The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes - Volume 1

Excerpt

WITHIN AND WITHOUT

PART I.

  Go thou into thy closet; shut thy door;
  And pray to Him in secret: He will hear.
  But think not thou, by one wild bound, to clear
  The numberless ascensions, more and more,
  Of starry stairs that must be climbed, before
  Thou comest to the Father's likeness near,
  And bendest down to kiss the feet so dear
  That, step by step, their mounting flights passed o'er.
  Be thou content if on thy weary need
  There falls a sense of showers and of the spring;
  A hope that makes it possible to fling
  Sickness aside, and go and do the deed;
  For highest aspiration will not lead
  Unto the calm beyond all questioning.

SCENE I.—A cell in a convent. JULIAN alone.

  Julian.
  Evening again slow creeping like a death!
  And the red sunbeams fading from the wall,
  On which they flung a sky, with streaks and bars
  Of the poor window-pane that let them in,
  For clouds and shadings of the mimic heaven!
  Soul of my cell, they part, no more to come.
  But what is light to me, while I am dark!
  And yet they strangely draw me, those faint hues,
  Reflected flushes from the Evening's face,
  Which as a bride, with glowing arms outstretched,
  Takes to her blushing heaven him who has left
  His chamber in the dim deserted east.
  Through walls and hills I see it! The rosy sea!
  The radiant head half-sunk! A pool of light,
  As the blue globe had by a blow been broken,
  And the insphered glory bubbled forth!
  Or the sun were a splendid water-bird,
  That flying furrowed with its golden feet
  A flashing wake over the waves, and home!
  Lo there!—Alas, the dull blank wall!—High up,
  The window-pane a dead gray eye! and night
  Come on me like a thief!—Ah, well! the sun
  Has always made me sad! I'll go and pray:
  The terror of the night begins with prayer.

  (Vesper bell.)
  Call them that need thee; I need not thy summons;
  My knees would not so pain me when I kneel,
  If only at thy voice my prayer awoke.
  I will not to the chapel. When I find Him,
  Then will I praise him from the heights of peace;
  But now my soul is as a speck of life
  Cast on the deserts of eternity;
  A hungering and a thirsting, nothing more.
  I am as a child new-born, its mother dead,
  Its father far away beyond the seas.
  Blindly I stretch my arms and seek for him:
  He goeth by me, and I see him not.
  I cry to him: as if I sprinkled ashes,
  My prayers fall back in dust upon my soul.

  (Choir and organ-music.)
  I bless you, sweet sounds, for your visiting.
  What friends I have! Prismatic harmonies
  Have just departed in the sun's bright coach,
  And fair, convolved sounds troop in to me,
  Stealing my soul with faint deliciousness.
  Would they took shapes! What levees I should hold!
  How should my cell be filled with wavering forms!
  Louder they grow, each swelling higher, higher;
  Trembling and hesitating to float off,
  As bright air-bubbles linger, that a boy
  Blows, with their interchanging, wood-dove-hues,
  Just throbbing to their flight, like them to die....