Explore "A Gift" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My gift would find thee fast asleep, / And arise a dream in thee; / A violet sky o'er the roll and sweep / Of a purple and pallid sea; / And a crescent moon from my sky should creep / In the golden dream to thee.
Thou shouldst lay thee down, and sadly list / To the wail of our cold birth-time; / And build thee a temple, glory-kissed, / In the heart of the sunny clime; / Its columns should rise in a music-mist, / And its roofs in a spirit-rhyme.
Its pillars the solemn hills should bind / 'Neath arches of starry deeps; / Its floor the earth all veined and lined; / Its organ the ocean-sweeps; / And, swung in the hands of the grey-robed wind, / Its censers the blossom-heaps.
And 'tis almost done; for in this my rhyme, / Thanks to thy mirror-soul, / Thou wilt see the mountains, and hear the chime / Of the waters after the roll; / And the stars of my sky thy sky will climb, / And with heaven roof in the whole.