The poetical works of George MacDonald Volume I Part 38

Perhaps I like it best: I would not choose Another than the ordered circ.u.mstance.

This farm is G.o.d's as much as yonder town; These men and maidens, kine and horses, his; For them his laws must be incarnated In act and fact, and so their world redeemed."

Though thus he spoke at times, he spake not oft; Ruled chief by action: what he said, he did.

No grief was suffered there of man or beast More than was need; no creature fled in fear; All slaying was with generous suddenness, Like G.o.d's benignant lightning. "For," he said, "G.o.d makes the beasts, and loves them dearly well-- Better than any parent loves his child, It may be," would he say; for still the _may be_ Was sacred with him no less than the _is_-- "In such humility he lived and wrought-- Hence are they sacred. Sprung from G.o.d as we, They are our brethren in a lower kind, And in their face we see the human look."

If any said: "Men look like animals; Each has his type set in the lower kind;"

His answer was: "The animals are like men; Each has his true type set in the higher kind, Though even there only rough-hewn as yet.

The h.e.l.l of cruelty will be the ghosts Of the sad beasts: their crowding heads will come, And with encircling, slow, pain-patient eyes, Stare the ill man to madness."

When he spoke, His word behind it had the force of deeds Unborn within him, ready to be born; But, like his race, he promised very slow.

His goodness ever went before his word, Embodying itself unconsciously In understanding of the need that prayed, And cheerful help that would outrun the prayer.

When from great cities came the old sad news Of crime and wretchedness, and children sore With hunger, and neglect, and cruel blows, He would walk sadly all the afternoon, With head down-bent, and pondering footstep slow; Arriving ever at the same result-- Concluding ever: "The best that I can do For the great world, is the same best I can For this my world. What truth may be therein Will pa.s.s beyond my narrow circ.u.mstance, In truth's own right." When a philanthropist Said pompously: "It is not for your gifts To spend themselves on common labours thus: You owe the world far n.o.bler things than such;"

He answered him: "The world is in G.o.d's hands, This part of it in mine. My sacred past, With all its loves inherited, has led Hither, here left me: shall I judge, arrogant, Primaeval G.o.dlike work in earth and air, Seed-time and harvest--offered fellowship With G.o.d in nature--unworthy of my hands?

I know your argument--I know with grief!-- The crowds of men, in whom a starving soul Cries through the windows of their hollow eyes For bare humanity, nay, room to grow!-- Would I could help them! But all crowds are made Of individuals; and their grief and pain, Their thirst and hunger--all are of the one, Not of the many: the true, the saving power Enters the individual door, and thence Issues again in thousand influences Besieging other doors. I cannot throw A ma.s.s of good into the general midst, Whereof each man may seize his private share; And if one could, it were of lowest kind, Not reaching to that hunger of the soul.

Now here I labour whole in the same spot Where they have known me from my childhood up And I know them, each individual: If there is power in me to help my own, Even of itself it flows beyond my will, Takes shape in commonest of common acts, Meets every humble day's necessity: --I would not always consciously do good, Not always work from full intent of help, Lest I forget the measure heaped and pressed And running over which they pour for me, And never reap the too-much of return In smiling trust and beams from kindly eyes.

But in the city, with a few lame words, And a few wretched coins, sore-coveted, To mediate 'twixt my _cannot_ and my _would_, My best attempts would never strike a root; My scattered corn would turn to wind-blown chaff; I should grow weak, might weary of my kind, Misunderstood the most where almost known, Baffled and beaten by their unbelief: Years could not place me where I stand this day High on the vantage-ground of confidence: I might for years toil on, and reach no man.

Besides, to leave the thing that nearest lies, And choose the thing far off, more difficult-- The act, having no touch of G.o.d in it, Who seeks the needy for the pure need's sake, Must straightway die, choked in its selfishness."

Thus he. The world-wise schemer for the good Held his poor peace, and went his trackless way.

