Elizabeth Rundle Charles

“ So the Child awoke with a new joy in his heart. He was sure that Voice must have spoken the truth, and with a light and buoyant heart he retraced his steps through the wood beside the stream till he reached his own little cave and the sea-shore. There all his old friends were in a flutter of delight to see him back again. The flowers looked so glad that they almost spoke; the cockles dived into the sand and up again as if they were playing at hide-and-seek; the sand-borers fluttered their feathered heads, and the anemones spread all their living petals ”

“ Then gently laying his finger on the gem, it expanded, like a lily-bell in the sun, into a crystal vase, and in it bubbled up a miniature fountain of pure, sparkling water.
"In us a well of water springing up," he murmured, as if to himself, as he drank and was refreshed; and touching the vase again, it folded up, like a convolvulus going to sleep when the sun sets.
I wondered he had not had the courtesy to offer me a draught. He read my thoughts, and said, "This water is untransferable. Each of us must have his own jewel." ”

“ What makes things musical?
The Sun!" said the Forest. "In the night I am still and voiceless. A weight of silence lies upon my heart. If you pass through me, the sound of your own footstep echoes fearfully, like the foot-fall of a ghost. If you speak to break the spell, the silence closes in on your words, like the ocean on a pebble you throw into it. The wind sighs far off among the branches, as if he were hushing his breath to listen. If a little bird chirps uneasily in its nest, it is silenced before you can find out whence the sound came. ”

“ But Gottlieb looked up inquiringly.
"Yet He likes us to say 'Thank you,' too? Did you not say all the Church services, all the beautiful cathedral itself, is just the people's 'Thank you' to God? Are we not going to church just to say 'Thank you,' to-day?"
"Yes, darling," she said. "But the 'Thank you' we mean to say is worth little unless it is just the blossom and fragrance of the love and content always in the heart. God cares infinitely for our loving Him, and loves us to thank Him if we do. He does not care at all for the thanks without the love, or without the content." ”

“ You are my church music,—the only church music I can ever hear. When I hear you chime the hour on Sundays and on the festivals, I feel myself among the multitude within your sacred walls; and your voice seems to bear their songs of praise to me, and I am no more alone, but one of the worshippers. But at night it is I prize you most. All through the hours of darkness, so often sleepless to me, your voice is the voice of a friend, familiar as my mother's, yet solemn as the chants of the choir. ”

“ That night Bruno also lay awake, and he answered her thoughts, and said reproachfully to her,—
"Wilt thou, even thou, be hard on me? Forgiveness is Divine; but vengeance also is Divine. The Judge is just, or we could not trust Him. If it were a slave, if it were a dog that had been so wronged, must I not rejoice the wrong-doer should be punished?"
"Thou art wiser than I, my beloved," she said. "I have no wisdom but His face and His words. 'Father, forgive them,' He said; and with Him forgiveness meant Paradise to the forgiven. ”

“ But the spring revived me and my yearnings, and I grew certainly very handsome and tall for one of my branch of our family; but still only a little fern!
The forest decayed, I know not how. The marsh extended, and instead of the world of varied exuberant life, we lay a long time a mass of steaming, mouldering decay. And then, through millenniums more, we stiffened and hardened, and grew black and shapeless, and were buried in the dark, no one can say how long, for to us, throughout those changeless ages, there were no days and no seasons to measure time. ”

“ This new Light of Life, this new Hope of the children of men, is also slain. It is the old funeral train, and the old death-wail. We—the earth-born, spirits of the waters and the forests and the hills—live on, and send our echoes on from age to age. They—the heaven-born—die, and mourn, and pay vain worship to their dead. Once more the religion of the children of men is a pilgrimage to a grave."
All that day the wondering doubt of old Snorro the Norseman, and the moans and whispers of that strange dream, sent wild, bewildering echoes through the Lady's heart. ”

“ Only now and then a little bird gave a slight dreamy stir and chirp, as if it were talking in its sleep; or a large moth would whiz past him, and be out of hearing in a moment. The Child could not bear to feel so silent and alone amidst the multitude of living creatures, and yet he shrank from the sound of his own voice; so he crept noiselessly on to where the moonbeams broke through an opening in the trees. When he reached the clear space, he found the trees there began to be scattered thinly about, whilst the little stream flowed silently through the open glade among the silvery ferns. ”

