



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Jonathan Ingram, Charles M.
Bidwell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.










THE POETICAL WORKS OF

GEORGE MACDONALD

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. 2


    CONTENTS.

PARABLES--
  The Man of Songs
  The Hills
  The Journey
  The Tree's Prayer
  Were I a Skilful Painter
  Far and Near
  My Room
  Death and Birth
  Love's Ordeal
  The Lost Soul
  The Three Horses
  The Golden Key
  Somnium Mystici
  The Sangreal
  The Failing Track
  Tell Me
  Brother Artist
  After an Old Legend
  A Meditation of St Eligius
  The Early Bird
  Sir Lark and King Sun
  The Owl and the Bell
  A Mammon-Marriage
  A Song in the Night
  Love's History
  The Lark and the Wind
  A Dead House
  Bell upon Organ
  Master and Boy
  The Clock of the Universe
  The Thorn in the Flesh
  Lycabas

BALLADS--
  The Unseen Model
  The Homeless Ghost
  Abu Midjan
  The Thankless Lady
  Legend of the Corrievrechan
  The Dead Hand


MINOR DITTIES--
  In the Night
  The Giver
  False Prophets
  Life-Weary
  Approaches
  Travellers' Song
  Love is Strength
  Coming
  A Song of the Waiting Dead
  Obedience
  A Song in the Night
  De Profundis
  Blind Sorrow

MOTES IN THE SUN--
  Angels
  The Father's Worshippers
  A Birthday-Wish
  To Any One
  Waiting
  Lost but Safe
  Much and More
  Hope and Patience
  A Better Thing
  A Prisoner
  To My Lord and Master
  To One Unsatisfied
  To My God
  Triolet
  The Word of God
  Eine Kleine Predigt
  To the Life Eternal
  Hope Deferred
  Forgiveness
  Dejection
  Appeal

POEMS FOR CHILDREN--
  Lessons for a Child
  What makes Summer?
  Mother Nature
  The Mistletoe
  Professor Noctutus
  Bird-Songs
  Riddles
  Baby
  Up and Down
  Up in the Tree
  A Baby-Sermon
  Little Bo-Peep
  Little Boy Blue
  Willie's Question
  King Cole
  Said and Did
  Dr. Doddridge's Dog
  The Girl that Lost Things
  A Make-Believe
  The Christmas Child
  A Christmas Prayer
  No End of No-Story

