"Gloriously Wasteful" (stanzas for artists by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following stanzas are taken from the March 2nd to 5th entries (pp. 30-31) in George MacDonald's Diary of an Old Soul.

"Gloriously wasteful, O my Lord, art thou!
Sunset faints after sunset into the night,
Splendorously dying from thy window sill--
Forever. Sad our poverty doth bow
Before the riches of thy making might:
Sweep from thy space thy systems at thy will--
In thee the sun sets every sunset still.

And in the perfect time, O perfect God,
When we are in our home, our natal home,
When joy shall carry every sacred load,
And from its life and peace no heart shall roam,
What if thou make us able to make like thee--
To light with moons, to clothe with greenery,
To hang gold sunsets o'er a rose and purple sea!

Then to his neighbor one may call out, "Come,
Brother, come hither--I would show you a thing";
And lo, a vision of his imagining,
Informed of thought which else had rested dumb,
Before the neighbor's truth-delighted eyes,
In the great ether of existence rise,
And two hearts each to each the closer cling!

We make, but thou art the creating core.
Whatever thing I dream, invent, or feel,
Thou art the heart of it, the atmosphere.
Thou art inside all love man ever bore;
Yea, the love itself, whatever thing be dear.
Man calls his dog, he follows at his heel,
Because thou first art love, self-caused, essential, mere."