What of the vision now? the vision fair Sent forth to meet him, when at eve he went Home from his first day's ploughing? Oft he dreamed She pa.s.sed him smiling on her stately horse; But never band or buckle yielded more; Never again his hands enthroned the maid; He only worshipped with his eyes, and woke.

Nor woke he then with foolish vain regret; But, saying, "I have seen the beautiful,"

Smiled with his eyes upon a flower or bird, Or living form, whate'er, of gentleness, That met him first; and all that morn, his face Would oftener dawn into a blossomy smile.

And ever when he read a lofty tale, Or when the storied leaf, or ballad old, Or spake or sang of woman very fair, Or wondrous good, he saw her face alone; The tale was told, the song was sung of her.

He did not turn aside from other maids, But loved their faces pure and faithful eyes.

He may have thought, "One day I wed a maid, And make her mine;" but never came the maid, Or never came the hour: he walked alone.

Meantime how fared the lady? She had wed One of the common crowd: there must be ore For the gold grains to lie in: virgin gold Lies in the rock, enriching not the stone.

She was not one who of herself could _be_; And she had found no heart which, tuned with hers, Would beat in rhythm, growing into rime.

She read phantasmagoric tales, sans salt, Sans hope, sans growth; or listlessly conversed With phantom-visitors--ladies, not friends, Mere spectral forms from fashion's concave gla.s.s.

She haunted gay a.s.semblies, ill-content-- Witched woods to hide in from her better self, And danced, and sang, and ached. What had she felt, If, called up by the ordered sounds and motions, A vision had arisen--as once, of old, The minstrel's art laid bare the seer's eye, And showed him plenteous waters in the waste;-- If the gay dance had vanished from her sight, And she beheld her ploughman-lover go With his great stride across a lonely field, Under the dark blue vault ablaze with stars, Lifting his full eyes to the radiant roof, Live with our future; or had she beheld Him studious, with s.p.a.ce-compelling mind Bent on his slate, pursue some planet's course; Or reading justify the poet's wrath, Or sage's slow conclusion?--If a voice Had whispered then: This man in many a dream, And many a waking moment of keen joy, Blesses you for the look that woke his heart, That smiled him into life, and, still undimmed, Lies lamping in the cabinet of his soul;-- Would her sad eyes have beamed with sudden light?

Would not her soul, half-dead with nothingness, Have risen from the couch of its unrest, And looked to heaven again, again believed In G.o.d and life, courage, and duty, and love?

Would not her soul have sung to its lone self: "I have a friend, a ploughman, who is wise.

He knows what G.o.d, and goodness, and fair faith Mean in the words and books of mighty men.

He nothing heeds the show of worldly things, But worships the unconquerable truth.

This man is humble and loves me: I will Be proud and very humble. If he knew me, Would he go on and love me till we meet!"?

In the third year, a heavy harvest fell, Full filled, before the reaping-hook and scythe.

The heat was scorching, but the men and maids Lightened their toil with merry jest and song; Rested at mid-day, and from br.i.m.m.i.n.g bowl, Drank the brown ale, and white abundant milk.

The last ear fell, and spiky stubble stood Where waved the forests of dry-murmuring corn; And sheaves rose piled in shocks, like ranged tents Of an encamping army, tent by tent, To stand there while the moon should have her will.

The grain was ripe. The harvest carts went out Broad-platformed, bearing back the towering load, With frequent pa.s.sage 'twixt homeyard and field.

And half the oats already hid their tops, Their ringing, rustling, wind-responsive sprays, In the still darkness of the towering stack; When in the north low billowy clouds appeared, Blue-based, white-crested, in the afternoon; And westward, darker ma.s.ses, plashed with blue, And outlined vague in misty steep and dell, Clomb o'er the hill-tops: thunder was at hand.

The air was sultry. But the upper sky Was clear and radiant.

Downward went the sun, Below the sullen clouds that walled the west, Below the hills, below the shadowed world.

