The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes - Volume 1 - George MacDonald (digital book reader TXT) 📗

men grasp and grope!
The precious things in heavenly eyes
Are love, and truth, and trust, and hope.


V.

Better the clown who God doth love
Than he that high can go
And name each little star above
But sees not God below!

What if all things on earth I knew,
Yea, love were all my creed,
It serveth nothing with the True;
He goes by heart and deed.


VI.

If thou dost think thy knowledge good,
Thy intellect not slow,
Bethink thee of the multitude
Of things thou dost not know.

Why look on any from on high
Because thou knowest more?
Thou need'st but look abroad, to spy
Ten thousand thee before.

Wouldst thou in knowledge true advance
And gather learning's fruit,
In love confess thy ignorance,
And thy Self-love confute.


VII.

This is the highest learning,
The hardest and the best-
From self to keep still turning,
And honour all the rest.

If one should break the letter,
Yea, spirit of command,
Think not that thou art better,
Thou may'st not always stand!

We all are weak-but weaker
Hold no one than thou art;
Then, as thou growest meeker,
Higher will go thy heart.


VIII.

Sense and judgment oft indeed
Spy but little and mislead,
Ground us on a shelf!

Happy he whom Truth doth teach,
Not by forms of passing speech,
But her very self!

Why of hidden things dispute,
Mind unwise, howe'er astute,
Making that thy task
Where the Judge will, at the last,
When disputing all is past,
Not a question ask?

Folly great it is to brood
Over neither bad nor good,
Eyes and ears unheedful!
Ears and eyes, ah, open wide
For what may be heard or spied
Of the one thing needful!


TO AND OF FRIENDS.


TO LADY NOEL BYRON .


Men sought, ambition's thirst to slake,
The lost elixir old
Whose magic touch should instant make
The meaner metals gold.

A nobler alchymy is thine
Which love from pain doth press:
Gold in thy hand becomes divine,
Grows truth and tenderness.


TO THE SAME .


Dead, why defend thee, who in life
For thy worst foe hadst died;
Who, thy own name a word of strife,
Didst silent stand aside?

Grand in forgiveness, what to thee
The big world's puny prate!
Or thy great heart hath ceased to be
Or loveth still its mate!


TO AURELIO SAFFI .


To God and man be simply true;
Do as thou hast been wont to do;
Bring out thy treasures, old and new -
Mean all the same when said to you.

I love thee: thou art calm and strong;
Firm in the right, mild to the wrong;
Thy heart, in every raging throng,
A chamber shut for prayer and song.

Defeat thou know'st not, canst not know,
Although thy aims so lofty go
They need as long to root and grow
As infant hills to reach the snow.

Press on and prosper, holy friend!
I, weak and ignorant, would lend
A voice, thee, strong and wise, to send
Prospering onward without end.


A THANKSGIVING FOR F. D. MAURICE .


The veil hath lifted and hath fallen; and him
Who next it stood before us, first so long,
We see not; but between the cherubim
The light burns clearer: come-a thankful song!

Lord, for thy prophet's calm commanding voice,
For his majestic innocence and truth,
For his unswerving purity of choice,
For all his tender wrath and plenteous ruth;

For his obedient, wise, clear-listening care
To hear for us what word The Word would say,
For all the trembling fervency of prayer
With which he led our souls the prayerful way;

For all the heavenly glory of his face
That caught the white Transfiguration's shine
And cast on us the reflex of thy grace-
Of all thy men late left, the most divine;

For all his learning, and the thought of power
That seized thy one Idea everywhere,
Brought the eternal down into the hour,
And taught the dead thy life to claim and share;

For his humility, dove-clear of guile;-
The sin denouncing, he, like thy great Paul,
Still claimed in it the greatest share, the while
Our eyes, love-sharpened, saw him best of all!

For his high victories over sin and fear,
The captive hope his words of truth set free;
For his abiding memory, holy, dear;
Last, for his death and hiding now in thee,

We praise, we magnify thee, Lord of him:
Thou hast him still; he ever was thine own;
Nor shall our tears prevail the path to dim
That leads where, lowly still, he haunts thy throne.

When thou, O Lord, ascendedst up on high
Good gifts thou sentest down to cheer thy men:
Lo, he ascends!-we follow with the cry,
His spirit send thou back in thine again.


GEORGE ROLLESTON .


Dead art thou? No more dead than was the maid
Over whose couch the saving God did stand-
"She is not dead but sleepeth," said,
And took her by the hand!

Thee knowledge never from Life's pathway wiled,
But following still where life's great father led,
He turned, and taking up his child,
Raised thee too from the dead,

O living, thou hast passed thy second birth,
Found all things new, and some things lovely strange;
But thou wilt not forget the earth,
Or in thy loving change!


TO GORDON, LEAVING KHARTOUM.


The silence of traitorous feet!
The silence of close-pent rage!
The roar, and the sudden heart-beat!
And the shot through the true heart going,
The truest heart of the age!
And the Nile serenely flowing!

Carnage and curses and cries!
He utters never a word;
Still as a child he lies;
The wind of the desert is blowing
Across the dead man of the Lord;
And the Nile is softly flowing.

But the song is stilled in heaven
To welcome one more king:
For the truth he hath witnessed and striven,
And let the world go crowing,
And Mammon's church-bell go ring,
And the Nile blood-red go flowing!

Man who hated the sword
Yet wielded the sword and axe-
Farewell, O arm of the Lord,
The Lord's own harvest mowing-
With a wind in the smoking flax
Where our foul rivers are flowing!

In war thou didst cherish peace,
Thou slewest for love of life:
Hail, hail thy stormy release
Go home and await thy sowing,
The patient flower of thy strife,
Thy bread on the Nile cast flowing.

Not thy earth to our earth alone,
Thy spirit is left with us!
Thy body is victory's throne,
And our hearts around it are glowing:
Would that we others died thus
Where the Thames and the Clyde are flowing!


SONG OF THE SAINTS AND ANGELS ,

JANUARY 26, 1885.


Gordon, the self-refusing,
Gordon, the lover of God,
Gordon, the good part choosing,
Welcome along the road!

Thou knowest the man, O Father!
To do thy will he ran;
Men's praises he did not gather:
There is scarce such another man!

Thy black sheep's faithful shepherd
Who knew not how to flee,
Is torn by the desert leopard,
And comes wounded home to thee!

Home he is coming the faster
That the way he could not miss:
In thy arms, oh take him, Master,
And heal him with a kiss!

Then give him a thousand cities
To rule till their evils cease,
And their wailing minor ditties
Die in a psalm of peace.


FAILURE .


Farewell, O Arm of the Lord!
Man who hated the sword,
Yet struck and spared not the thing abhorred!
Farewell, O word of the Word!
Man who knew no failure
But the failure of the Lord!


TO E. G., DEDICATING A BOOK .


A broken tale of endless things,
Take, lady: thou art not of those
Who in what vale a fountain springs
Would have its journey close.

Countless beginnings, fair first parts,
Leap to the light, and shining flow;
All broken things, or toys or hearts,
Are mended where they go.

Then down thy stream, with hope-filled