The Diary of an Old Soul(一颗衰老灵魂的日记)

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The Diary of an Old Soul

by George MacDonald

The Diary of an Old Soul

DEDICATION

Sweet friends, receive my offering. You will find Against each worded

page a white page set:-- This is the mirror of each friendly mind

Reflecting that. In this book we are met. Make it, dear hearts, of worth to

you indeed:-- Let your white page be ground, my print be seed, Growing

to golden ears, that faith and hope shall feed.

YOUR OLD SOUL

The Diary of an Old Soul

JANUARY.

LORD, what I once had done with youthful might, Had I been from

the first true to the truth, Grant me, now old, to do--with better sight, And

humbler heart, if not the brain of youth; So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and

ruth, Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain, Round to his best--young

eyes and heart and brain.

A dim aurora rises in my east, Beyond the line of jagged questions

hoar, As if the head of our intombed High Priest Began to glow behind the

unopened door: Sure the gold wings will soon rise from the gray!-- They

rise not. Up I rise, press on the more, To meet the slow coming of the

Master's day.

Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot, And drifted out upon an

ebbing sea! My soul that was at rest now resteth not, For I am with myself

and not with thee; Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn, Where

nothing is but sick-heart vanity: Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child

forlorn.

Death, like high faith, levelling, lifteth all. When I awake, my daughter

and my son, Grown sister and brother, in my arms shall fall, Tenfold my

girl and boy. Sure every one Of all the brood to the old wings will run.

Whole-hearted is my worship of the man >From whom my earthly history

began.

Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll; Thy birds fly but within

thy airy sea; My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul; I breathe, I think, I

love, I live but thee. Oh breathe, oh think,--O Love, live into me;

Unworthy is my life till all divine, Till thou see in me only what is thine.

Then shall I breathe in sweetest sharing, then Think in harmonious

The Diary of an Old Soul

consort with my kin; Then shall I love well all my father's men, Feel one

with theirs the life my heart within. Oh brothers! sisters holy! hearts divine!

Then I shall be all yours, and nothing mine-- To every human heart a

mother-twin.

I see a child before an empty house, Knocking and knocking at the

closed door; He wakes dull echoes--but nor man nor mouse, If he stood

knocking there for evermore.-- A mother angel, see! folding each wing,

Soft-walking, crosses straight the empty floor, And opens to the obstinate

praying thing.

Were there but some deep, holy spell, whereby Always I should

remember thee--some mode Of feeling the pure heat-throb momently Of

the spirit-fire still uttering this I!-- Lord, see thou to it, take thou

remembrance' load: Only when I bethink me can I cry; Remember thou,

and prick me with love's goad.

If to myself--"God sometimes interferes"-- I said, my faith at once

would be struck blind. I see him all in all, the lifing mind, Or nowhere in

the vacant miles and years. A love he is that watches and that hears, Or but

a mist fumed up from minds of men, Whose fear and hope reach out

beyond their ken.

10.

When I no more can stir my soul to move, And life is but the ashes of

a fire; When I can but remember that my heart Once used to live and love,

long and aspire,-- Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art; Be thou the

calling, before all answering love, And in me wake hope, fear, boundless

desire.

11.

I thought that I had lost thee; but, behold! Thou comest to me from the

horizon low, Across the fields outspread of green and gold-- Fair carpet for

thy feet to come and go. Whence I know not, or how to me thou art come!-

- Not less my spirit with calm bliss doth glow, Meeting thee only thus, in

nature vague and dumb.

The Diary of an Old Soul

12.

Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind! My soul in

storm is but a tattered sail, Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale; In

calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing: Oh! swell it with thy breath; make

it a wing,-- To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind Nor rest

until in thee its haven it shall find.

13.

The idle flapping of the sail is doubt; Faith swells it full to breast the

breasting seas. Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm; Hell's

freezing north no tempest can send out, But it shall toss thee homeward to

thy leas; Boisterous wave-crest never shall o'erwhelm Thy sea-float bark

as safe as field-borne rooted elm.

14.

Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray-- For doubt, and pain,

and anger, and all strife. Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the

nest May fall, flit, fly, perch--crouch in the bowery breast Of the large,

nation-healing tree of life;-- Moveless there sit through all the burning day,

And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.

15.

