The Poetical Works of George MacDonald (Parables)
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I woke, with calmness cleansed and sanctified--
The peace that filled my heart of old, when I Woke in my mother's lap; for since I died
The past lay bare, even to the dreaming shy
That shadowed my yet gathering unborn brain. And, marvelling, on the floor I saw, close by
My elbow-pillowed head, as if it had lain
Beside me all the time I dreamless lay, A little pool of sunlight, which did stain
The earthen brown with gold; marvelling, I say,
Because, across the sea and through the wood, No sun had shone upon me all the way.
I rose, and through a chink the glade I viewed,
But all was dull as it had always been, And sunless every tree-top round it stood,
With hardly light enough to show it green;
Yet through the broken roof, serenely glad, By a rough hole entered that heavenly sheen.
Then I remembered in old years I had
Seen such a light--where, with dropt eyelids gloomed, Sitting on such a floor, dark women sad
In a low barn-like house where lay entombed
Their sires and children; only there the door Was open to the sun, which entering plumed
With shadowy palms the stones that on the floor
Stood up like lidless chests--again to find That the soul needs no brain, but keeps her store
In hidden chambers of the eternal mind.
Thence backward ran my roused Memory Down the ever-opening vista--back to blind
Anticipations while my soul did lie
Closed in my mother's; forward thence through bright Spring morns of childhood, gay with hopes that fly
Bird-like across their doming blue and white, To passionate summer noons, to saddened eves
Of autumn rain, so on to wintred night;
Thence up once more to the dewy dawn that weaves
Saffron and gold--weaves hope with still content, And wakes the worship that even wrong bereaves
Of half its pain. And round her as she went
Hovered a sense as of an odour dear Whose flower was far--as of a letter sent
Not yet arrived--a footstep coming near,
But, oh, how long delayed the lifting latch!-- As of a waiting sun, ready to peer
Yet peering not--as of a breathless watch
Over a sleeping beauty--babbling rime About her lips, but no winged word to catch!
And here I lay, the child of changeful Time
Shut in the weary, changeless Evermore, A dull, eternal, fadeless, fruitless clime!
Was this the dungeon of my sinning sore--
A gentle hell of loneliness, foredoomed For such as I, whose love was yet the core
Of all my being? The brown shadow gloomed
Persistent, faded, warm. No ripple ran Across the air, no roaming insect boomed.
"Alas," I cried, "I am no living man!
Better were darkness and the leave to grope Than light that builds its own drear prison! Can
This be the folding of the wings of Hope?"