The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2
TekstNO END OF NO-STORY
There is a river whose waters run asleep run run ever singing in the shallows dumb in the hollows sleeping so deep and all the swallows that dip their feathers in the hollows or in the shallows are the merriest swallows and the nests they make with the clay they cake with the water they shake from their wings that rake the water out of the shallows or out of the hollows will hold together in any weather and the swallows are the merriest fellows and have the merriest children and are built very narrow like the head of an arrow to cut the air and go just where the nicest water is flowing and the nicest dust is blowing and each so narrow like the head of an arrow is a wonderful barrow to carry the mud he makes for his children's sakes from the wet water flowing and the dry dust blowing to build his nest for her he loves best and the wind cakes it the sun bakes it into a nest for the rest of her he loves best and all their merry children each little fellow with a beak as yellow as the buttercups growing beside the flowing of the singing river always and ever growing and blowing as fast as the sheep awake or asleep crop them and crop and cannot stop their yellowness blowing nor yet the growing of the obstinate daisies the little white praises they grow and they blow they spread out their crown and they praise the sun and when he goes down their praising is done they fold up their crown and sleep every one till over the plain he is shining amain and they're at it again praising and praising such low songs raising that no one can hear them but the sun so near them and the sheep that bite them but do not fright them are the quietest sheep awake or asleep with the merriest bleat and the little lambs are the merriest lambs forgetting to eat for the frolic in their feet and the lambs and their dams are the whitest sheep with the woolliest wool for the swallow to pull when he makes his nest for her he loves best and they shine like snow in the grasses that grow by the singing river that sings for ever and the sheep and the lambs are merry for ever because the river sings and they drink it and the lambs and their dams would any one think it are bright and white because of their diet which gladdens them quiet for what they bite is buttercups yellow and daisies white and grass as green as the river can make it with wind as mellow to kiss it and shake it as never was known but here in the hollows beside the river where all the swallows are the merriest fellows and the nests they make with the clay they cake in the sunshine bake till they are like bone and as dry in the wind as a marble stone dried in the wind the sweetest wind that blows by the river flowing for ever and who shall find whence comes the wind that blows on the hollows and over the shallows where dip the swallows and comes and goes and the sweet life blows into the river that sings as it flows and the sweet life blows into the sheep awake or asleep with the woolliest wool and the trailingest tails and never fails gentle and cool to wave the wool and to toss the grass as the lambs and the sheep over it pass and tug and bite with their teeth so white and then with the sweep of their trailing tails smooth it again and it grows amain and amain it grows and the wind that blows tosses the swallows over the hollows and over the shallows and blows the sweet life and the joy so rife into the swallows that skim the shallows and have the yellowest children and the wind that blows is the life of the river that flows for ever and washes the grasses still as it passes and feeds the daisies the little white praises and buttercups sunny with butter and honey that whiten the sheep awake or asleep that nibble and bite and grow whiter than white and merry and quiet on such good diet watered by the river and tossed for ever by the wind that tosses the wool and the grasses and the swallow that crosses with all the swallows over the shallows dipping their wings to gather the water and bake the cake for the wind to make as hard as a bone and as dry as a stone and who shall find whence comes the wind that blows from behind and ripples the river that flows for ever and still as it passes waves the grasses and cools the daisies the white sun praises that feed the sheep awake or asleep and give them their wool for the swallows to pull a little away to mix with the clay that cakes to a nest for those they love best and all the yellow children soon to go trying their wings at the flying over the hollows and over the shallows with all the swallows that do not know whence the wind doth blow that comes from behind a blowing wind.
A THREEFOLD CORD:
Poems by Three Friends
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.
A THREEFOLD CHORD
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 that went away released?
I know not—know not, but something is coming
Somehow back with an inward humming!
V. Ha! look there! look at that house,
Forsaken of all things, beetle and mouse!
Mark how it looks! It must have a soul!
It looks, it looks, though it cannot stir!
See the ribs of it, how they stare!
Its blind eyes yet have a seeing air!
It knows it has a soul!
Haggard it hangs o'er the slimy pool,
And gapes wide open as corpses gape:
It is the very murderer!
The ghost has modelled himself to the shape
Of this drear house all sodden with woe
Where the deed was done, long, long ago,
And filled with himself his new body full—
To haunt for ever his ghastly crime,
And see it come and go—
Brooding around it like motionless time,
With a mouth that gapes, and eyes that yawn
Blear and blintering and full of the moon,
Like one aghast at a hellish dawn!—
The deed! the deed! it is coming soon!
VI. For, ever and always, when round the tune
Grinds on the barrel of organ-Time,
The deed is done. And it comes anon:
True to the roll of the clock-faced moon,
True to the ring of the spheric chime,
True to the cosmic rhythm and rime,
Every point, as it first fell out,
Will come and go in the fearsome bout.
See! palsied with horror from garret to core,
The house cannot shut its gaping door;
Its burst eye stares as if trying to see,
And it leans as if settling heavily,
Settling heavy with sickness dull:
It also is hearing the soundless humming
Of the wheel that is turning—the thing that is coming!
On the naked rafters of its brain,
Gaunt and wintred, see the train
Of gossiping, scandal-mongering crows
That watch, all silent, with necks a-strain,
Wickedly knowing, with heads awry
And the sharpened gleam of a cunning eye—
Watch, through the cracks of the ruined skull,
How the evil business goes!—
Beyond the eyes of the cherubim,
Beyond the ears of the seraphim,
Outside, forsaken, in the dim
Phantom-haunted chaos grim
He stands, with the deed going on in him!
