tread of leisurely delay; Fear or doubt it cannot bridle Should it headlong run away; No remorse, no incantation Moves the standing from its station.

Wouldst thou end thy earthly journey Wise and of good fortune full, Make the Lingering thine attorney Thee to counsel-not thy tool; Not for friend the Flying take, Nor thy foe the Standing make.


II.

Threefold is of Space the way:
On unresting, without stay,
Strives the Length into the distance;
Ceaseless pours the Breadth's insistence
Bottomless the Depth goes down.

For a sign the three are sent thee:
Onward must alone content thee-
Weary, thou must not stand still
Wouldst thou thy perfection fill!
Thou must spread thee wider, bigger,
Wouldst thou have the world take figure!
To the deep the man descendeth
Who existence comprehendeth. Leads persistence to the goal; Leads abundance to precision; Dwells in the abyss the Vision.

* * * * *

In the following epigrams I have altered the form, which in the original is the elegiac distich .


KNOWLEDGE .

To this man, 'tis a goddess tall,
Who lifts a star-encircled head; To that, a fine cow in a stall,
Which gives him butter to his bread.


MY FAITH .

Which religion I profess?
None of which you mention make. Wherefore so?-And can't you guess?
For Religion's sake.


FRIEND AND FOE .

Dear is my friend, but my foe too
Is friendly to my good; My friend the thing shows I can do,
My foe, the thing I should.


EXPECTATION AND FULFILMENT .

Thousand-masted, mighty float,
Out to sea Youth's navy goes: Silent, in his one saved boat,
Age into the harbour rows.


THE DIVER

"Which of you, knight or squire, will dare
Plunge into yonder gulf? A golden beaker I fling in it-there!
The black mouth swallows it like a wolf! Who brings