My harvest withers. Health, my means to live-- All things seem

rushing straight into the dark. But the dark still is God. I would not give

The smallest silver-piece to turn the rush Backward or sideways. Am I not

a spark Of him who is the light?--Fair hope doth flush My east.--Divine

success--Oh, hush and hark!

16.

Thy will be done. I yield up everything. "The life is more than meat"--

then more than health; "The body more than raiment"--then than wealth;

The hairs I made not, thou art numbering. Thou art my life--I the brook,

thou the spring. Because thine eyes are open, I can see; Because thou art

thyself, 'tis therefore I am me.

17.

No sickness can come near to blast my health; My life depends not

upon any meat; My bread comes not from any human tilth; No wings will

grow upon my changeless wealth; Wrong cannot touch it, violence or

The Diary of an Old Soul

deceit; Thou art my life, my health, my bank, my barn-- And from all

other gods thou plain dost warn.

18.

Care thou for mine whom I must leave behind; Care that they know

who 'tis for them takes care; Thy present patience help them still to bear;

Lord, keep them clearing, growing, heart and mind; In one thy oneness us

together bind; Last earthly prayer with which to thee I cling-- Grant that,

save love, we owe not anything.

19.

'Tis well, for unembodied thought a live, True house to build--of

stubble, wood, nor hay; So, like bees round the flower by which they

thrive, My thoughts are busy with the informing truth, And as I build, I

feed, and grow in youth-- Hoping to stand fresh, clean, and strong, and

gay, When up the east comes dawning His great day.

20.

Thy will is truth--'tis therefore fate, the strong. Would that my will did

sweep full swing with thine! Then harmony with every spheric song, And

conscious power, would give sureness divine. Who thinks to thread thy

great laws' onward throng, Is as a fly that creeps his foolish way Athwart

an engine's wheels in smooth resistless play.

21.

Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine, A scion of the tree of

life: it grows; But not in every wind or weather it blows; The leaves fall

sometimes from the baby tree, And the life-power seems melting into pine;

Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine, And the unseen root clings

cramplike unto thee.

22.

Do thou, my God, my spirit's weather control; And as I do not gloom

though the day be dun, Let me not gloom when earth-born vapours roll

Across the infinite zenith of my soul. Should sudden brain-frost through

the heart's summer run, Cold, weary, joyless, waste of air and sun, Thou

art my south, my summer-wind, my all, my one.

23.

O Life, why dost thou close me up in death? O Health, why make me

The Diary of an Old Soul

inhabit heaviness?-- I ask, yet know: the sum of this distress, Pang-

haunted body, sore-dismayed mind, Is but the egg that rounds the winged

faith; When that its path into the air shall find, My heart will follow, high

above cold, rain, and wind.

24.

I can no more than lift my weary eyes; Therefore I lift my weary eyes-

-no more. But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before 'Tis well awake,

knocks where the conscience lies; Conscience runs quick to the spirit's

hidden door: Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries Up to the

Father's listening ears arise.

25.

Not in my fancy now I search to find thee; Not in its loftiest forms

would shape or bind thee; I cry to one whom I can never know, Filling me

with an infinite overflow; Not to a shape that dwells within my heart,

Clothed in perfections love and truth assigned thee, But to the God thou

knowest that thou art.

26.

Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill; Not that my mind looks up

to thee clear-eyed; Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied; Not that I

need thee daily sorer still; Not that I wretched, wander from thy will; Not

now for any cause to thee I cry, But this, that thou art thou, and here am I.

27.

Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door. I from my

window looked: the thing I saw, The shape uncouth, I had not seen before.

I was disturbed--with fear, in sooth, not awe; Whereof ashamed, I instantly

did rouse My will to seek thee--only to fear the more: Alas! I could not

find thee in the house.

28.

I was like Peter when he began to sink. To thee a new prayer therefore

I have got-- That, when Death comes in earnest to my door, Thou wouldst

thyself go, when the latch doth clink, And lead him to my room, up to my

cot; Then hold thy child's hand, hold and leave him not, Till Death has

done with him for evermore.

29.

The Diary of an Old Soul

Till Death has done with him?--Ah, leave me then! And Death has

done with me, oh, nevermore! He comes--and goes--to leave me in thy

arms, Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before! To lay thy child, naked,

new-born again Of mother earth, crept free through many harms, Upon thy

bosom--still to the very core.

30. Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how, Nor think at which

door I would have thee appear, Nor put off calling till my floors be swept,

But cry, "Come, Lord, come any way, come now." Doors, windows, I

throw wide; my head I bow, And sit like some one who so long has slept

That he knows nothing till his life draw near.

31.

O Lord, I have been talking to the people; Thought's wheels have

round me whirled a fiery zone, And the recoil of my words' airy ripple My

heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before

thee prone: Lay cool hands on my burning brain, and press >From my

weak heart the swelling emptiness.

The Diary of an Old Soul

FEBRUARY.

I TO myself have neither power nor worth, Patience nor love, nor

anything right good; My soul is a poor land, plenteous in dearth-- Here

blades of grass, there a small herb for food-- A nothing that would be

something if it could; But if obedience, Lord, in me do grow, I shall one

day be better than I know.

The worst power of an evil mood is this-- It makes the bastard self

seem in the right, Self, self the end, the goal of human bliss. But if the

Christ-self in us be the might Of saving God, why should I spend my force

With a dark thing to reason of the light-- Not push it rough aside, and hold

obedient course?

Back still it comes to this: there was a man Who said, "I am the truth,

the life, the way:"-- Shall I pass on, or shall I stop and hear?-- "Come to

the Father but by me none can:" What then is this?--am I not also one Of

those who live in fatherless dismay? I stand, I look, I listen, I draw near.

My Lord, I find that nothing else will do, But follow where thou goest,

sit at thy feet, And where I have thee not, still run to meet. Roses are

scentless, hopeless are the morns, Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling

thorns, If thou, the Truth, do not make them the true: Thou art my life, O

Christ, and nothing else will do.

Thou art here--in heaven, I know, but not from here-- Although thy

separate self do not appear; If I could part the light from out the day, There

I should have thee! But thou art too near: How find thee walking, when

thou art the way? Oh, present Christ! make my eyes keen as stings, To see

thee at their heart, the glory even of things.

That thou art nowhere to be found, agree Wise men, whose eyes are

but for surfaces; Men with eyes opened by the second birth, To whom the

The Diary of an Old Soul

seen, husk of the unseen is, Descry thee soul of everything on earth. Who

know thy ends, thy means and motions see: Eyes made for glory soon

discover thee.

Thou near then, I draw nearer--to thy feet, And sitting in thy shadow,

look out on the shine; Ready at thy first word to leave my seat-- Not thee:

thou goest too. From every clod Into thy footprint flows the indwelling

wine; And in my daily bread, keen-eyed I greet Its being's heart, the very

body of God.

Thou wilt interpret life to me, and men, Art, nature, yea, my own soul's

mysteries-- Bringing, truth out, clear-joyous, to my ken, Fair as the morn

trampling the dull night. Then The lone hill-side shall hear exultant cries;

The joyous see me joy, the weeping weep; The watching smile, as Death

breathes on me his cold sleep.

I search my heart--I search, and find no faith. Hidden He may be in its

many folds-- I see him not revealed in all the world Duty's firm shape

thins to a misty wraith. No good seems likely. To and fro I am hurled. I

have no stay. Only obedience holds:-- I haste, I rise, I do the thing he saith.

10.

Thou wouldst not have thy man crushed back to clay; It must be, God,

thou hast a strength to give To him that fain would do what thou dost say;

Else how shall any soul repentant live, Old griefs and new fears hurrying

on dismay? Let pain be what thou wilt, kind and degree, Only in pain calm

thou my heart with thee.

11.

I will not shift my ground like Moab's king, But from this spot

whereon I stand, I pray-- >From this same barren rock to thee I say, "Lord,

in my commonness, in this very thing That haunts my soul with folly--

through the clay Of this my pitcher, see the lamp's dim flake; And hear the

blow that would the pitcher break."

12.

Be thou the well by which I lie and rest; Be thou my tree of life, my

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TheDiaryofanOldSoul1TheDiaryofanOldSoulbyGeorgeMacDonaldTheDiaryofanOldSoul2DEDICATIONSweetfriends,receivemyoffering.YouwillfindAgainsteachwordedpageawhitepageset:--ThisisthemirrorofeachfriendlymindReflectingthat.Inthisbookwearemet.Makeit,dearhearts,ofworthtoyouindeed:--Letyourwhitepagebeground,mypr...

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The Diary of an Old Soul(一颗衰老灵魂的日记)

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