The moon looked over the clear eastern wall, And slanting rose, and looked, rose, looked again, And searched for silence in her yellow fields, But found it not. For there the staggering carts, Like overladen beasts, crawled homeward still, Sped fieldward light and low. The laugh broke yet, That lightning of the soul's unclouded skies-- Though not so frequent, now that toil forgot Its natural hour. Still on the labour went, Straining to beat the welkin-climbing heave Of the huge rain-clouds, heavy with their floods.

Sleep, old enchantress, sided with the clouds, The hoisting clouds, and cast benumbing spells On man and horse. One youth who walked beside A ponderous load of sheaves, higher than wont, Which dared the lurking levin overhead, Woke with a start, falling against the wheel, That circled slow after the slumbering horse.

Yet none would yield to soft-suggesting sleep, And quit the last few shocks; for the wild storm Would catch thereby the skirts of Harvest-home, And hold her lingering half-way in the rain.

The scholar laboured with his men all night.

He did not favour such p.r.o.ne headlong race With Nature. To himself he said: "The night Is sent for sleep; we ought to sleep in the night, And leave the clouds to G.o.d. Not every storm That climbeth heavenward overwhelms the earth; And when G.o.d wills, 'tis better he should will; What he takes from us never can be lost."

But the father so had ordered, and the son Went manful to his work, and held his peace.

When the dawn blotted pale the clouded east, The first drops, overgrown and helpless, fell On the last home-bound cart, oppressed with sheaves; And by its side, the last in the retreat, The scholar walked, slow bringing up the rear.

Half the still lengthening journey he had gone, When, on opposing strength of upper winds Tumultuous borne, at last the labouring racks Met in the zenith, and the silence ceased: The lightning brake, and flooded all the world, Its roar of airy billows following it.

The darkness drank the lightning, and again Lay more unslaked. But ere the darkness came, In the full revelation of the flash, Met by some stranger flash from cloudy brain, He saw the lady, borne upon her horse, Careless of thunder, as when, years agone, He saw her once, to see for evermore.

"Ah, ha!" he said, "my dreams are come for me!

Now shall they have me!" For, all through the night, There had been growing trouble in his frame, An overshadowing of something dire.

Arrived at home, the weary man and horse Forsook their load; the one went to his stall, The other sought the haven of his bed-- There slept and moaned, cried out, and woke, and slept: Through all the netted labyrinth of his brain The fever shot its pent malignant fire.

'Twas evening when to pa.s.sing consciousness He woke and saw his father by his side: His guardian form in every vision drear That followed, watching shone; and the healing face Of his true sister gleamed through all his pain, Soothing and strengthening with cloudy hope; Till, at the weary last of many days, He woke to sweet quiescent consciousness, Enfeebled much, but with a new-born life-- His soul a summer evening after rain.

Slow, with the pa.s.sing weeks, he gathered strength, And ere the winter came, seemed half restored; And hope was busy. But a fire too keen Burned in his larger eyes; and in his cheek Too ready came the blood at faintest call, Glowing a fair, quick-fading, sunset hue.

Before its hour, a biting frost set in.

It gnawed with icy fangs his shrinking life; And that disease bemoaned throughout the land, The smiling, hoping, wasting, radiant death, Was born of outer cold and inner heat.

One morn his sister, entering while he slept, Spied in his listless hand a handkerchief Spotted with red. Cold with dismay, she stood, Scared, motionless. But catching in the gla.s.s The sudden glimpse of a white ghostly face, She started at herself, and he awoke.

He understood, and said with smile unsure, "Bright red was evermore my master-hue; And see, I have it in me: that is why."

She shuddered; and he saw, nor jested more, But smiled again, and looked Death in the face.

When first he saw the red blood outward leap, As if it sought again the fountain-heart Whence it had flowed to fill the golden bowl, No terror seized--an exaltation swelled His spirit: now the pondered mystery Would fling its portals wide, and take him in, One of the awful dead! Them, fools conceive As ghosts that fleet and pine, bereft of weight, And half their valued lives: he otherwise;-- Hoped now, and now expected; and, again, Said only, "I await the thing to come."

