The poetical works of George MacDonald Volume I Part 58

How I would hold thy hand, My glad eyes often to thy glory lifting!

Should darkness 'twixt thy face and mine come drifting, My heart would but expand.

If an ill thing came near, I would but creep within thy mantle's folding, Shut my eyes close, thy hand yet faster holding, And soon forget my fear.

O soul, O soul, rejoice!

Thou art G.o.d's child indeed, for all thy sinning; A poor weak child, yet his, and worth the winning With saviour eyes and voice.

Who spake the words? Didst Thou?

They are too good, even for such a giver: Such water drinking once, I should feel ever As I had drunk but now.

Yet sure the Word said so, Teaching our lips to cry with his, Our Father!

Telling the tale of him who once did gather His goods to him, and go!

Ah, thou dost lead me, G.o.d!

But it is dark and starless, the way dreary; Almost I sleep, I am so very weary Upon this rough hill-road.

_Almost_! Nay, I _do_ sleep; There is no darkness save in this my dreaming; Thy fatherhood above, around, is beaming; Thy hand my hand doth keep.

With sighs my soul doth teem; I have no knowledge but that I am sleeping; Haunted with lies, my life will fail in weeping; Wake me from this my dream.

How long shall heavy night Deny the day? How long shall this dull sorrow Say in my heart that never any morrow Will bring the friendly light?

Lord, art thou in the room?

Come near my bed; oh, draw aside the curtain!

A child's heart would say _Father_, were it certain That it would not presume.

But if this dreary sleep May not be broken, help thy helpless sleeper To rest in thee; so shall his sleep grow deeper-- For evil dreams too deep.

_Father_! I dare at length; My childhood sure will hold me free from blaming: Sinful yet hoping, I to thee come, claiming Thy tenderness, my strength.

_A PRAYER FOR THE PAST_.

_All sights and sounds of day and year, All groups and forms, each leaf and gem, Are thine, O G.o.d, nor will I fear To talk to thee of them_.

Too great thy heart is to despise, Whose day girds centuries about; From things which we name small, thine eyes See great things looking out.

Therefore the prayerful song I sing May come to thee in ordered words: Though lowly born, it needs not cling In terror to its chords.

I think that nothing made is lost; That not a moon has ever shone, That not a cloud my eyes hath crossed But to my soul is gone.

That all the lost years garnered lie In this thy casket, my dim soul; And thou wilt, once, the key apply, And show the shining whole.

_But were they dead in me, they live In thee, whose Parable is--Time, And Worlds, and Forms--all things that give Me thoughts, and this my rime_.

_And after what men call my death, When I have crossed the unknown sea, Some heavenly morn, on hopeful breath, Shall rise this prayer to thee_.

Oh let me be a child once more, And dream fine glories in the gloom, Of sun and moon and stars in store To ceil my humble room.

Oh call again the moons that crossed Blue gulfs, behind gray vapours crept; Show me the solemn skies I lost Because in thee I slept.

Once more let gathering glory swell, And lift the world's dim eastern eye; Once more let lengthening shadows tell Its time is come to die.

But show me first--oh, blessed sight!

The lowly house where I was young; There winter sent wild winds at night, And up the snow-heaps flung;

Or soundless brought a chaos fair, Full, formless, of fantastic forms, White ghostly trees in sparkling air-- Chamber for slumbering storms.

There sudden dawned a dewy morn; A man was turning up the mould; And in our hearts the spring was born, Crept thither through the cold.

_And Spring, in after years of youth, Became the form of every form For hearts now bursting into truth, Now sighing in the storm_.

On with the glad year let me go, With troops of daisies round my feet; Flying my kite, or, in the glow Of arching summer heat,

Outstretched in fear upon a bank, Lest, gazing up on awful s.p.a.ce, I should fall down into the blank, From off the round world's face.

And let my brothers come with me To play our old games yet again, Children on earth, more full of glee That we in heaven are men.

If then should come the shadowy death, Take one of us and go, We left would say, under our breath, "It is a dream, you know!"

"And in the dream our brother's gone Upstairs: he heard our father call; For one by one we go alone, Till he has gathered all."

_Father, in joy our knees we bow: This earth is not a place of tombs: We are but in the nursery now; They in the upper rooms_.

For are we not at home in thee, And all this world a visioned show; That, knowing what Abroad is, we What Home is too may know?

_And at thy feet I sit, O Lord, As once of old, in moonlight pale, I at my father's sat, and heard Him read a lofty tale_.

On with my history let me go, And reap again the gliding years, Gather great noontide's joyous glow, Eve's love-contented tears;

One afternoon sit pondering In that old chair, in that old room, Where pa.s.sing pigeon's sudden wing Flashed lightning through the gloom;

There try once more, with effort vain, To mould in one perplexed things; There find the solace yet again Hope in the Father brings;

Or mount and ride in sun and wind, Through desert moors, hills bleak and high, Where wandering vapours fall, and find In me another sky!

_For so thy Visible grew mine, Though half its power I could not know; And in me wrought a work divine, Which thou hadst ordered so_;

Giving me cups that would not spill, But water carry and yield again; New bottles with new wine to fill For comfort of thy men.

But if thou thus restore the past One hour, for me to wander in, I now bethink me at the last-- O Lord, leave out the sin.

_And with the thought comes doubt, my G.o.d: Shall I the whole desire to see, And walk once more, of that hill-road By which I went to thee_?