The Complete Poetical Works of George MacDonald. George MacDonald

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Would beat in rhythm, growing into rime. She read phantasmagoric tales, sans salt, Sans hope, sans growth; or listlessly conversed With phantom-visitors—ladies, not friends, Mere spectral forms from fashion's concave glass. She haunted gay assemblies, ill-content— Witched woods to hide in from her better self, And danced, and sang, and ached. What had she felt, If, called up by the ordered sounds and motions, A vision had arisen—as once, of old, The minstrel's art laid bare the seer's eye, And showed him plenteous waters in the waste;— If the gay dance had vanished from her sight, And she beheld her ploughman-lover go With his great stride across a lonely field, Under the dark blue vault ablaze with stars, Lifting his full eyes to the radiant roof, Live with our future; or had she beheld Him studious, with space-compelling mind Bent on his slate, pursue some planet's course; Or reading justify the poet's wrath, Or sage's slow conclusion?—If a voice Had whispered then: This man in many a dream, And many a waking moment of keen joy, Blesses you for the look that woke his heart, That smiled him into life, and, still undimmed, Lies lamping in the cabinet of his soul;— Would her sad eyes have beamed with sudden light? Would not her soul, half-dead with nothingness, Have risen from the couch of its unrest, And looked to heaven again, again believed In God and life, courage, and duty, and love? Would not her soul have sung to its lone self: "I have a friend, a ploughman, who is wise. He knows what God, and goodness, and fair faith Mean in the words and books of mighty men. He nothing heeds the show of worldly things, But worships the unconquerable truth. This man is humble and loves me: I will Be proud and very humble. If he knew me, Would he go on and love me till we meet!"?

      In the third year, a heavy harvest fell,

       Full filled, before the reaping-hook and scythe.

       The heat was scorching, but the men and maids

       Lightened their toil with merry jest and song;

       Rested at mid-day, and from brimming bowl,

       Drank the brown ale, and white abundant milk.

       The last ear fell, and spiky stubble stood

       Where waved the forests of dry-murmuring corn;

       And sheaves rose piled in shocks, like ranged tents

       Of an encamping army, tent by tent,

       To stand there while the moon should have her will.

      The grain was ripe. The harvest carts went out

       Broad-platformed, bearing back the towering load,

       With frequent passage 'twixt homeyard and field.

       And half the oats already hid their tops,

       Their ringing, rustling, wind-responsive sprays,

       In the still darkness of the towering stack;

       When in the north low billowy clouds appeared,

       Blue-based, white-crested, in the afternoon;

       And westward, darker masses, plashed with blue,

       And outlined vague in misty steep and dell,

       Clomb o'er the hill-tops: thunder was at hand.

       The air was sultry. But the upper sky

       Was clear and radiant.

      Downward went the sun,

       Below the sullen clouds that walled the west,

       Below the hills, below the shadowed world.

       The moon looked over the clear eastern wall,

       And slanting rose, and looked, rose, looked again,

       And searched for silence in her yellow fields,

       But found it not. For there the staggering carts,

       Like overladen beasts, crawled homeward still,

       Sped fieldward light and low. The laugh broke yet,

       That lightning of the soul's unclouded skies—

       Though not so frequent, now that toil forgot

       Its natural hour. Still on the labour went,

       Straining to beat the welkin-climbing heave

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

       Sleep, old enchantress, sided with the clouds,

       The hoisting clouds, and cast benumbing spells

       On man and horse. One youth who walked beside

       A ponderous load of sheaves, higher than wont,

       Which dared the lurking levin overhead,

       Woke with a start, falling against the wheel,

       That circled slow after the slumbering horse.

       Yet none would yield to soft-suggesting sleep,

       And quit the last few shocks; for the wild storm

       Would catch thereby the skirts of Harvest-home,

       And hold her lingering half-way in the rain.

      The scholar laboured with his men all night.

       He did not favour such prone headlong race

       With Nature. To himself he said: "The night

       Is sent for sleep; we ought to sleep in the night,

       And leave the clouds to God. Not every storm

       That climbeth heavenward overwhelms the earth;

       And when God wills, 'tis better he should will;

       What he takes from us never can be lost."

       But the father so had ordered, and the son

       Went manful to his work, and held his peace.

      When the dawn blotted pale the clouded east,

       The first drops, overgrown and helpless, fell

       On the last home-bound cart, oppressed with sheaves;

       And by its side, the last in the retreat,

       The scholar walked, slow bringing up the rear.

       Half the still lengthening journey he had gone,

       When, on opposing strength of upper winds

       Tumultuous borne, at last the labouring racks

       Met in the zenith, and the silence ceased:

       The lightning brake, and flooded all the world,

       Its roar of airy billows following it.

       The darkness drank the lightning, and again

       Lay more unslaked. But ere the darkness came,

       СКАЧАТЬ