The Poetry Corner

Cleaning The Windows.

By George MacDonald

Wash the window; rub it dry; Make the ray-door clean and bright: He who lords it in the sky Loves on cottage floors to light! Looking over sea and beck, Mountain-forest, orchard-bloom, He can spy the smallest speck Anywhere about the room! See how bright his torch is blazing In the heart of mother's store! Strange! I never saw him gazing So into that press before! Ah, I see!--the wooden pane In the window, dull and dead, Father called its loss a gain, And a glass one put instead! What a difference it makes! How it melts the filmy gloom! What a little more it takes Much to brighten up a room! There I spy a dusty streak! There a corner not quite clean! There a cobweb! There the sneak Of a spider, watching keen! Lord of suns, and eyes that see, Shine into me, see and show; Leave no darksome spot in me Where thou dost not shining go. Fill my spirit full of eyes, Doors of light in every part; Open windows to the skies That no moth corrupt my heart.