Lilith: A Romance

by George MacDonald

  CHAPTER XLV. THE JOURNEY HOME

  It had ceased to be dark; we walked in a dim twilight, breathing throughthe dimness the breath of the spring. A wondrous change had passed uponthe world--or was it not rather that a change more marvellous hadtaken place in us? Without light enough in the sky or the air to revealanything, every heather-bush, every small shrub, every blade of grasswas perfectly visible--either by light that went out from it, as firefrom the bush Moses saw in the desert, or by light that went out of oureyes. Nothing cast a shadow; all things interchanged a little light.Every growing thing showed me, by its shape and colour, its indwellingidea--the informing thought, that is, which was its being, and sent itout. My bare feet seemed to love every plant they trod upon. The worldand my being, its life and mine, were one. The microcosm and macrocosmwere at length atoned, at length in harmony! I lived in everything;everything entered and lived in me. To be aware of a thing, was to knowits life at once and mine, to know whence we came, and where we were athome--was to know that we are all what we are, because Another is whathe is! Sense after sense, hitherto asleep, awoke in me--sense aftersense indescribable, because no correspondent words, no likenesses orimaginations exist, wherewithal to describe them. Full indeed--yet everexpanding, ever making room to receive--was the conscious being wherethings kept entering by so many open doors! When a little breezebrushing a bush of heather set its purple bells a ringing, I was myselfin the joy of the bells, myself in the joy of the breeze to whichresponded their sweet TIN-TINNING**, myself in the joy of the sense, andof the soul that received all the joys together. To everything glad Ilent the hall of my being wherein to revel. I was a peaceful oceanupon which the ground-swell of a living joy was continually lifting newwaves; yet was the joy ever the same joy, the eternal joy, with tens ofthousands of changing forms. Life was a cosmic holiday.

  Now I knew that life and truth were one; that life mere and pure isin itself bliss; that where being is not bliss, it is not life, butlife-in-death. Every inspiration of the dark wind that blew where itlisted, went out a sigh of thanksgiving. At last I was! I lived, andnothing could touch my life! My darling walked beside me, and we were onour way home to the Father!

  So much was ours ere ever the first sun rose upon our freedom: what mustnot the eternal day bring with it!

  We came to the fearful hollow where once had wallowed the monsters ofthe earth: it was indeed, as I had beheld it in my dream, a lovely lake.I gazed into its pellucid depths. A whirlpool had swept out the soil inwhich the abortions burrowed, and at the bottom lay visible the wholehorrid brood: a dim greenish light pervaded the crystalline water, andrevealed every hideous form beneath it. Coiled in spires, folded inlayers, knotted on themselves, or "extended long and large," theyweltered in motionless heaps--shapes more fantastic in ghoulish,blasting dismay, than ever wine-sodden brain of exhausted poet feveredinto misbeing. He who dived in the swirling Maelstrom saw none tocompare with them in horror: tentacular convolutions, tumid bulges,glaring orbs of sepian deformity, would have looked to him innocencebeside such incarnations of hatefulness--every head the wickedflower that, bursting from an abominable stalk, perfected its evilsignificance.

  Not one of them moved as we passed. But they were not dead. So long asexist men and women of unwholesome mind, that lake will still be peopledwith loathsomenesses.

  But hark the herald of the sun, the auroral wind, softly trumpetinghis approach! The master-minister of the human tabernacle is at hand!Heaping before his prow a huge ripple-fretted wave of crimson and gold,he rushes aloft, as if new launched from the urging hand of his makerinto the upper sea--pauses, and looks down on the world. White-ravingstorm of molten metals, he is but a coal from the altar of the Father'snever-ending sacrifice to his children. See every little flowerstraighten its stalk, lift up its neck, and with outstretched headstand expectant: something more than the sun, greater than the light, iscoming, is coming--none the less surely coming that it is long upon theroad! What matters to-day, or to-morrow, or ten thousand years to Lifehimself, to Love himself! He is coming, is coming, and the necks of allhumanity are stretched out to see him come! Every morning will they thusoutstretch themselves, every evening will they droop and wait--until hecomes.--Is this but an air-drawn vision? When he comes, will he indeedfind them watching thus?

