The Hidden Servants and Other Very Old Stories. Alexander Francesca
quaint.
Angel, demon, prince, and saint,
Much alike in face and air;
Houses tipping here and there,
Lion, palm-tree, hermit's cell,
And much more I need not tell.
Then they all attentive wait,
While the story I relate,
And, before the half is told,
I forget that I am old!
But one age there seems to be
For the little ones and me.
What though all be new and strange,
Little children never change;
All is shifting day by day, —
Worse or better, who can say?
Much we lose, and much we learn,
But the children still return,
As the flowers do, every year;
Just as innocent and dear
As those babes who first did meet
At our Heavenly Master's feet.
In His arms He took them all:
Oh, 'tis precious to recall —
Blessèd to believe it true —
That what we love He loved too!
Since the time when life was new,
All my long, long journey through,
I have story-teller been.
When a child I did begin
To my playmates; later on,
Other children, long since gone,
Came to listen; and of some,
Still the children's children come!
Some, the dearest, took their flight,
In the early morning light,
To the glory far away,
Made for them and such as they.
I have lingered till the last;
All the busy hours are past;
Now my sun is in the west,
Slowly sinking down to rest
Ere it wholly fades from view,
One thing only I would do:
From my stories I would choose
Those 't would grieve me most to lose.
And would tell them once again
For the children who remain,
And for others, yet to be,
Whom on earth I may not see.
Here, within this volume small,
I have thought to write them all;
And to-day the work commence,
Trusting, ere God call me hence,
I may see the whole complete.
It will be a labour sweet,
Calling back, in sunset glow,
Happy hours of long ago.
The Hidden Servants
AND OTHER POEMS
A sheltered nook on a mountain side,
Shut in, and guarded, and fortified
By rocks that hardly a goat would climb,
All smoothed by tempest and bleached by time —
Such was the spot that the hermit chose,
From youth to age, for his life's repose.
There had he lived for forty years,
Trying, with penance and prayers and tears,
To make his soul like a polished stone
In God's great temple; for this alone
Was the one dear wish that his soul possessed,
And 't was little he cared for all the rest,
Nothing had changed since first he came;
The sky and the mountain were all the same,
Only a beech-tree, that there had grown
Ere ever he builded his cell of stone,
Had risen and spread to a stately grace,
And its shifting shadow filled half the place.
Many a winter its storms had spent,
Many a summer its sunshine lent
To the little cell, till it came to look
Like another rock in the peaceful nook.
Mosses and lichen had veiled the wall,
Till it hardly seemed like a dwelling at all.
'T was a peaceful home when the days were soft,
And spring in her sweetness crept aloft
From the plains below where her work was done,
And the hills grew green in the warming sun.
And in summer the cell of the hermit seemed
Like part of that heaven of which he dreamed:
For the turf behind those walls of flint
Was sprinkled with flowers of rainbow tint;
And never a sound but the bees' low hum,
As over the blossoms they go and come;
Or – when one listened – the fainter tones
Of a spring that bubbled between the stones.
But dreary it was on a winter's night,
When the snow fell heavy and soft and white.
And at times, when the morn was cold and keen,
The footprints of wolves at his door were seen.
But cold or hunger he hardly felt,
So near to heaven the good man dwelt;
And as for danger – why, death, to him,
Meant only joining the Seraphim!
Poorly he lived, and hardly fared;
And when the acorns and roots he shared
With mole or squirrel, he asked no more,
But thanked the Lord for such welcome store.
The richest feast he could ever know
Was when the shepherds who dwelt below,
Whose sheep in the mountain pastures fed,
Would bring him cheeses, or barley bread,
Or – after harvest – a bag of meal;
And then they would all before him kneel,
On flowery turf or on moss-grown rocks,
To ask a blessing for them and their flocks,
And once or twice he had wandered out
To preach in the country round about,
Where unto many his words were blest;
Then back he climbed to his quiet nest.
By all in trouble his aid was sought;
And women their pining children brought,
For a touch of his hand to ease their pain,
And his prayers to make them strong again.
And now one wish in his heart remained:
He longed to know