Poems: George MacDonald: Verses for "all the creature throng"

George MacDonald was a Scotsman, a clergyman, a Baptist, an Evangelical, a "soteriological universalist" or nearly so, and oftentimes a great writer of poems and novels.  Here his major metaphor-cluster centers on Summer time, with Day, Morning, Afternoon, Nite, and the coming of a New Day again (Northrop Frye).  The cycle of Seasons and the Diurnal Turn structure the conceptual side of his poetry.  He is a bardic poet and as such seeks a union of the Distinctive Features (Roman Jakobson) of the Sound and Sense (John Ciardi) of the English tongue in a land where once the Scottish Gaelic language seems to have prevailed.  C.S. Lewis said that MacDonald was "the greatest mythographer of the English language." Also, says Lewis: "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him."


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If you ask for my favourite among MacDonald's literary works, I woud have to refer you to his novel Lilith.  It opens our imaginations to an alternative sense of what happens after death, a sense MacDonald derived from John Calvin's doctrine of "soul sleep," and thus allows us to understand the contemporary forensic science whereby we dissolve informatically into the universe in rippling out wavicles (physics founded in mathemesis, Dooyeweerd, Stafleu) but are not obliterated.  This overcomes the scholastic dualism of body/soul by way of the mathemasis of our self as it is held together by our enthroned Lord Jesus Christ who made everything (John 1:1) and has power to re-constitute us so that we may in death yet dream "what dreams may come" after we "shuffle off this mortal coil" (William Shakespear).

Today we may have some trouble in capturing precisely the way MacDonald spoke English, as his Scottish dialect has some differences (but certainly not as much as those of Bobbie Burns) from the worldwide norms of standard English pronunciations then and today. This fact may affect rhythm and rhyme as the poet heard them in his inner ear. Both affect the semantics, at least marginally, as Roman Jakobson tried to maintain toward the completion of his linguistics after it had definitively taken its poetics turn.  Sorry, but I don't yet have the precise year for MacDonald's composition for "Songs for a Summer's Day." 


— Albert Gedraitis, refWrite publisher

Songs of the Summer Days
George MacDonald

I.

A glory on the chamber wall!
A glory in the brain!
Triumphant floods of glory fall
On heath, and wold, and plain.

Earth lieth still in hopeless bliss;
She has, and seeks no more;
Forgets that days come after this,
Forgets the days before.

Each ripple waves a flickering fire Of gladness, as it runs; They laugh and flash, and leap and spire, And toss ten thousand suns. But hark! low, in the world within, One sad aeolian tone: ‘Ah! shall we ever, ever win A summer of our own?’ II. A morn of winds and swaying trees- Earth’s jubilance rushing out! The birds are fighting with the breeze; The waters heave about. White clouds are swept across the sky, Their shadows o’er the graves; Purpling the green, they float and fly Athwart the sunny waves. The long grass-an earth-rooted sea- Mimics the watery strife. To boat or horse? Wild motion we Shall find harmonious life. But whither? Roll and sweep and bend Suffice for Nature’s part; But motion to an endless end Is needful for our heart. III. The morn awakes like brooding dove, With outspread wings of gray; Her feathery clouds close in above, And roof a sober day. No motion in the deeps of air! No trembling in the leaves! A still contentment everywhere, That neither laughs nor grieves! A film of sheeted silver gray Shuts in the ocean’s hue; White-winged feluccas cleave their way In paths of gorgeous blue. Dream on, dream on, O dreamy day, Thy very clouds are dreams! Yon child is dreaming far away- He is not where he seems. IV. The lark is up, his faith is strong, He mounts the morning air; Lone voice of all the creature throng, He sings the morning prayer. Slow clouds from north and south appear, Black-based, with shining slope; In sullen forms their might they rear, And climb the vaulted cope. A lightning flash, a thunder boom!- Nor sun nor clouds are there; A single, all-pervading gloom Hangs in the heavy air. A weeping, wasting afternoon Weighs down the aspiring corn; Amber and red, the sunset soon Leads back to golden morn.