  It was a glorious resurrection-morning. The night had been spent inpreparing it!

  The children went gamboling before, and the beasts came after us.Fluttering butterflies, darting dragon-flies hovered or shot hither andthither about our heads, a cloud of colours and flashes, now descendingupon us like a snow-storm of rainbow flakes, now rising into the humidair like a rolling vapour of embodied odours. It was a summer-day morelike itself, that is, more ideal, than ever man that had not diedfound summer-day in any world. I walked on the new earth, under the newheaven, and found them the same as the old, save that now they openedtheir minds to me, and I saw into them. Now, the soul of everything Imet came out to greet me and make friends with me, telling me we camefrom the same, and meant the same. I was going to him, they said, withwhom they always were, and whom they always meant; they were, they said,lightnings that took shape as they flashed from him to his. The darkrocks drank like sponges the rays that showered upon them; the greatworld soaked up the light, and sent out the living. Two joy-fires wereLona and I. Earth breathed heavenward her sweet-savoured smoke; webreathed homeward our longing desires. For thanksgiving, our veryconsciousness was that.

  We came to the channels, once so dry and wearyful: they ran and flashedand foamed with living water that shouted in its gladness! Far as theeye could see, all was a rushing, roaring, dashing river of water madevocal by its rocks.

  We did not cross it, but "walked in glory and in joy" up its right bank,until we reached the great cataract at the foot of the sandy desert,where, roaring and swirling and dropping sheer, the river divided intoits two branches. There we climbed the height--and found no desert:through grassy plains, between grassy banks, flowed the deep, wide,silent river full to the brim. Then first to the Little Ones wasrevealed the glory of God in the limpid flow of water. Instinctivelythey plunged and swam, and the beasts followed them.

  The desert rejoiced and blossomed as the rose. Wide forests had sprungup, their whole undergrowth flowering shrubs peopled with song-birds.Every thicket gave birth to a rivulet, and every rivulet to itswater-song.

  The place of the buried hand gave no sign. Beyond and still beyond, theriver came in full volume from afar. Up and up we went, now along grassymargin, and now through forest of gracious trees. The grass grew sweeterand its flowers more lovely and various as we went; the trees grewlarger, and the wind fuller of messages.

  We came at length to a forest whose trees were greater, grander, andmore beautiful than any we had yet seen. Their live pillars upheaved athick embowed roof, betwixt whose leaves and blossoms hardly a sunbeamfiltered. Into the rafters of this aerial vault the children climbed,and through them went scrambling and leaping in a land of bloom,shouting to the unseen elephants below, and hearing them trumpet theirreplies. The conversations between them Lona understood while I butguessed at them blunderingly. The Little Ones chased the squirrels,and the squirrels, frolicking, drew them on--always at length allowingthemselves to be caught and petted. Often would some bird, lovelyin plumage and form, light upon one of them, sing a song of what wascoming, and fly away. Not one monkey of any sort could they see.

  CHAPTER XLVI. THE CITY

  Lona and I, who walked below, heard at last a great shout overhead, andin a moment or two the Little Ones began to come dropping down from thefoliage with the news that, climbing to the top of a tree yet tallerthan the rest, they had descried, far across the plain, a curioussomething on the side of a solitary mountain--which mountain, they said,rose and rose, until the sky gathered thick to keep it down, and knockedits top off.

  "It may be a city," they said, "but it is not at all like Bulika."

  I went up to look, and saw a great city, ascending into blue
clouds,where I could not distinguish mountain from sky and cloud, or rocks fromdwellings. Cloud and mountain and sky, palace and precipice mingled in aseeming chaos of broken shadow and shine.

  I descended, the Little Ones came with me, and together we sped onfaster. They grew yet merrier as they went, leading the way, and neverlooking behind them. The river grew lovelier and lovelier, until I knewthat never before had I seen real water. Nothing in this world is morethan LIKE it.

