Christmas Part 19

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The play is done--the curtain drops, Slow-falling to the prompter's bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task; And, when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes his mask, A face that's anything but gay.

One word, ere yet the evening ends, Let's close it with a parting rhyme; And pledge a hand to all young friends, As fits the merry Christmas time.

On life's wide scene you, too, have parts That fate erelong shall bid you play; Good-night!--with honest, gentle hearts A kindly greeting go alway!

Good-night!--I'd say the griefs, the joys, Just hinted in this mimic page, The triumphs and defeats of boys, Are but repeated in our age.

I'd say your woes were not less keen, Your hopes more vain than those of men, Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen At forty-five played o'er again.

I'd say we suffer and we strive, Not less nor more as men than boys, With grizzled beards at forty-five As erst at twelve in corduroys; And if, in time of sacred youth, We learned at home to love and pray, Pray Heaven that early love and truth May never wholly pa.s.s away.

And in the world as in the school I'd say how fate may change and s.h.i.+ft, The prize be sometimes to the fool, The race not always to the swift: The strong may yield, the good may fall, The great man be a vulgar clown, The knave be lifted over all, The kind cast pitilessly down.

Who knows the inscrutable design?

Blessed be He who took and gave!

Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, Be weeping at her darling's grave?

We bow to Heaven that willed it so, That darkly rules the fate of all, That sends the respite or the blow, That's free to give or to recall.

This crowns his feast with wine and wit,-- Who brought him to that mirth and state?

His betters, see, below him sit, Or hunger hopeless at the gate!

Who bade the mud from Dives's wheel To spurn the rags of Lazarus?

Come, brother, in that dust we'll kneel, Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.

So each shall mourn, in life's advance, Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed; Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance, And longing pa.s.sion unfulfilled.

Amen!--whatever fate be sent, Pray G.o.d the heart may kindly glow, Although the head with cares be bent, And whitened with the winter snow!

Come wealth or want, come good or ill, Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the awful will, And bear it with an honest heart.

Who misses or who wins the prize, Go, lose or conquer, as you can; But if you fail, or if you rise, Be each, pray G.o.d, a gentleman!

A gentleman, or old or young!

(Bear kindly with my humble lays;) The sacred chorus first was sung Upon the first of Christmas days; The shepherds heard it overhead,-- The joyful angels raised it then: "Glory to Heaven on high," it said, "And peace on earth to gentle men!"

My song, save this, is little worth; I lay the weary pen aside, And wish you health and love and mirth, As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still: Be peace on earth, be peace on earth To men of gentle will!

CHRIST'S NATIVITY

HENRY VAUGHAN

Awake, glad heart! get up and sing!

It is the Birthday of thy King.

Awake! awake!

The sun doth shake Light from his locks, and, all the way Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.

Awake! awake! hark how th' wood rings, Winds whisper, and the busy springs A concert make!

Awake! awake!

Man is their high-priest, and should rise To offer up the sacrifice.

I would I were some bird, or star, Fluttering in woods, or lifted far Above this inn, And road of sin!

Then either star or bird should be s.h.i.+ning or singing still to thee.

I would I had in my best part Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart Where so clean as Thy manger was!

But I am all filth, and obscene; Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more This leper haunt and soil thy door!

Cure him, ease him, O release him!

And let once more, by mystic birth, The Lord of life be born in earth.

CHRISTMAS DREAMS

CHRISTOPHER NORTH

To-morrow is Merry Christmas; and when its night descends there will be mirth and music, and the light sounds of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy walls--and sleep now reigning over all the house save this one room, will be banished far over the sea--and morning will be reluctant to allow her light to break up the innocent orgies.

Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration, painted according to nature--what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a sameness would pervade them all--but only that kind of sameness that pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon and some stars--a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few castellated, clouds? yet no two nights ever bore more than a family resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that illumine those skies--and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.

"Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"--is a fine line of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces the air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will last to the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor irrecoverable by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike; though many a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems to be buried among the dead. But they are not dead--but only sleep; though to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, and we, wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How pa.s.sing sweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in our solitude!--as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our youth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly stand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment, and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close upon our heart.

My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in spring, with the din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds on earth. It is the Christmas Holidays--Christmas Day itself--Christmas Night--and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were we brothers and sisters so dear to one another--never before had our hearts so yearned towards the authors of our being--our blissful being! There they sat--silent in all that outcry--composed in all that disarray--still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a prisoner--a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy flight. One old game treads on the heels of another--twenty within the hour--and many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is a hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a forest when the moon drops behind the mountain, and small green-robed People of Peace at once cease their pastime, and vanish. For she--the Silver-Tongued--is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alike hundreds of years old--and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall, with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below--and, ere another Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be mute on earth--but to be hymning in Heaven.

