II.

The other meets me in the public throng;

Her hair streams backward from her loose attire;

She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire;

She points me downward, steadily and long:--

"There is thy grave--arise, my son, be strong!

Hands are upon thy crown--awake, aspire

To immortality; heed not the lyre

Of the Enchantress, nor her poppy-song,

But in the stillness of the summer calm

Tremble for what is Godlike in thy being.

Listen a while, and thou shall hear the psalm

Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing;

And from far battle-fields there comes the neighing

Of dreadful onset, though the air is balm."

The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2 · 第 91 / 133 题