Where thou, fair growing, like some silent flower,
Last of a kingly line, — unknown and lowly,
O desert lily, — passed thy childhood’s hour.
The world knew not the tender, serious maiden,
Who, through deep loving years so silent grew,
Filled with high thoughts and holy aspirations,
Which, save thy Father, God’s, no eye might view.
And then it came, that message from the Highest,
Such as to woman ne’er before descended;
Th’ almighty shadowing wings thy soul o’erspread,
And with thy life the Life of worlds was blended.
What visions, then, of future glory filled thee,
Mother of King and kingdom yet unknown —
Mother, fulfiller of all prophecy,
Which through dim ages wondering seers had shown!
Well did thy dark eye kindle, thy deep soul
Rise into billows, and thy heart rejoice;
Then woke the poet’s fire, the prophet’s song
Tuned with strange, burning words thy timid voice.
Then in dark contrast came the lowly manger,
The outcast shed, the tramp of brutal feet;
Again, behold earth’s learned, and her lowly,
Sages and shepherds, prostrate at thy feet.
Then to the temple bearing, hark! again
What strange, conflicting tones of prophecy
Breathe o’er the Child, foreshadowing words of joy,
High triumph, and yet bitter agony.
O, highly favored thou, in many an hour
Spent in lone musing with thy wondrous Son,
When thou didst gaze into that glorious eye,
And hold that mighty hand within thy own.
Blessed through those thirty years, when in thy dwelling
He lived a God disguised, with unknown power,
And thou, his sole adorer, — his best love, —
Trusting, revering, waitedst for his hour.
Blessed in that hour, when called by opening heaven
With cloud, and voice, and the baptizing flame,
Up from the Jordan walked th’ acknowledged stranger,
And awe-struck crowds grew silent as he came.
Blessed, when full of grace, with glory crowned,
He from both hands almighty favors poured,
And, though he had not where to lay his head,
Brought to his feet alike the slave and lord.
Crowds followed; thousands shouted, “Lo, our King!”
Fast beat thy heart; now, now the hour draws nigh:
Behold the crown — the throne! the nations bend.
Ah, no! fond mother, no! behold him die.
Now by that cross thou tak’st thy final station,
And shar’st the last dark trial of thy Son;
Not with weak tears or woman’s lamentation,
But with high, silent anguish, like his own.
Hail, highly favored, even in this deep passion,
Hail, in this bitter anguish — thou art blest —
Blest in the holy power with him to suffer
Those deep death pangs that lead to higher rest.
All now is darkness; and in that deep stillness
The God-man wrestles with that mighty woe;
Hark to that cry, the rock of ages rending —
“’Tis finished!” Mother, all is glory now!
By sufferings mighty as his mighty soul
Hath the Jehovah risen — forever blest;
And through all ages must his heart-beloved
Through the same baptism enter the same rest.
CHRISTIAN PEACE.
“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride
of man; thou shalt keep them secretly as in a pavilion from the
strife of tongues.”
When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
’Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.
Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er he flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
So to the heart that knows thy love, O Purest,
There is a temple, sacred evermore,
And all the babble of life’s angry voices
Die in hushed stillness at its peaceful door.
Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,
And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully,
And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er he flieth,
Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in thee.
O, rest of rests! O, peace serene, eternal!
THOU ever livest; and thou changest never;
And in the secret of thy presence dwelleth
Fulness of joy — forever and forever.
ABIDE IN ME AND I IN YOU.
THE SOUL’S ANSWER.
That mystic word of thine, O sovereign Lord,
Is all too pure, too high, too deep for me;
Weary of striving, and with longing faint,
I breathe it back again in prayer to thee.
Abide in me, I pray, and I in thee;
From this good hour, O, leave me nevermore;
Then shall the discord cease, the wound be healed,
The lifelong bleeding of the soul be o’er.
Abide in me — o’ershadow by thy love
Each half-formed purpose and dark thought of sin;
Quench, e’er it rise, each selfish, low desire,
And keep my soul as thine, calm and divine.
As some rare perfume in a vase of clay
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own,
So, when thou dwellest in a mortal soul,
All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.
The soul alone, like a neglected harp,
Grows out of tune, and needs a hand divine;
Dwell thou within it, tune, and touch the chords,
Till every note and string shall answer thine.
Abide in me; there have been moments pure
When I have seen thy face and felt thy power;
Then evil lost its grasp, and passion, hushed,
Owned the divine enchantment of the hour.
These were but seasons beautiful and rare;
“Abide in me,” — and they shall ever be;
Fulfil at once thy precept and my prayer —
Come and abide in me, and I in thee.
WHEN I AWAKE I AM STILL WITH THEE.
Still, still with thee, when purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh and the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight,
Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with thee!
Alone with thee, amid the mystic shadows,
The solemn hush of nature newly born;
Alone with thee in breathless adoration,
In the calm dew and freshness of the morn.