“ Every living leaf of mine had melody, and all together made a stream of many-voiced music; whilst around me were countless living trees like myself, who woke at every dawn to a chorus in the morning breeze. But since the axe was laid at our roots, all the music has gone from our branches. We are useful still, they say, in the gallant ship, and our country mentions us with honour even in death; but the music has gone from us with life for ever, and we can only groan and creak in the storms. Life made us musical," said the Oak-beam.
What makes creatures musical? ”

“ Because, He hears the feeblest wail of want, though it comes not from a dove or even from a harmless sparrow, but a young raven. And He does not heed the sweetest anthem of the fullest choir, if it is a mere pomp of sound. Because, while the best love of His meanest creatures is precious to Him, the second-best of His loftiest creatures is intolerable to Him. He heeds the shining of the drops of dew and the rustling of the blades of grass. But from creatures who can love He cannot accept the mere outside offering of creatures which can only make a pleasant sound. ”

“ And as he listened, the moon went down behind the mountains, and the silvery veil of moonbeams grew so dim that star after star began to peep through it on the Child. These grew brighter and brighter as they and the Child looked into each other's eyes; and more and more came forth, till the heavens were full of millions of happy stars. Every moment the firmament seemed to become deeper and fuller, and the Child's heart grew fuller of joy. For from every star came a separate tone of music, and once more the music seemed almost to form itself into a Name. ”

“ And tears and repressed sobs came fast at the thought, and he murmured aloud, thinking no one was near,—
"Dear Saviour, only let me sing once more here in church to you, and I will think of no one but you; not of the boys who laugh at me, nor the people who praise me, nor the Cistercians, nor the archduchess, nor even the dear choir-master, but only of you, of you, and perhaps of mother and Lenichen. I could not help that, and you would not mind it. You and they love me so much more than any one, and I love you really so much more than all besides. ”

“ By sick-beds they sang it, and the voice of patience and peace replaced the murmurs of disease; they taught it in homes of poverty and toil, to little lisping children, to mothers burdened with many cares, to men toiling by the wayside.
In some places the Children met with rough usage, like Him whose Name gave all the power and sweetness to their Song; but nothing could dry up the flood of love and melody in their hearts; and it was believed that although their footsteps had passed away from earth, they were still singing the blessed Song in a happy place beyond the heavens. ”

“ Then I danced down over the hills, and sang as I went, till all the lonely places were glad with my voice; and I tinkled over the stones like bells, and crept among my cresses like fairy flutes, and dashed over the rocks and plunged into the pools with all my endless harmonies. Action makes me musical," said the Stream.
What makes things musical?
"Suffering!" said the Harp-strings. "We were dull lumps of silver and copper ore in the mines; and no silence on the living, sunny earth is like the blank of voiceless ages in those dead and sunless depths. ”

“ Love makes us musical. In Storms and Sunshine, Suffering and Joy, Action, Union, Life, Love is the music at the heart of all. Love makes us musical," said all the Creatures.
And from the multitude before the throne, who, through fires of Tribulation and Storms of conflict, had learned the new song, and from depths of Darkness and the silence of Isolation had been brought together in the Light of Life to sing it, floated down a soft "Amen, for God is Love." ”

“ It reminded him of his own home by the sea, only the rush was constant,—not rising and falling like the organ-swell of the waves. The Child followed the sound, till he reached a waterfall gleaming like a white robe in the moonlight. He watched it a long time with wondering delight, to see the silvery waters ever the same, yet ever new; always leaping after each other with such a startled joy over the edge of the rocks, and always sinking with such content into the deep dark pool beneath, again to set out on a new journey among the sand and pebbles. ”

“ The resurrection to endless woe or joy will have come.
"You may even possibly keep one more Christmas. But it will be the last. It must be all but the last day of the world, for before its octave has dawned 'apparebit repentina.'
"He will have come. Not as a babe smiling on His mother's knee, not as the lowly Saviour to the manger, to live, and teach, and heal, and suffer, and die. ”

“ If there is hatred in his heart, love is beneath the hate, Thou knowest. Forgive, oh, forgive him! even if he cannot quite forgive."
And then, in her tearful prayers, she pleaded the day when Baron Ivo himself had come to their hut, pursued by some of the many who had been turned into beggars, or robbers, by his high-handed tyranny; when, not seeing Bruno, Bruno had recognized him by his voice, and, nevertheless, had spared him, and suffered her to hide him from his pursuers, and suffered the child Hilda to quench his thirst with fresh water from the spring. ”