A THREEFOLD CORD--
  Dedication
  The Haunted House
  In the Winter
  Christmas Day, 1878
  The New Year
  Two Rondels
  Rondel
  Song
  Smoke
  To a Certain Critic
  Song
  A Cry
  From Home
  To My Mother Earth
  Thy Heart
  0 Lord, how Happy
  No Sign
  November, 1851
  Of One who Died in Spring
  An Autumn Song
  Triolet
  I See Thee Not
  A Broken Prayer
  Come Down
  A Mood
  The Carpenter
  The Old Garden
  A Noonday Melody
  Who Lights the Fire?
  Who would have Thought?
  On a December Day
  Christmas Day, 1850
  To a February Primrose
  In February
  The True
  The Dwellers Therein
  Autumn's Gold
  Punishment
  Shew us the Father
  The Pinafore
  The Prism
  Sleep
  Sharing
  In Bonds
  Hunger
  New Year's Eve: A Waking Dream
  From North Wales: To the Mother
  Come to Me
  A Fear
  The Lost House
  The Talk of the Echoes
  The Goal
  The Healer
  Oh that a Wind
  A Vision of St. Eligius
  Of the Son of Man
  A Song-Sermon
  Words in the Night
  Consider the Ravens
  The Wind of the World
  Sabbath Bells
  Fighting
  After the Fashion of an Old Emblem
  A Prayer in Sickness
  Quiet Dead
  Let your Light so Shine
  Triolet
  The Souls' Rising
  Awake
  To an Autograph-Hunter
  With a Copy of "In Memoriam"
  They are Blind
  When the Storm was Proudest
  The Diver
  To the Clouds
  Second Sight
  Not Understood
  Hom II. v. 403
  The Dawn
  Galileo
  Subsidy
  The Prophet
  The Watcher
  The Beloved Disciple
  The Lily of the Valley
  Evil Influence
  Spoken of several Philosophers
  Nature a Moral Power
  To June
  Summer
  On a Midge
  Steadfast
  Provision
  First Sight of the Sea
  On the Source of the Arve
  Confidence
  Fate
  Unrest
  One with Nature
  My Two Geniuses
  Sudden Calm
  Thou Also
  The Aurora Borealis
  The Human
  Written on a Stormy Night
  Reverence waking Hope
  Born of Water
  To a Thunder-Cloud
  Sun and Moon
  Doubt heralding Vision
  Life or Death?
  Lost and Found
  The Moon
  Truth, not Form
  God in Growth
  In a Churchyard
  Power
  Death
  That Holy Thing
  From Novalis
  What Man is there of You?
  O Wind of God
  Shall the Dead praise Thee?
  A Year-Song
  Song
  For where your Treasure is, there will your Heart be also
  The Asthmatic Man to the Satan that binds him
  Song-Sermon
  Shadows
  A Winter Prayer
  Song of a Poor Pilgrim
  An Evening Prayer
  Song-Sermon
  A Dream-Song
  Christmas, 1880
  Rondel
  The Sparrow
  December 23, 1879
  Song-Prayer
  December 27, 1879
  Sunday, December 28, 1879
  Song-Sermon
  The Donkey in the Cart to the Horse in the Carriage
  Room to Roam
  Cottage Songs--
    1. By the Cradle
    2. Sweeping the Floor
    3. Washing the Clothes
    4. Drawing Water
    5. Cleaning the Windows
  The Wind and the Moon
  The Foolish Harebell
  Song
  An Improvisation
  Equity
  Contrition
  The Consoler
  To ------.
  To a Sister
  The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs

SCOTS SONGS AND BALLADS--
  Annie she's Dowie
  O Lassie ayont the Hill!
  The bonny, bonny Dell
  Nannie Braw
  Ower the Hedge
  Gaein and Comin
  A Sang o' Zion
  Time and Tide
  The Waesome Carl
  The Mermaid
  The Yerl o' Waterydeck
  The Twa Gordons
  The Last Wooin
  Halloween
  The Laverock
  Godly Ballants--
    1. This Side an' That
    2. The Twa Baubees
    3. Wha's my Neibour?
    4. Him wi' the Bag
    5. The Coorse Cratur
  The Deil's Forhooit his Ain
  The Auld Fisher
  The Herd and the Mavis
  A Lown Nicht
  The Home of Death
  Triolet
  Win' that Blaws
  A Song of Hope
  The Burnie
  Hame
  The Sang o' the Auld Fowk
  The Auld Man's Prayer
  Granny Canty
  Time
  What the Auld Fowk are Thinkin
  Greitna, Father
  I Ken Something
  Mirls




    PARABLES



_THE MAN OF SONGS._

"Thou wanderest in the land of dreams,
  O man of many songs!
To thee what is, but looks and seems;
  No realm to thee belongs!"

"Seest thou those mountains, faint and far,
  O spirit caged and tame?"
"Blue clouds like distant hills they are,
  And like is not the same."

"Nay, nay; I know each mountain well,
  Each cliff, and peak, and dome!
In that cloudland, in one high dell,
  Nesteth my little home."



_THE HILLS._

Behind my father's cottage lies
  A gentle grassy height
Up which I often ran--to gaze
  Back with a wondering sight,
For then the chimneys I thought high
  Were down below me quite!

All round, where'er I turned mine eyes,
  Huge hills closed up the view;
The town'mid their converging roots
  Was clasped by rivers two;
From, one range to another sprang
  The sky's great vault of blue.

It was a joy to climb their sides,
  And in the heather lie!
A joy to look at vantage down
  On the castle grim and high!
Blue streams below, white clouds above,
  In silent earth and sky!

