LILITH A Fantasy Novel By George MacDonald - online book

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350                                 LILITH
who guided the bow across its strings? Say rather, again—who set the song birds each on its bough in the tree of life, and startled each in its order from its perch ? Whence came the fantasia ? and whence the life that danced thereto ? Didst thou say, in the dark of thy own unconscious self, " Let beauty be ; let truth seem! " and straightway beauty 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 ; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfil it.
I have never again sought the mirror. The hand sent me back : I will not go out again by that door! ' All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come.'
Now and then, when I look round on my books, they seem to waver as if a wind rippled their solid mass, and another world were about to break through. Some­times when I am abroad, a like thing takes place; the heavens and the earth, the trees and the grass appear for a moment to shake as if about to pass away; then, lo, they have settled again into the old familiar face! At times I seem to hear whisperings around me, as if some that loved me were talking of me ; but when I would distinguish the words, they cease, and all is very still. I know not whether these things 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 broad daylight, but I never dream now. It may be, notwithstanding, that, when most
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