[Malcolm meditates on this poem in the churchyard after a funeral.]
Uplifted is the stone,
And all mankind arisen!
We men remain thine own,
And vanished is our prison!
What bitterest grief can stay
Before thy golden cup,
When earth and life give way,
And with our Lord we sup!
To the marriage Death doth call.
The maidens are not slack;
The lamps are burning all--
Of oil there is no lack.
Afar I hear the walking
Of thy great marriage-throng!
And hark! the stars are talking
With human tone and tongue!
Courage! for life is hasting
To endless life away;
The inner fire, unwasting,
Transfigures our dull clay!
See the stars melting, sinking,
In life-wine, golden-bright!
We, of the splendour drinking,
Shall grow to stars of light.
Lost, lost are all our losses;
Love set forever free;
The full life heaves and tosses
Like an eternal sea!
One endless living story!
One poem spread abroad!
And the sun of all our glory
Is the countanance of God.
[From Malcolm. This poem is based on a translation MacDonald made from German of a piece of Hymns to the Night by Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). MacDonald notes that "They were written when the shadow of the death of his betrothed had begun to thin before the apporaching dawn of his own new life. He died in 1801, at the age of twenty-nine." This is apparently a loose rendition of Novalis' work, omitting some stanzas and modifying others; a more exact translation is in Rampolli, p. 13.]