And now, where'er my feet may roam,
  At sight of stranger hill
A new sense of the old delight
  Springs in my bosom still,
And longings for the high unknown
  Their ancient channels fill.

For I am always climbing hills,
  From the known to the unknown--
Surely, at last, on some high peak,
  To find my Father's throne,
Though hitherto I have only found
  His footsteps in the stone!

And in my wanderings I did meet
  Another searching too:
The dawning hope, the shared quest
  Our thoughts together drew;
Fearless she laid her band in mine
  Because her heart was true.

She was not born among the hills,
  Yet on each mountain face
A something known her inward eye
  By inborn light can trace;
For up the hills must homeward be,
  Though no one knows the place.

Clasp my hand close, my child, in thine--
  A long way we have come!
Clasp my hand closer yet, my child,
  Farther we yet must roam--
Climbing and climbing till we reach
  Our heavenly father's home.



_THE JOURNEY._

I.

Hark, the rain is on my roof!
Every murmur, through the dark,
Stings me with a dull reproof
Like a half-extinguished spark.
Me! ah me! how came I here,
Wide awake and wide alone!
Caught within a net of fear,
All my dreams undreamed and gone!

I will rise; I will go forth.
Better dare the hideous night,
Better face the freezing north
Than be still, where is no light!
Black wind rushing round me now,
Sown with arrowy points of rain!
Gone are there and then and now--
I am here, and so is pain!

Dead in dreams the gloomy street!
I will out on open roads.
Eager grow my aimless feet--
Onward, onward something goads!
I will take the mountain path,
Beard the storm within its den;
Know the worst of this dim wrath
Harassing the souls of men.

Chasm 'neath chasm! rock piled on rock!
Roots, and crumbling earth, and stones!
Hark, the torrent's thundering shock!
Hark, the swaying pine tree's groans!
Ah! I faint, I fall, I die,
Sink to nothingness away!--
Lo, a streak upon the sky!
Lo, the opening eye of day!

II.

Mountain summits lift their snows
O'er a valley green and low;
And a winding pathway goes
Guided by the river's flow;
And a music rises ever,
As of peace and low content,
From the pebble-paven river
Like an odour upward sent.

And the sound of ancient harms
Moans behind, the hills among,
Like the humming of the swarms
That unseen the forest throng.
Now I meet the shining rain
From a cloud with sunny weft;
Now against the wind I strain,
Sudden burst from mountain cleft.

Now a sky that hath a moon
Staining all the cloudy white
With a faded rainbow--soon
Lost in deeps of heavenly night!
Now a morning clear and soft,
Amber on the purple hills;
Warm blue day of summer, oft
Cooled by wandering windy rills!

Joy to travel thus along
With the universe around!
Every creature of the throng,
Every sight and scent and sound
Homeward speeding, beauty-laden,
Beelike, to its hive, my soul!
Mine the eye the stars are made in!
Mine the heart of Nature's whole!

III.

Hills retreating on each hand
Slowly sink into the plain;
Solemn through the outspread land
Rolls the river to the main.
In the glooming of the night
Something through the dusky air
Doubtful glimmers, faintly white,
But I know not what or where.

Is it but a chalky ridge
Bared of sod, like tree of bark?
Or a river-spanning bridge
Miles away into the dark?
Or the foremost leaping waves
Of the everlasting sea,
Where the Undivided laves
Time with its eternity?

Is it but an eye-made sight,
In my brain a fancied gleam?
Or a faint aurora-light
From the sun's tired smoking team?
In the darkness it is gone,
Yet with every step draws nigh;
Known shall be the thing unknown
When the morning climbs the sky!

Onward, onward through the night
Matters it I cannot see?
I am moving in a might
Dwelling in the dark and me!
End or way I cannot lose--
Grudge to rest, or fear to roam;
All is well with wanderer whose
Heart is travelling hourly home.

IV.

Joy! O joy! the dawning sea
Answers to the dawning sky,
Foretaste of the coming