As in the dawning o’er the waveless ocean
The image of the morning star doth rest,
So in this stillness thou beholdest only
Thine image in the waters of my breast.
Still, still with thee! as to each new-born morning
A fresh and solemn splendor still is given,
So doth this blessed consciousness, awaking,
Breathe, each day, nearness unto thee and heaven.
When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber,
Its closing eye looks up to thee in prayer,
Sweet the repose beneath thy wings o’ershading,
But sweeter still to wake and find thee there.
So shall it be at last, in that bright morning
When the soul waketh and life’s shadows flee;
O, in that hour, fairer than daylight dawning,
Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with thee!
CHRIST’S VOICE IN THE SOUL.
“Come ye yourselves into a desert place and rest a while; for there
were many coming and going, so that they had no time so much as to
eat.”
‘Mid the mad whirl of life, its dim confusion,
Its jarring discords and poor vanity,
Breathing like music over troubled waters,
What gentle voice, O Christian, speaks to thee?
It is a stranger — not of earth or earthly;
By the serene, deep fulness of that eye, —
By the calm, pitying smile, the gesture lowly, —
It is thy Savior as he passeth by.
“Come, come,” he saith, “into a desert place,
Thou who art weary of life’s lower sphere;
Leave its low strifes, forget its babbling noise;
Come thou with me — all shall be bright and clear.
“Art thou bewildered by contesting voices,
Sick to thy soul of party noise and strife?
Come, leave it all, and seek that solitude
Where thou shalt learn of me a purer life.
“When far behind the world’s great tumult dieth,
Thou shalt look back and wonder at its roar;
But its far voice shall seem to thee a dream,
Its power to vex thy holier life be o’er.
“There shalt thou learn the secret of a power,
Mine to bestow, which heals the ills of living;
To overcome by love, to live by prayer,
To conquer man’s worst evils by forgiving.”
THE END
OUR CHARLEY AND WHAT TO DO WITH HIM
CONTENTS
OUR CHARLEY.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH OUR CHARLEY?
THE HAPPY CHILD.
LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A FAIRY.
THE DREAM.
UNCLE JERRY’S DREAM ABOUT THE BROWNIES.
TAKE CARE OF THE HOOK.
FAIRY TALES.
A TALK ABOUT BIRDS.
THE NEST IN THE ORCHARD.
OUR CHARLEY.
When the blaze of the wood fire flickers up and down in our snug evening parlor, there dances upon the wall a little shadow with a pug nose, a domestic household shadow — a busy shadow — a little restless specimen of perpetual motion, and the owner thereof is “Our Charley?
Now, we should not write about him and his ways, if he were strictly a peculiar and individual existence of our own home circle; but it is not so. “Our Charley” exists in a thousand, nay, a million families; he has existed in millions in all time back; his name is variously rendered in all the tongues of the earth; nay, there are a thousand synonymes for him in English — for indisputably “our Willie,” or “our Harry,” or “our Georgie,” belongs to the same snub-nosed, rosy-cheeked, restless shadow-maker. So in France, he is “Leonce,” or “Pierre,” as well as “Charle;” in Italy, he is “Carlino” or “Francisco;” in Germany, “Max” or “Wilhelm and in China, he is little “Ling-Fung,” with a long silk tail on the back of his head, but the same household sprite among them all; in short, we take “our Charley” in a generic sense, and we mean to treat of him as a miniature epitome of the grown man — enacting in a shadowy ballet by the fireside all that men act in earnest in after-life. He is a looking glass for grown people, in which they may see how certain things become them — in which they may sometimes even see streaks and gleamings of something wiser than all the harsh conflict of life teaches them.
“Our Charley” is generally considered by the world as an idle little dog, whose pursuits, being’ very inconsequent, may be put off or put by for every and any body; but the world, as usual, is very much mistaken. No man is more pressed with business, and needs more prudence, energy, tact, and courage to carry out his schemes, in face of all the opposing circumstances that grown people constantly throw in his way.
Has he not ships to build and to sail? and has he not vast engineerings to make ponds and docks in every puddle or brook, where they shall lie at anchor? Is not his pocket stuffed with material for sails and cordage? And yet, like a man of the world as lie is, all this does not content him, but he must own railroad stock too. If he lives where a steam whistle has vibrated, it has awakened an unquiet yearning within him, and some day he harnesses all the chairs into a train, and makes a locomotive of your work table and a steam whistle of himself. He inspects toy-shop windows, gets up flirtations with benevolent shop-men; and when he gets his mouth close to papa’s ear, reveals to him how Mr. So-and-so has a locomotive that will wind up and go alone — so cheap too — can’t papa get it for him? And so papa (all papas do) goes soberly down and buys it, though he knows it will be broken in a week.