So waits a child the lingering curtain's rise, While yet the panting lamps restrained burn At half-height, and the theatre is full.

But as the days went by, they brought sad hours, When he would sit, his hands upon his knees, Drooping, and longing for the wine of life.

For when the ninefold crystal spheres, through which The outer light sinks in, are cracked and broken, Yet able to keep in the 'piring life, Distressing shadows cross the chequered soul: Poor Psyche trims her irresponsive lamp, And anxious visits oft her store of oil, And still the shadows fall: she must go pray!

And G.o.d, who speaks to man at door and lattice, Glorious in stars, and winds, and flowers, and waves, Not seldom shuts the door and dims the pane, That, isled in calm, his still small voice may sound The clearer, by the hearth, in the inner room-- Sound on until the soul, fulfilled of hope, Look undismayed on that which cannot kill; And saying in the dark, _I will the light_, Glow in the gloom the present will of G.o.d: Then melt the shadows of her shaken house.

He, when his lamp shot up a spiring flame, Would thus break forth and climb the heaven of prayer: "Do with us what thou wilt, all-glorious heart!

Thou G.o.d of them that are not yet, but grow!

We trust thee for the thing we shall be yet; We too are ill content with what we are."

And when the flame sank, and the darkness fell, He lived by faith which is the soul of sight.

Yet in the frequent pauses of the light, When all was dreary as a drizzling thaw, When sleep came not although he prayed for sleep, And wakeful-weary on his bed he lay, Like frozen lake that has no heaven within; Then, then the sleeping horror woke and stirred, And with the tooth of unsure thought began To gnaw the roots of life:--What if there were No truth in beauty! What if loveliness Were but the invention of a happier mood!

"For, if my mind can dim or slay the Fair, Why should it not enhance or make the Fair?"

"Nay," Psyche answered; "for a tired man May drop his eyelids on the visible world, To whom no dreams, when fancy flieth free, Will bring the sunny excellence of day.

'Tis easy to destroy; G.o.d only makes.

Could my invention sweep the lucid waves With purple shadows--next create the joy With which my life beholds them? Wherefore should One meet the other without thought of mine, If G.o.d did not mean beauty in them and me, But dropped them, helpless shadows, from his sun?

There were no G.o.d, his image not being mine, And I should seek in vain for any bliss!

Oh, lack and doubt and fear can only come Because of plenty, confidence, and love!

Those are the shadow-forms about the feet Of these--because they are not crystal-clear To the all-searching sun in which they live: Dread of its loss is Beauty's certain seal!"

Thus reasoned mourning Psyche. Suddenly The sun would rise, and vanish Psyche's lamp, Absorbed in light, not swallowed in the dark.

It was a wintry time with sunny days, With visitings of April airs and scents, That came with sudden presence, unforetold, As brushed from off the outer spheres of spring In the great world where all is old and new.

Strange longings he had never known till now, Awoke within him, flowers of rooted hope.

For a whole silent hour he would sit and gaze Upon the distant hills, whose dazzling snow Starred the dim blue, or down their dark ravines Crept vaporous; until the fancy rose That on the other side those rampart walls, A mighty woman sat, with waiting face, Calm as that life whose rapt intensity Borders on death, silent, waiting for him, To make him grand for ever with a kiss, And send him silent through the toning worlds.

The father saw him waning. The proud sire Beheld his pride go drooping in the cold, Like snowdrop on its grave; and sighed deep thanks That he was old. But evermore the son Looked up and smiled as he had heard strange news Across the waste, of tree-buds and primroses.

Then all at once the other mood would come, And, like a troubled child, he would seek his father For father-comfort, which fathers all can give: Sure there is one great Father in the world, Since every word of good from fathers' lips Falleth with such authority, although They are but men as we! This trembling son, Who saw the unknown death draw hourly nigher, Sought solace in his father's tenderness, And made him strong to die.