Poetry

again⁠—
Rather, as light the power to me affords,
Christ’s new and old would to my friends unbind;
Through words he spoke help to his thought behind;
Unveil the heart with which he drew his men;
Set forth his rule o’er devils, animals, corn, and wind.

23

I do remember how one time I thought,
“God must be lonely⁠—oh, so lonely lone!
I will be very good to him⁠—ah, nought
Can reach the heart of his great loneliness!
My whole heart I will bring him, with a moan
That I may not come nearer; I will lie prone
Before the awful loveliness in loneliness’ excess.”

24

A God must have a God for company.
And lo! thou hast the Son-God to thy friend.
Thou honour’st his obedience, he thy law.
Into thy secret life-will he doth see;
Thou fold’st him round in live love perfectly⁠—
One two, without beginning, without end;
In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without a flaw.

25

Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care
For times and seasons⁠—but this one glad day
Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights
That flash in the girdle of the year so fair⁠—
When thou wast born a man, because alway
Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights
Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation’s play.

26

We all are lonely, Maker⁠—each a soul
Shut in by itself, a sundered atom of thee.
No two yet loved themselves into a whole;
Even when we weep together we are two.
Of two to make one, which yet two shall be,
Is thy creation’s problem, deep, and true,
To which thou only hold’st the happy, hurting clue.

27

No less than thou, O Father, do we need
A God to friend each lonely one of us.
As touch not in the sack two grains of seed,
Touch no two hearts in great worlds populous.
Outside the making God we cannot meet
Him he has made our brother: homeward, thus,
To find our kin we first must turn our wandering feet.

28

It must be possible that the soul made
Should absolutely meet the soul that makes;
Then, in that bearing soul, meet every other
There also born, each sister and each brother.
Lord, till I meet thee thus, life is delayed;
I am not I until that morning breaks,
Not I until my consciousness eternal wakes.

29

Again I shall behold thee, daughter true;
The hour will come when I shall hold thee fast
In God’s name, loving thee all through and through.
Somewhere in his grand thought this waits for us.
Then shall I see a smile not like thy last⁠—
For that great thing which came when all was past,
Was not a smile, but God’s peace glorious.

30

Twilight of the transfiguration-joy,
Gleam-faced, pure-eyed, strong-willed, high-hearted boy!
Hardly thy life clear forth of heaven was sent,
Ere it broke out into a smile, and went.
So swift thy growth, so true thy goalward bent,
Thou, child and sage inextricably blent,
Wilt one day teach thy father in some heavenly tent

31

Go, my beloved children, live your life.
Wounded, faint, bleeding, never yield the strife.
Stunned, fallen-awake, arise, and fight again.
Before you victory stands, with shining train
Of hopes not credible until they are.
Beyond morass and mountain swells the star
Of perfect love⁠—the home of longing heart and brain

A Threefold Cord

By George MacDonald, John Hill MacDonald, and Greville Matheson MacDonald

To
Greville Matheson MacDonald.

First, most, to thee, my son, I give this book
In which a friend’s and brother’s verses blend
With mine; for not son only⁠—brother, friend,
Art thou, through sonship which no veil can brook
Between the eyes that in each other look,
Or any shadow ’twixt the hearts that tend
Still nearer, with divine approach, to end
In love eternal that cannot be shook
When all the shakable shall cease to be.
With growing hope I greet the coming day
When from thy journey done I welcome thee
Who sharest in the names of all the three,
And take thee to the two, and humbly say,
Let this man be the fourth with us, I pray.

Casa Coraggio:
May, 1883.

The Haunted House

Suggested by a drawing of Thomas Moran, the American painter.

This must be the very night!
The moon knows it!⁠—and the trees!
They stand straight upright,
Each a sentinel drawn up,
As if they dared not know
Which way the wind might blow!
The very pool, with dead gray eye,
Dully expectant, feels it nigh,
And begins to curdle and freeze!
And the dark night,
With its fringe of light,
Holds the secret in its cup!

II

What can it be, to make
The poplars cease to shiver and shake,
And up in the dismal air
Stand straight and stiff as the human hair
When the human soul is dizzy with dread⁠—
All but those two that strain
Aside in a frenzy of speechless pain,
Though never a wind sends out a breath
To tunnel the foggy rheum of death?
What can it be has power to scare
The full-grown moon to the idiot stare
Of a blasted eye in the midnight air?
Something has gone wrong;
A scream will come tearing out ere long!

III

Still as death,
Although I listen with bated breath!
Yet something is coming, I know⁠—is coming!
With an inward soundless humming
Somewhere in me, or if in the air
I cannot tell, but it is there!
Marching on to an unheard drumming
Something is coming⁠—coming⁠—
Growing and coming!
And the moon is aware,
Aghast in the air
At the thing that is only coming
With an inward soundless humming
And an unheard spectral drumming!

IV

Nothing to see and nothing to hear!
Only across the inner sky
The wing of a shadowy thought flits by,
Vague and featureless, faceless, drear⁠—
Only a thinness to catch the eye:
Is it a dim foreboding unborn,
Or a buried memory, wasted and worn
As the fading frost of a wintry sigh?
Anon I shall have it!⁠—anon!⁠—it draws nigh!
A night when⁠—a something it was took place
That drove the blood from that scared moon-face!
Hark! was that the cry of a goat,
Or the gurgle of water in a throat?
Hush! there is nothing to see or hear,
Only a silent something is near;
No knock, no footsteps three or four,
Only a presence outside the door!
See! the moon is remembering!⁠—what?
The wail of a mother-left, lie-alone brat?
Or a raven sharpening its beak to peck?
Or a cold blue knife and a warm white neck?
Or only a heart that burst and ceased
For a man