Then what raptures! The dear locomotive! the darling black chimney sleeps under his pillow that he may feel of it in the night, and be sure when he first wakes that the joy is not evaporated. He bores every body to death with it as artlessly as grown people do with their hobbies; but at last the ardor runs out. His darling is found to have faults. He picks it to pieces to make it work better; finds too late that he can’t put it together again; and so he casts it aside, and makes a locomotive out of a broken wheelbarrow and some barrel staves.
Do you, my brother, or grown-up sister, ever do any thing like this? Do your friendships and loves ever go the course of our Charley’s toy? First, enthusiasm; second, satiety; third, discontent; then picking to pieces; then dropping and losing! How many idols are in your box of by-gone playthings? And may it not be as well to suggest to you, when you find flaws in your next one, to inquire before you pick to pieces, whether you can put together again, or whether what you call defect is not a part of its nature? A tin locomotive won’t draw a string of parlor chairs, by any possible alteration, but it may be very pretty for all it was made for. Charley and you might both learn something from this.
Charley’s business career, as we have before intimated, has its trials. It is hard for him to find time for it; so many impertinent interruptions. For instance, there are four hours of school, taken out of the best part of the day; four mortal hours, in which he might make ships, or build dams, or run railroad cars, he is obliged to leave all his affairs, often in very precarious situations, and go through the useless ceremony of reading and spelling. When he comes home, the housemaid has swept his foremast into the fire, and mamma has put his top-sails into the rag bag, and all his affairs are in a desperate situation. Sometimes he gets terribly misanthropic; all grown people seem conspiring against him; he is called away from his serious avocations so often, and his attention distracted with such irrelevant matters, that he is indignant. He is rushing through the passage in hot haste, hands full of nails, strings, and twine, and Mary seizes him and wants to brush his hair; he is interrupted in a burst of enthusiasm, and told to wash his hands for dinner! or perhaps, a greater horror than all, company is expected, and he must put on a clean new suit, just as he has made all the arrangements for a ship-launching down by the swamp. This dressing and washing he regards with unutterable contempt and disgust; secretly, too, he is sceptical about the advantages of going to school and learning to read; he believes, to be sure, when papa and mamma tell him of unknown future advantages to come when he is a “great man;” but then, the present he is sure of; his ships and sloops, his bits of string and fish-hooks, and old corks and broken railroad-cars, and above all, his new skates; these are realities. And he knows also what Tom White and Bill Smith say; and so he walks by sight more than by faith.
Ah, the child is father of the man. When he gets older he will have the great toys of which these are emblems; he will believe in what he sees and touches — in house, land, railroad stock he will believe in these earnestly and really, and in his eternal manhood nominally and partially. And when his Father’s messengers meet him, and face him about, and take him off his darli
ng pursuits, and sweep his big ships into the fire, and crush his full-grown cars, then the grown man will complain and murmur, and wonder as the little man does now. The Father wants the future, the child the present, all through life, till death makes the child a man.
So, though our Charley has his infirmities, he is a little bit of a Christian after all. Like you, brother, he has his good hours, when he sits still and calm, and is told of Jesus; and his cheeks glow, and tears come to his eyes; his bosom heaves; and now he is sure he is going to be always good; he is never going to be naughty. He will stand still to have his hair combed; he will come the first time mother speaks; he will never speak a cross word to Katy; he repents of having tyrannized over grandmamma, and made poor mamma’s head ache; and is quite sure that he has now got the victory over all sin. Like the Israelites by the Red Sea, he beholds his spiritual enemies dead on the sea shore. But to-morrow, in one hour even, what becomes of his good resolutions? What becomes of yours on Monday?
With all “our Charley’s” backslidings, he may teach us one thing which we have forgotten. When Jesus would teach his disciples what faith was, he took a child and set him in the midst of them. We do not presume that this child was one of those exceptional ones who have memoirs written, but a common average child, with its smiles and tears, its little naughtinesses and goodnesses, and its aptness as an example was not in virtue of an exceptional but a universal quality. If you want to study faith, go to school to “your Charley.” See his faith in you. Does he not believe that you have boundless wealth, boundless wisdom, infinite strength? Is he not certain of your love to that degree that he cannot be repelled from you? Does he hesitate to question you on any thing celestial or terrestrial? Is not your word enough to outweigh that of the wisest of the earth? You might talk him out of the sight of his eyes, the hearing of his ears, so boundless is his faith in you. Even checks and frowns cannot make him doubt your love; and though sometimes, when you cross him, the naughty murmuring spirit arises, yet in an hour it dissolves, and his little soul flows back, prattling and happy, into your bosom. Be only to God as he is to you, and the fireside shadow shall not have been by your hearth in vain.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH OUR CHARLEY?
YES, that is the question! The fact is, there seems to be no place in heaven above, or earth beneath, that is exactly safe and suitable, except the bed. While he is asleep, then our souls have rest; we know where he is and what he is about, and sleep is a gracious state; but then he wakes up bright and early, and begins tooting, pounding, hammering, singing, meddling, asking questions, and, in short, overturning the peace of society generally, for about thirteen hours out of the twenty-four.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 509