Explore "Of the Son of Man" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I. I honour Nature, holding it unjust / To look with jealousy on her designs; / With every passing year more fast she twines / About my heart; with her mysterious dust / Claim I a fellowship not less august / Although she works before me and combines / Her changing forms, wherever the sun shines / Spreading a leafy volume on the crust / Of the old world; and man himself likewise / Is of her making: wherefore then divorce / What God hath joined thus, and rend by force / Spirit away from substance, bursting ties / By which in one great bond of unity / God hath together bound all things that be?
II. And in these lines my purpose is to show / That He who left the Father, though he came / Not with art-splendour or the earthly flame / Of genius, yet in that he did bestow / His own true loving heart, did cause to grow, / Unseen and buried deep, whate'er we name / The best in human art, without the shame / Of idle sitting in most real woe; / And that whate'er of Beautiful and Grand / The Earth contains, by him was not despised, / But rather was so deeply realized / In word and deed, though not with artist hand, / That it was either hid or all disguised / From those who were not wise to understand.