VII. O winds, winds, that lurk and peep
Under the edge of the moony fringe!
O winds, winds, up and sweep,
Up and blow and billow the air,
Billow the air with blow and swinge,
Rend me this ghastly house of groans!
Rend and scatter the skeleton's bones
Over the deserts and mountains bare!
Blast and hurl and shiver aside
Nailed sticks and mortared stones!
Clear the phantom, with torrent and tide,
Out of the moon and out of my brain,
That the light may fall shadowless in again!
VIII. But, alas, then the ghost
O'er mountain and coast
Would go roaming, roaming! and never was swine
That, grubbing and talking with snork and whine
On Gadarene mountains, had taken him in
But would rush to the lake to unhouse the sin!
For any charnel
This ghost is too carnal;
There is no volcano, burnt out and cold,
Whose very ashes are gray and old,
But would cast him forth in reviving flame
To blister the sky with a smudge of shame!
IX. Is there no help? none anywhere
Under the earth or above the air?—
Come, sad woman, whose tender throat
Has a red-lipped mouth that can sing no note!
Child, whose midwife, the third grim Fate,
Shears in hand, thy coming did wait!
Father, with blood-bedabbled hair!
Mother, all withered with love's despair!
Come, broken heart, whatever thou be,
Hasten to help this misery!
Thou wast only murdered, or left forlorn:
He is a horror, a hate, a scorn!
Come, if out of the holiest blue
That the sapphire throne shines through;
For pity come, though thy fair feet stand
Next to the elder-band;
Fling thy harp on the hyaline,
Hurry thee down the spheres divine;
Come, and drive those ravens away;
Cover his eyes from the pitiless moon,
Shadow his brain from her stinging spray;
Droop around him, a tent of love,
An odour of grace, a fanning dove;
Walk through the house with the healing tune
Of gentle footsteps; banish the shape
Remorse calls up thyself to ape;
Comfort him, dear, with pardon sweet;
Cool his heart from its burning heat
With the water of life that laves the feet
Of the throne of God, and the holy street!
X. O God, he is but a living blot,
Yet he lives by thee—for if thou wast not,
They would vanish together, self-forgot,
He and his crime:—one breathing blown
From thy spirit on his would all atone,
Scatter the horror, and bring relief
In an amber dawn of holy grief!
God, give him sorrow; arise from within,
His primal being, deeper than sin!
XI. Why do I tremble, a creature at bay?
'Tis but a dream—I drive it away.
Back comes my breath, and my heart again
Pumps the red blood to my fainting brain
Released from the nightmare's nine-fold train:
God is in heaven—yes, everywhere,
And Love, the all-shining, will kill Despair!—
To the wall's blank eyeless space
I turn the picture's face.
XII. But why is the moon so bare, up there?
And why is she so white?
And why does the moon so stare, up there—
Strangely stare, out of the night?
Why stand up the poplars
That still way?
And why do those two of them
Start astray?
And out of the black why hangs the gray?
Why does it hang down so, I say,
Over that house, like a fringed pall
Where the dead goes by in a funeral?—
Soul of mine,
Thou the reason canst divine:
Into thee the moon doth stare
With pallid, terror-smitten air!
Thou, and the Horror lonely-stark,
Outcast of eternal dark,
Are in nature same and one,
And thy story is not done!
So let the picture face thee from the wall,
And let its white moon stare!
IN THE WINTER
In the winter, flowers are springing;
In the winter, woods are green,
Where our banished birds are singing,
Where our summer sun is seen!
Our cold midnights are coeval
With an evening and a morn
Where the forest-gods hold revel,
And the spring is newly born!
While the earth is full of fighting,
While men rise and curse their day,
While the foolish strong are smiting,
And the foolish weak betray—
The true hearts beyond are growing,
The brave spirits work alone,
Where Love's summer-wind is blowing
In a truth-irradiate zone!
While we cannot shape our living
To the beauty of our skies,
While man wants and earth is giving—
Nature calls and man denies—
How the old worlds round Him gather
Where their Maker is their sun!
How the children know the Father
Where the will of God is done!
Daily woven with our story,
Sounding far above our strife,
Is a time-enclosing glory,
Is a space-absorbing life.
We can dream no dream Elysian,
There is no good thing might be,
But some angel has the vision,
But some human soul shall see!
Is thy strait horizon dreary?
Is thy foolish fancy chill?
Change the feet that have grown weary
For the wings that never will.
Burst the flesh, and live the spirit;
Haunt the beautiful and far;
Thou hast all things to inherit,
And a soul for every star.
CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1878
I think I might be weary of this day
That comes inevitably every year,
The same when I was young and strong and gay,
The same when I am old and growing sere—
I should grow weary of it every year
But that thou comest to me every day.
I shall grow weary if thou every day
But come to me, Lord of eternal life;
I shall grow weary thus to watch and pray,
For ever out of labour into strife;
Take everlasting house with me, my life,
And I shall be new-born this Christmas-day.
Thou art the Eternal Son, and born no day,
But ever he the Father, thou the Son;
I am his child, but being born alway—
How long, O Lord, how long till it be done?
Be thou from endless years to years the Son—
And I thy brother, new-born every day.
THE NEW YEAR
Be welcome, year! with corn and sickle come;
Make poor the body, but make rich the heart:
What man that bears his sheaves, gold-nodding, home,
Will heed the paint rubbed from his groaning cart!
Nor leave behind thy fears and holy shames,
Thy sorrows on the horizon hanging low—
Gray gathered fuel for the sunset-flames
When joyous in death's harvest-home we go.