  By and by we could from the plain see the city among the blue clouds.But other clouds were gathering around a lofty tower--or was it arock?--that stood above the city, nearer the crest of the mountain.Gray, and dark gray, and purple, they writhed in confused, contrariantmotions, and tossed up a vaporous foam, while spots in them gyrated likewhirlpools. At length issued a dazzling flash, which seemed for amoment to play about the Little Ones in front of us. Blinding darknessfollowed, but through it we heard their voices, low with delight.

  "Did you see?"

  "I saw."

  "What did you see?"

  "The beautifullest man."

  "I heard him speak!"

  "I didn't: what did he say?"

  Here answered the smallest and most childish of the voices--that ofLuva:--

  "He said, ''Ou's all mine's, 'ickle ones: come along!'"

  I had seen the lightning, but heard no words; Lona saw and heard withthe children. A second flash came, and my eyes, though not my ears,were opened. The great quivering light was compact of angel-faces. Theylamped themselves visible, and vanished.

  A third flash came; its substance and radiance were human.

  "I see my mother!" I cried.

  "I see lots o' mothers!" said Luva.

  Once more the cloud flashed--all kinds of creatures--horses andelephants, lions and dogs--oh, such beasts! And such birds!--great birdswhose wings gleamed singly every colour gathered in sunset or rainbow!little birds whose feathers sparkled as with all the precious stonesof the hoarding earth!--silvery cranes; red flamingoes; opal pigeons;peacocks gorgeous in gold and green and blue; jewelly hummingbirds!--great-winged butterflies; lithe-volumed creeping things--all inone heavenly flash!

  "I see that serpents grow birds here, as caterpillars used to growbutterflies!" remarked Lona.

  "I saw my white pony, that died when I was a child.--I needn't have beenso sorry; I should just have waited!" I said.

  Thunder, clap or roll, there had been none. And now came a sweet rain,filling the atmosphere with a caressing coolness. We breathed deep, andstepped out with stronger strides. The falling drops flashed the coloursof all the waked up gems of the earth, and a mighty rainbow spanned thecity.

  The blue clouds gathered thicker; the rain fell in torrents; thechildren exulted and ran; it was all we could do to keep them in sight.

  With silent, radiant roll, the river swept onward, filling to the marginits smooth, soft, yielding channel. For, instead of rock or shingle orsand, it flowed over grass in which grew primroses and daisies, crocusesand narcissi, pimpernels and anemones, a starry multitude, large andbright through the brilliant water. The river had gathered no turbidcloudiness from the rain, not even a tinge of yellow or brown; thedelicate mass shone with the pale berylline gleam that ascended from itsdeep, dainty bed.

  Drawing nearer to the mountain, we saw that the river came from its verypeak, and rushed in full volume through the main street of the city.It descended to the gate by a stair of deep and wide steps, mingled ofporphyry and serpentine, which continued to the foot of the mountain.There arriving we found shallower steps on both banks, leading up tothe gate, and along the ascending street. Without the briefest halt, theLittle Ones ran straight up the stair to the gate, which stood open.

  Outside, on the landing, sat the portress, a woman-angel of dark visage,leaning her shadowed brow on her idle hand. The children rushed uponher, covering her with caresses, and ere she understood, they had takenheaven by surprise, and were already in the city, still mounting thestair by the side of the descending torrent. A great angel, attendedby a company of shining ones, came down to meet and receive them, butmerrily evading them all, up still they ran. In merry dance, however,a group of woman-angels descended upon them, and in a moment they werefettered in heavenly arms. The radiants carried them away, and I sawthem no more.

  "Ah!" said the mighty angel, continuing his descent to meet us who werenow almost at the gate and within hearing of his words, "this is well!these are soldiers to take heaven itself by storm!--I hear of a horde ofblack bats on the frontiers: these will make short work with such!"

  Seeing the horse and the elephants clambering up behind us--

  "Take those animals to the royal stables," he added; "there tend them;then turn them into the king's forest."

  "Welcome home!" he said to us, bending low with the sweetest smile.

  Immediately he turned and led the way higher. The scales of his armourflashed like flakes of lightning.

  Thought cannot form itself to tell what I felt, thus received by theofficers of heaven***. All I wanted and knew not, must be on its way tome!

