Explore "Let your Light so Shine" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head / A lamp that well might pharos all the lands; / Anon the light will neither rise nor spread: / Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands!
A pharos? Oh dull brain! poor dying lamp / Under a bushel with an earthy smell!
Mouldering it stands, in rust and eating damp, / While the slow oil keeps oozing from its cell!
For me it were enough to be a flower / Knowing its root in thee, the Living, hid, / Ordained to blossom at the appointed hour, / And wake or sleep as thou, my Nature, bid;
But hear my brethren in their darkling fright!
Hearten my lamp that it may shine abroad / Then will they cry -- Lo, there is something bright!
Who kindled it if not the shining God?