“ May and I always find, wherever we roam among the hills, we never lose the sea. When we wander far back from the shore, the beautiful blue waters seem to follow us as if they loved us; and in the inmost recesses of the mountains we always see beneath us some glimpse of bright water in the creeks which run up among the hills, or the rivers which come down to meet them. The sea seems to love every corner of our country, mother, and penetrate everywhere."
A cold shudder passed over the mother's frame, and tears gathered in her eyes. ”

“ And thus together we respond to your gentle touch, and soothe for you many a lonely hour. Life from death, music through fires of trial: this is also your destiny. Hereafter every nerve of your tried and perfected being shall respond to the slightest touch of the Hand you love, filling heaven with happy music."
"As for me," said the pages of the hymn-book, "my discipline has, perhaps, been the severest of all. Once rustling in the flax-field, rejoicing in the dews and sunshine, I was torn, racked, twisted, and woven by many iron hands into linen. ”

“ In a city whose history dates from the ages of silvery bells and stately buildings, there stood, and stands now for aught I know, a cathedral, rich in all the endless fancies of Gothic art. Inside, it was solemn with shade, and gorgeous with light which came in through the elaborate tracery of the stained windows, many-coloured, and broken as the sunbeams through a tropical forest. Outside, fretted pinnacles and carved bell-towers sprang upward, grand yet fairy-like, as if stone towers rose as easily and naturally towards heaven as oaks and pines. ”

“ All this little Marie felt, as she lay hour by hour alone on her pallet; felt, not thought, for the roots of true thoughts in after-life lie deep in the feelings of the child's heart, which the child cannot utter even to itself, and which some lips indeed are never opened in this life to utter to any one: a silence not of much moment, since this is the world for learning rather than for uttering, and many of our most eloquent utterances here would seem but as babes' lispings there; while many lips which have but lisping or stammering speech here, will be opened in very glorious singing there. ”

“ The waves were plashing against the foot of the rocks, but the cave in which the little Child lived was far above their reach; and he lay still on his little bed of dry leaves and moss, in his soft warm clothing, and kept his eyes closed. One little hand lay on his bosom, and the other was stretched out and folded close over a tiny shell; and he lay quietly, with the last soft kisses of Slumber still sealing his eyelids, and talked in his heart to the waves.
"You are awake," he murmured. "You are always awake: night and day you sing, and dance, and roll over one another in play. ”

“ The sick girl lay in her shaded room, in the street of a great city, and thought, "If I could only leave this prison of mine, and look at the beautiful world, I know I should grow happier and holier with every breath I drew. The thorny buds on the brown branches in spring would give me promise of resurrection; every butterfly would tell me of life through death; every flower would lift my heart to Him who cares for our little pleasures; every bubbling spring would murmur to me of the living water; every corn-field and garden would repeat the sacred parables. ”

“ That was the great longing of her life.
If only once she could feel the great roof bending over her, and the walls embracing her; if, instead of straining to catch some clear melody which she might sing over in her heart, out of the dim labyrinth of those sweet and solemn sounds which reached her where she lay; if she could only once be among them, hearing the music, knowing the words, making melody in her heart among the worshippers! Marie thought she could live happy for the rest of her life on the remembrance ”

“ The first thing that attracted his attention was his friend the Sea-anemone, expanding its flowery disk like a sun-flower in the crystal water, with three companions rooted to the rock [Pg 200] beside it. They all seemed to feel the presence of the Child, and spread themselves like flowers in the sunshine as he smiled on them. And clinging to a rock beside them a tiny star expanded itself with long petals like a daisy, silently stirring its delicate rays to and fro.
"Why are you never still?" said the Child.
"Because every movement is pleasure," it replied, "and every breath I draw is a feast. ”

“ We go to Thy sepulchre, mortal, mourning human creatures, for Thou also wast mortal once. Thou also hast died and hast been buried!"
Thus, in stooping lowly, nearer her fellow-men, she grew nearer Him who stooped lowest of all.
"The whole earth is a sepulchre," she said; "for it was Thine! Not our beloved only; Thou also hast lain in the grave! When we and our beloved lie down in ours, it will be but where Thou hast lain before."
Meanwhile, all the time the earth was bearing her lowly witness to the resurrection in opening buds and nestling birds, and all the renewal of the spring. ”