The Poetical Works of George MacDonald (Parables)
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No gentlest murmur through the city crept;
Not one lone word my brother to me had spoken; But when beyond the city-gate we stept
I knew the hovering silence would be broken.
A low night wind came whispering: through and through It did baptize me with the pledge and token
Of that soft spirit-wind which blows and blew
And fans the human world since evermore. The very grass, cool to my feet, I knew
To be love also, and with the love I bore
To hold far sympathy, silent and sweet, As having known the secret from of yore
In the eternal heart where all things meet,
Feelings and thinkings, and where still they are bred. Sudden he stood, and with arrested feet
I also. Like a half-sunned orb, his head
Slow turned the bright side: lo, the brother-smile That ancient human glory on me shed
Clothéd in which Jesus came forth to wile
Unto his bosom every labouring soul, And all dividing passions to beguile
To winsome death, and then on them to roll
The blessed stone of the holy sepulchre! "Thank God," he said, "thou also now art whole
And sound and well! For the keen pain, and stir
Uneasy, and sore grief that came to us all, In that we knew not how the wine and myrrh
Could ever from the vinegar and gall
Be parted, are deep sunk, yea drowned in God; And yet the past not folded in a pall,
But breathed upon, like Aaron's withered rod,
By a sweet light that brings the blossoms through, Showing in dreariest paths that men have trod
Another's foot-prints, spotted of crimson hue,
Still on before wherever theirs did wend; Yea, through the desert leading, of thyme and rue,
The desert souls in which young lions rend
And roar--the passionate who, to be blest, Ravin as bears, and do not gain their end,
Because that, save in God, there is no rest."