A Hidden Life and Other Poems. George MacDonald

Because she knew it not; and brave withal,

       Because she drank the draught that maketh strong,

       The charmed country air. Her father's house—

       A Scottish laird was he, of ancient name—

       Stood only two miles off amid the hills;

       But though she often passed alone as now,

       The youth had never seen her face before,

       And might not twice. Yet was not once enough?

       It left him not. She, as the harvest moon

       That goeth on her way, and knoweth not

       The fields of grain whose ripening ears she fills

       With wealth of life and human joyfulness,

       Went on, and knew not of the influence

       She left behind; yea, never thought of him;

       Save at those times when, all at once, old scenes

       Return uncalled, with wonder that they come,

       Amidst far other thoughts and other cares;

       Sinking again into their ancient graves,

       Till some far-whispered necromantic spell

       Loose them once more to wander for a space.

      Again I say, no fond romance of love,

       No argument of possibilities,

       If he were some one, and she claimed his aid,

       Turned his clear brain into a nest of dreams.

       As soon he had sat down and twisted cords

       To snare, and carry home for daylight use,

       Some woman-angel, wandering half-seen

       On moonlight wings, o'er withered autumn fields.

       But when he rose next morn, and went abroad,

       (The exultation of his new-found rank

       Already settling into dignity,)

       He found the earth was beautiful. The sky,

       Which shone with expectation of the sun,

       Somehow, he knew not how, was like her face.

       He grieved almost to plough the daisies down;

       Something they shared in common with that smile

       Wherewith she crowned his manhood; and they fell

       Bent in the furrow, sometimes, with their heads

       Just out imploringly. A hedgehog ran

       With tangled mesh of bristling spikes, and face

       Helplessly innocent, across the field:

       He let it run, and blessed it as it ran.

       At noon returning, something drew his feet

       Into the barn. Entering, he gazed and stood.

       Through the rent roof alighting, one sunbeam,

       Blazing upon the straw one golden spot,

       Dulled all the yellow heap, and sank far down,

       Like flame inverted, through the loose-piled mound,

       Crossing the splendour with the shadow-straws,

       In lines innumerable. 'Twas so bright,

       The eye was cheated with a spectral smoke

       That rose as from a fire. He never knew,

       Before, how beautiful the sunlight was;

       Though he had seen it in the grassy fields,

       And on the river, and the ripening corn,

       A thousand times. He threw him on the heap,

       And gazing down into the glory-gulf,

       Dreamed as a boy half-sleeping by the fire;

       And dreaming rose, and got his horses out.

      God, and not woman, is the heart of all.

       But she, as priestess of the visible earth,

       Holding the key, herself most beautiful,

       Had come to him, and flung the portals wide.

       He entered in: each beauty was a glass

       That gleamed the woman back upon his view.

      Already in these hours his growing soul

       Put forth the white tip of a floral bud,

       Ere long to be a crown-like, shadowy flower.

       For, by his songs, and joy in ancient tales,

       He showed the seed lay hidden in his heart,

       A safe sure treasure, hidden even from him,

       And notwithstanding mellowing all his spring;

       Until, like sunshine with its genial power,

       Came the fair maiden's face: the seed awoke.

       I need not follow him through many days;

       Nor tell the joys that rose around his path,

       Ministering pleasure for his labour's meed;

       Nor how each morning was a boon to him;

       Nor how the wind, with nature's kisses fraught,

       Flowed inward to his soul; nor how the flowers

       Asserted each an individual life,

       A separate being, for and in his thought;

       Nor how the stormy days that intervened

       Called forth his strength, and songs that quelled their force;

       Nor how in winter-time, when thick the snow

       Armed the sad fields from gnawing of the frost,

       And the low sun but skirted his far realms,

       And sank in early night, he took his place

       Beside the fire; and by the feeble lamp

       Head book on book; and lived in other lives,

       And other needs, and other climes than his;

       And added other beings thus to his.

       But I must tell that love of knowledge grew

       Within him to a passion and a power;

       Till, through the night (all dark, except the moon

       Shone frosty o'er the lea, or the white snow

       Gave back all motes of light that else had sunk

       Into the thirsty earth) he bent his way

       Over the moors to where the little town

       Lay gathered in the hollow. There the man

       Who taught the children all the shortened day,

       Taught other scholars in the long fore-night;

       And youths who in the shop, or in the barn,

       Or at the loom, had done their needful work,

       Came to his schoolroom in the murky night,

       And found the fire aglow, the candles lit,

       And the good master waiting for his men.

       Here mathematics wiled him to their heights;

       And strange consent of lines to form and law

       Made Euclid like a great romance of truth.

       The master saw with wonder how the youth

       All eagerly devoured the offered food,

       And straightway longed to lead him; with that hope

       Of sympathy which urges him that knows

       To multiply great knowledge by its gift;

       That so two