  We stood for a moment at the gate whence issued roaring the radiantriver. I know not whence came the stones that fashioned it, but amongthem I saw the prototypes of all the gems I had loved on earth--far morebeautiful than they, for these were living stones--such in which I saw,not the intent alone, but the intender too; not the idea alone, but theimbodier present, the operant outsender: nothing in this kingdom wasdead; nothing was mere; nothing only a thing.

  We went up through the city and passed out. There was no wall on theupper side, but a huge pile of broken rocks, upsloping like the moraineof an eternal glacier; and through the openings between the rocks, theriver came billowing out. On their top I could dimly discern what seemedthree or four great steps of a stair, disappearing in a cloud white assnow; and above the steps I saw, but with my mind's eye only, as it werea grand old chair, the throne of the Ancient of Days. Over and under andbetween those steps issued, plenteously, unceasingly new-born, the riverof the water of life.

  The great angel could guide us no farther: those rocks we must ascendalone!

  My heart beating with hope and desire, I held faster the hand of myLona, and we began to climb; but soon we let each other go, to use handsas well as feet in the toilsome ascent of the huge stones. At lengthwe drew near the cloud, which hung down the steps like the borders of agarment, passed through the fringe, and entered the deep folds. A hand,warm and strong, laid hold of mine, and drew me to a little door with agolden lock. The door opened; the hand let mine go, and pushed me gentlythrough. I turned quickly, and saw the board of a large book in the actof closing behind me. I stood alone in my library.

  CHAPTER XLVII. THE "ENDLESS ENDING"

  As yet I have not found Lona, but Mara is much with me. She has taughtme many things, and is teaching me more.

  Can it be that that last waking also was in the dream? that I am stillin the chamber of death, asleep and dreaming, not yet ripe enough towake? Or can it be that I did not go to sleep outright and heartily,and so have come awake too soon? If that waking was itself but a dream,surely it was a dream of a better waking yet to come, and I have notbeen the sport of a false vision! Such a dream must have yet loveliertruth at the heart of its dreaming!

  In moments of doubt I cry,

  "Could God Himself create such lovely things as I dreamed?"

  "Whence then came thy dream?" answers Hope.

  "Out of my dark self, into the light of my consciousness."

  "But whence first into thy dark self?" rejoins Hope.

  "My brain was its mother, and the fever in my blood its father."

  "Say rather," suggests Hope, "thy brain was the violin whence it issued,and the fever in thy blood the bow that drew it forth.--But who madethe violin? and who guided the bow across its strings? Say rather,again--who set the song birds each on its bough in the tree of life, andstartled each in its order from its perch? Whence came the fantasia? andwhence the life that da
nced thereto? Didst THOU say, in the dark of thyown unconscious self, 'Let beauty be; let truth seem!' and straightwaybeauty was, and truth but seemed?"

  Man dreams and desires; God broods and wills and quickens.

  When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; whenAnother gives it him, that Other is able to fulfil it.

  I have never again sought the mirror. The hand sent me back: I will notgo out again by that door! "All the days of my appointed time will Iwait till my change come."

  Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as ifa wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to breakthrough. Sometimes when I am abroad, a like thing takes place; theheavens and the earth, the trees and the grass appear for a moment toshake as if about to pass away; then, lo, they have settled again intothe old familiar face! At times I seem to hear whisperings around me, asif some that loved me were talking of me; but when I would distinguishthe words, they cease, and all is very still. I know not whether thesethings rise in my brain, or enter it from without. I do not seek them;they come, and I let them go.

  Strange dim memories, which will not abide identification, often,through misty windows of the past, look out upon me in the broaddaylight, but I never dream now. It may be, notwithstanding, that, whenmost awake, I am only dreaming the more! But when I wake at last intothat life which, as a mother her child, carries this life in its bosom,I shall know that I wake, and shall doubt no more.

  I wait; asleep or awake, I wait.

  Novalis says, "Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhapsbecome one."

  *Chapter 42: William Law.

  **Chapter 45: Tin tin sonando con si dolce nota Che 'l ben disposto spirito d' amor turge. DEL PARADISO, x. 142.

  ***Chapter 46: Oma' vedrai di si fatti uficiali. Del Purgatorio, ii. 30.