A Hidden Life and Other Poems. George MacDonald

chord. She went, and danced, or sat

       And listlessly conversed; or, if at home,

       Read the new novel, wishing all the time

       For something better; though she knew not what,

       Or how to search for it.

      What had she felt,

       If, through the rhythmic motion of light forms,

       A vision, had arisen; as when, of old,

       The minstrel's art laid bare the seer's eye,

       And showed him plenteous waters in the waste?

       If she had seen her ploughman-lover go

       With his great stride across some lonely field,

       Beneath the dark blue vault, ablaze with stars,

       And lift his full eyes to earth's radiant roof

       In gladness that the roof was yet a floor

       For other feet to tread, for his, one day?

       Or the emerging vision might reveal

       Him, in his room, with space-compelling mind,

       Pursue, upon his slate, some planet's course;

       Or read, and justify the poet's wrath,

       Or wise man's slow conclusion; or, in dreams,

       All gently bless her with a trembling voice

       For that old smile, that withered nevermore,

       That woke him, smiled him into what he is;

       Or, kneeling, cry to God for better still.

       Would those dark eyes have beamed with darker light?

       Would that fair soul, all tired of emptiness,

       Have risen from the couch of its unrest,

       And looked to heaven again, again believed

       In God's realities of life and fact?

       Would not her soul have sung unto itself,

       In secret joy too good for that vain throng:

       "I have a friend, a ploughman, who is wise,

       And knoweth God, and goodness, and fair faith;

       Who needeth not the outward shows of things,

       But worships the unconquerable truth:

       And this man loveth me; I will be proud

       And humble—would he love me if he knew?"

      In the third year, a heavy harvest fell,

       Full filled, beneath the reaping-hook and scythe.

       The men and maidens in the scorching heat

       Held on their toil, lightened by song and jest;

       Resting at mid-day, and from brimming bowl,

       Drinking brown ale, and white abundant milk;

       Until the last ear fell, and stubble stood

       Where waved the forests of the murmuring corn;

       And o'er the land rose piled the tent-like shocks,

       As of an army resting in array

       Of tent by tent, rank following on rank;

       Waiting until the moon should have her will

       Of ripening on the ears.

      And all went well.

       The grain was fully ripe. The harvest carts

       Went forth broad-platformed for the towering load,

       With frequent passage 'twixt homeyard and field.

       And half the oats already hid their tops,

       Of countless spray-hung grains—their tops, by winds

       Swayed oft, and ringing, rustling contact sweet;

       Made heavy oft by slow-combining dews,

       Or beaten earthward by the pelting rains;

       Rising again in breezes to the sun,

       And bearing all things till the perfect time—

       Had hid, I say, this growth of sun and air

       Within the darkness of the towering stack;

       When in the north low billowy clouds appeared,

       Blue-based, white-topped, at close of afternoon;

       And in the west, dark masses, plashed with blue,

       With outline vague of misty steep and dell,

       Clomb o'er the hill-tops; there was thunder there.

       The air was sultry. But the upper sky

       Was clear and radiant.

      Downward went the sun;

       Down low, behind the low and sullen clouds

       That walled the west; and down below the hills

       That lay beneath them hid. Uprose the moon,

       And looked for silence in her moony fields,

       But there she found it not. The staggering cart,

       Like an o'erladen beast, crawled homeward still,

       Returning light and low. The laugh broke yet,

       That lightning of the soul, from cloudless skies,

       Though not so frequent, now that labour passed

       Its natural hour. Yet on the labour went,

       Straining to beat the welkin-climbing toil

       Of the huge rain-clouds, heavy with their floods.

       Sleep, like enchantress old, soon sided with

       The crawling clouds, and flung benumbing spells

       On man and horse. The youth that guided home

       The ponderous load of sheaves, higher than wont,

       Daring the slumberous lightning, with a start

       Awoke, by falling full against the wheel,

       That circled slow after the sleepy horse.

       Yet none would yield to soft-suggesting sleep,

       Or leave the last few shocks; for the wild rain

       Would catch thereby the skirts of Harvest-home,

       And hold her lingering half-way in the storm.

      The scholar laboured with his men all night.

       Not that he favoured quite this headlong race

       With Nature. He would rather say: "The night

       Is sent for sleep, we ought to sleep in it,

       And leave the clouds to God. Not every storm

       That climbeth heavenward, overwhelms the earth.

       And if God wills, 'tis better as he wills;

       What he takes from us never can be lost."

       But the old farmer ordered; and the son

       Went manful to the work, and held his peace.

      The last cart homeward went, oppressed with sheaves,

       Just as a moist dawn blotted pale the east,

       And the first drops fell, overfed with mist,

       O'ergrown and helpless. Darker grew the morn.

       Upstraining racks of clouds, tumultuous borne

       Upon the turmoil of opposing winds,

       Met in the zenith. And the silence ceased:

       The lightning brake, and flooded all the earth,

       And its great roar of billows followed it.

       The deeper darkness drank the light again,

       And lay unslaked.