The Complete Poetical Works of George MacDonald. George MacDonald

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       Would mould his loftiest thought in human guise:

       Thou didst appear, walking unknown abroad,

       God's living sculpture, all-informed of God.

      II.

      If one should say, "Lo, there thy statue! take

       Possession, sculptor; now inherit it;

       Go forth upon the earth in likeness fit;

       As with a trumpet-cry at morning, wake

       The sleeping nations; with light's terror, shake

       The slumber from their hearts, that, where they sit,

       They leap straight up, aghast, as at a pit

       Gaping beneath;" I hear him answer make:

       "Alas for me, I cannot nor would dare

       Inform what I revered as I did trace!

       Who would be fool that he like fool might fare,

       With feeble spirit mocking the enorm

       Strength on his forehead!" Thou, God's thought thy form,

       Didst live the large significance of thy face.

      III.

      Men have I seen, and seen with wonderment,

       Noble in form, "lift upward and divine,"

       In whom I yet must search, as in a mine,

       After that soul of theirs, by which they went

       Alive upon the earth. And I have bent

       Regard on many a woman, who gave sign

       God willed her beautiful, when he drew the line

       That shaped each float and fold of beauty's tent:

       Her soul, alas, chambered in pigmy space,

       Left the fair visage pitiful—inane—

       Poor signal only of a coming face

       When from the penetrale she filled the fane!—

       Possessed of thee was every form of thine,

       Thy very hair replete with the divine.

      IV.

      If thou hadst built a temple, how my eye

       Had hungering fed thereon, from low-browed crypt

       Up to the soaring pinnacles that, tipt

       With stars, gave signal when the sun drew nigh!

       Dark caverns in and under; vivid sky

       Its home and aim! Say, from the glory slipt,

       And down into the shadows dropt and dipt,

       Or reared from darkness up so holy-high?—

       Thou build'st the temple of thy holy ghost

       From hid foundation to high-hidden fate—

       Foot in the grave, head at the heavenly gate,

       From grave and sky filled with a fighting host!

       Man is thy temple; man thy work elect;

       His glooms and glory thine, great architect!

      V.

      If thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks,

       What outbursts of pent glories, what new grace

       Had shone upon us from the great world's face!

       How had we read, as in eternal books,

       The love of God in loneliest shiest nooks!

       A lily, in merest lines thy hand did trace,

       Had plainly been God's child of lower race!

       And oh how strong the hills, songful the brooks!

       To thee all nature's meanings lie light-bare,

       Because thy heart is nature's inner side;

       Clear as, to us, earth on the dawn's gold tide,

       Her notion vast up in thy soul did rise;

       Thine is the world, thine all its splendours rare,

       Thou Man ideal, with the unsleeping eyes!

      VI.

      But I have seen pictures the work of man,

       In which at first appeared but chaos wild:

       So high the art transcended, they beguiled

       The eye as formless, and without a plan.

       Not soon, the spirit, brooding o'er, began

       To see a purpose rise, like mountain isled,

       When God said, Let the Dry appear! and, piled

       Above the waves, it rose in twilight wan.

       So might thy pictures then have been too strange

       For us to pierce beyond their outmost look;

       A vapour and a darkness; a sealed book;

       An atmosphere too high for wings to range;

       And so we could but, gazing, pale and change,

       And tremble as at a void thought cannot brook.

      VII.

      But earth is now thy living picture, where

       Thou shadowest truth, the simple and profound

       By the same form in vital union bound:

       Where one can see but the first step of thy stair,

       Another sees it vanish far in air.

       When thy king David viewed the starry round,

       From heart and fingers broke the psaltery-sound:

       Lord, what is man, that thou shouldst mind his prayer!

       But when the child beholds the heavens on high,

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