A Hidden Life and Other Poems. George MacDonald

ere the darkness came,

       In the full revelation of the flash,

       He saw, along the road, borne on a horse

       Powerful and gentle, the sweet lady go,

       Whom years agone he saw for evermore.

       "Ah me!" he said; "my dreams are come for me,

       Now they shall have their time." And home he went,

       And slept and moaned, and woke, and raved, and wept.

       Through all the net-drawn labyrinth of his brain

       The fever raged, like pent internal fire.

       His father soon was by him; and the hand

       Of his one sister soothed him. Days went by.

       As in a summer evening, after rain,

       He woke to sweet quiescent consciousness;

       Enfeebled much, but with a new-born life.

      As slow the weeks passed, he recovered strength;

       And ere the winter came, seemed strong once more.

       But the brown hue of health had not returned

       On his thin face; although a keener fire

       Burned in his larger eyes; and in his cheek

       The mounting blood glowed radiant (summoning force,

       Sometimes, unbidden) with a sunset red.

      Before its time, a biting frost set in;

       And gnawed with fangs of cold his shrinking life;

       And the disease so common to the north

       Was born of outer cold and inner heat.

       One morn his sister, entering, saw he slept;

       But in his hand he held a handkerchief

       Spotted with crimson. White with terror, she

       Stood motionless and staring. Startled next

       By her own pallor, when she raised her eyes,

       Seen in the glass, she moved at last. He woke;

       And seeing her dismay, said with a smile,

       "Blood-red was evermore my favourite hue,

       And see, I have it in me; that is all."

       She shuddered; and he tried to jest no more;

       And from that hour looked Death full in the face.

      When first he saw the red blood outward leap,

       As if it sought again the fountain heart,

       Whence it had flowed to fill the golden bowl;

       No terror, but a wild excitement seized

       His spirit; now the pondered mystery

       Of the unseen would fling its portals wide,

       And he would enter, one of the awful dead;

       Whom men conceive as ghosts that fleet and pine,

       Bereft of weight, and half their valued lives;—

       But who, he knew, must live intenser life,

       Having, through matter, all illumed with sense,

       Flaming, like Horeb's bush, with present soul,

       And by the contact with a thousand souls,

       Each in the present glory of a shape,

       Sucked so much honey from the flower o' the world,

       And kept the gain, and cast the means aside;

       And now all eye, all ear, all sense, perhaps;

       Transformed, transfigured, yet the same life-power

       That moulded first the visible to its use.

       So, like a child he was, that waits the show,

       While yet the panting lights restrained burn

       At half height, and the theatre is full.

      But as the days went on, they brought sad hours,

       When he would sit, his hands upon his knees,

       Drooping, and longing for the wine of life.

       Ah! now he learned what new necessities

       Come when the outer sphere of life is riven,

       And casts distorted shadows on the soul;

       While the poor soul, not yet complete in God,

       Cannot with inward light burn up the shades,

       And laugh at seeming that is not the fact.

       For God, who speaks to man on every side,

       Sending his voices from the outer world,

       Glorious in stars, and winds, and flowers, and waves,

       And from the inner world of things unseen,

       In hopes and thoughts and deep assurances,

       Not seldom ceases outward speech awhile,

       That the inner, isled in calm, may clearer sound;

       Or, calling through dull storms, proclaim a rest,

       One centre fixed amid conflicting spheres;

       And thus the soul, calm in itself, become

       Able to meet and cope with outward things,

       Which else would overwhelm it utterly;

       And that the soul, saying I will the light, May, in its absence, yet grow light itself, And man's will glow the present will of God, Self-known, and yet divine.

      Ah, gracious God!

       Do with us what thou wilt, thou glorious heart!

       Thou art the God of them that grow, no less

       Than them that are; and so we trust in thee

       For what we shall be, and in what we are.

      Yet in the frequent pauses of the light,

       When fell the drizzling thaw, or flaky snow;

       Or when the heaped-up ocean of still foam

       Reposed upon the tranced earth, breathing low;

       His soul was like a frozen lake beneath

       The clear blue heaven, reflecting it so dim

       That he could scarce believe there was a heaven;

       And feared that beauty might be but a toy

       Invented by himself in happier moods.

       "For," said he, "if my mind can dim the fair,

       Why should it not enhance the fairness too?"

       But then the poor mind lay itself all dim,

       And ruffled with the outer restlessness

       Of striving death and life. And a tired man

       May drop his eyelids on the visible world,

       To whom no dreams, when fancy flieth free,

       Will bring the sunny excellence of day;

       Nor will his utmost force increase his sight.

       'Tis easy to destroy, not so to make.

       No keen invention lays the strata deep

       Of ancient histories; or sweeps the sea

       With purple shadows and blue breezes' tracks,

       Or rosy memories of the down-gone sun.

       And if God means no beauty in these shows,

       But drops them, helpless shadows, from his sun,

       Ah me, my heart! thou needst another God.

       Oh! lack and doubt and fear can only come

       Because of plenty, confidence, and love: