The miser lay on his lonely bed; <br />Life's candle was burning dim. <br />His heart in an iron chest was hid <br />Under heaps of gold and an iron lid; <br />And whether it were alive or dead <br />It never troubled him. <br /> <br />Slowly out of his body he crept. <br />He said, 'I am just the same! <br />Only I want my heart in my breast; <br />I will go and fetch it out of my chest!' <br />Through the dark a darker shadow he leapt, <br />Saying 'Hell is a fabled flame!' <br /> <br />He opened the lid. Oh, Hell's own night! <br />His ghost-eyes saw no gold!- <br />Empty and swept! Not a gleam was there! <br />In goes his hand, but the chest is bare! <br />Ghost-fingers, aha! have only might <br />To close, not to clasp and hold! <br /> <br />But his heart he saw, and he made a clutch <br />At the fungous puff-ball of sin: <br />Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust, <br />He grasped a handful of rotten dust, <br />And shrieked, as ghosts may, at the crumbling touch, <br />But hid it his breast within. <br /> <br />And some there are who see him sit <br />Under the church, apart, <br />Counting out coins and coins of gold <br />Heap by heap on the dank death-mould: <br />Alas poor ghost and his sore lack of wit- <br />They breed in the dust of his heart! <br /> <br />Another miser has now his chest, <br />And it hoards wealth more and more; <br />Like ferrets his hands go in and out, <br />Burrowing, tossing the gold about- <br />Nor heed the heart that, gone from his breast, <br />Is the cold heap's bloodless core. <br /> <br />Now wherein differ old ghosts that sit <br />Counting ghost-coins all day <br />From the man who clings with spirit prone <br />To whatever can never be his own? <br />Who will leave the world with not one whit <br />But a heart all eaten away?<br /><br />George MacDonald<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-where-your-treasure-is-there-will-your-heart-be-also/
