A Hidden Life and Other Poems - George MacDonald

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seized

      His spirit; now the pondered mystery

      Of the unseen would fling its portals wide,

      And he would enter, one of the awful dead;

      Whom men conceive as ghosts that fleet and pine,

      Bereft of weight, and half their valued lives;—

      But who, he knew, must live intenser life,

      Having, through matter, all illumed with sense,

      Flaming, like Horeb's bush, with present soul,

      And by the contact with a thousand souls,

      Each in the present glory of a shape,

      Sucked so much honey from the flower o' the world,

      And kept the gain, and cast the means aside;

      And now all eye, all ear, all sense, perhaps;

      Transformed, transfigured, yet the same life-power

      That moulded first the visible to its use.

      So, like a child he was, that waits the show,

      While yet the panting lights restrained burn

      At half height, and the theatre is full.

      But as the days went on, they brought sad hours,

      When he would sit, his hands upon his knees,

      Drooping, and longing for the wine of life.

      Ah! now he learned what new necessities

      Come when the outer sphere of life is riven,

      And casts distorted shadows on the soul;

      While the poor soul, not yet complete in God,

      Cannot with inward light burn up the shades,

      And laugh at seeming that is not the fact.

      For God, who speaks to man on every side,

      Sending his voices from the outer world,

      Glorious in stars, and winds, and flowers, and waves,

      And from the inner world of things unseen,

      In hopes and thoughts and deep assurances,

      Not seldom ceases outward speech awhile,

      That the inner, isled in calm, may clearer sound;

      Or, calling through dull storms, proclaim a rest,

      One centre fixed amid conflicting spheres;

      And thus the soul, calm in itself, become

      Able to meet and cope with outward things,

      Which else would overwhelm it utterly;

      And that the soul, saying I will the light,

      May, in its absence, yet grow light itself,

      And man's will glow the present will of God,

      Self-known, and yet divine.

                                 Ah, gracious God!

      Do with us what thou wilt, thou glorious heart!

      Thou art the God of them that grow, no less

      Than them that are; and so we trust in thee

      For what we shall be, and in what we are.

      Yet in the frequent pauses of the light,

      When fell the drizzling thaw, or flaky snow;

      Or when the heaped-up ocean of still foam

      Reposed upon the tranced earth, breathing low;

      His soul was like a frozen lake beneath

      The clear blue heaven, reflecting it so dim

      That he could scarce believe there was a heaven;

      And feared that beauty might be but a toy

      Invented by himself in happier moods.

      "For," said he, "if my mind can dim the fair,

      Why should it not enhance the fairness too?"

      But then the poor mind lay itself all dim,

      And ruffled with the outer restlessness

      Of striving death and life. And 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;

      Nor will his utmost force increase his sight.

      'Tis easy to destroy, not so to make.

      No keen invention lays the strata deep

      Of ancient histories; or sweeps the sea

      With purple shadows and blue breezes' tracks,

      Or rosy memories of the down-gone sun.

      And if God means no beauty in these shows,

      But drops them, helpless shadows, from his sun,

      Ah me, my heart! thou needst another God.

      Oh! lack and doubt and fear can only come

      Because of plenty, confidence, and love:

      Without the mountain there were no abyss.

      Our spirits, inward cast upon themselves,

      Because the delicate ether, which doth make

      The mediator with the outer world,

      Is troubled and confused with stormy pain;

      Not glad, because confined to shuttered rooms,

      Which let the sound of slanting rain be heard,

      But show no sparkling sunlight on the drops,

      Or ancient rainbow dawning in the west;—

      Cast on themselves, I say, nor finding there

      The thing they need, because God has not come,

      And, claiming all their Human his Divine,

      Revealed himself in all their inward parts,

      Go wandering up and down a dreary house.

      Thus reasoned he. Yet up and down the house

      He wandered moaning. Till his soul and frame,

      In painful rest compelled, full oft lay still,

      And suffered only. Then all suddenly

      A light would break from forth an inward well—

      God shone within him, and the sun arose.

      And to its windows went the soul and looked:—

      Lo! o'er the bosom of the outspread earth

      Flowed the first waves of sunrise, rippling on.

      Much gathered he of patient faith from off

      These gloomy heaths, this land of mountains dark,

      By moonlight only, like the sorcerer's weeds;

      As testify these written lines of his

      Found on his table, when his empty chair

      Stood by the wall, with yet a history

      Clinging around it for the old man's eyes.

              I am weary, and something lonely;

                And can only think, think.

              If there were some water only,

                That a spirit might drink, drink!

                  And rise

                  With light in the eyes,

              And a crown of hope on the brow;

                And

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