Of that House--to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings--with its old ivyed turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and with flowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed its foundations has vanished along with them--and a crowd of other buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne; which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we ourselves--then so linked in love that the band which bound us altogether was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood--to be scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wild parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought together no more! The old Abbey--it still survives; and there, in that corner of the burial-ground, below that part of the wall which was last in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers and nests--there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and Venerated--for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years have fled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to have ceased to weep--so seldom to have remembered!--And then, with a powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the floods we all wept together--at no long interval--on those pale and placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, in their coffins.

We believe that there is genius in all childhood. But the creative joy that makes it great in its simplicity dies a natural death or is killed, and genius dies with it. In favored spirits, neither few nor many, the joy and the might survive; for you must know that unless it be accompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms it brings before us must be inspired with beauty--that is, with affection or pa.s.sion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of their youth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of that blessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merely recollect but they must imagine, the hills and valleys--if any such there were--in which their childhood played, the torrents, the waterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the rocks, the heaven's imperial dome, the raven floating only a little lower than the eagle in the sky.

To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must imagine his own nature.

He must collect from many vanished hours the power of his untamed heart, and he must, perhaps, transfuse also something of his maturer mind into these dreams of his former being, thus linking the past with the present by a continuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken.

So is it too with the calmer affections that have grown within the shelter of a roof. We do not merely remember, we imagine our father's house, the fireside, all his features then most living, now dead and buried; the very manner of his smile, every tone of his voice. We must combine with all the pa.s.sionate and plastic power of imagination the spirit of a thousand happy hours into one moment; and we must invest with all that we ever felt to be venerable such an image as alone can satisfy our filial hearts. It is thus that imagination, which first aided the growth of all our holiest and happiest affections, can preserve them to us unimpaired--

"For she can give us back the dead, Even in the loveliest looks they wore."

Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated, one year in this family, another year in that--none present but those whom Charles Lamb the Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in all features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin from one root--relations all, happy, and with no reason either to be ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth, their lot being cast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean," where the dwellings are connecting links between the hut and the hall--fair edifices resembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expands or contracts their dimensions--in which Competence is next-door neighbor to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk of Contentment.

Merry Christmases they were indeed--one Lady always presiding, with a figure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but then somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her grandchildren's ears. Nor did these solemn eyes, bedimmed into a pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbs that had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity. Dearly she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave; but she sat in suns.h.i.+ne even within the shadow of death; and the "voice that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that its accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that was heard in the silence, as from another world.

Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves--uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and "the rest," it might be presumptuous in us, who were considered by ourselves and a few others not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of time to decide--especially in the affirmative; but how the roof did ring with sally, pun, retort, and repartee! Ay, with pun--a species of impertinence for which we have therefore a kindness even to this day.

Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the good fortune to have been born a cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone at those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its different branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears; and we think we hear ourselves--all those uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, and cousins--singing now! Easy it is to "warble melody" as to breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to people in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts ours used to be at Seconds! Yet the most woful failures were rapturously encored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most extraordinary voices indeed, every one hoa.r.s.er than another, till at last, walking home with a fair cousin, there was nothing left it but a tender glance of the eye--a tender pressure of the hand--for cousins are not altogether sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character, possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms of their own; as didst thou, Emily the "Wild-cap!"--That _soubriquet_ all forgotten now--for now thou art a matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elf fair and frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest and wisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancings, thy singings, and thy showering smiles.

On rolled Suns and Seasons--the old died--the elderly became old--and the young, one after another, were wafted joyously away on the wings of hope, like birds almost as soon as they can fly, ungratefully forsaking their nests and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed their pinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few days trimmed their snow-white sails in the land-locked bay, close to whose sh.o.r.es of silvery sand had grown the trees that furnished timber both for hull and mast, slip their tiny cables on some summer day, and gathering every breeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in suns.h.i.+ne, and melt far off into the main. Or, haply, some were like fair young trees, transplanted during no favorable season, and never to take root in another soil, but soon leaf and branch to wither beneath the tropic sun, and die almost unheeded by those who knew not how beautiful they had been beneath the dews and mists of their own native climate.

Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too plainly to touch the heart. For some hearts grew cold and forbidding with selfish cares--some, warm as ever in their own generous glow, were touched by the chill of Fortune's frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenly succeeding her smiles--some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past--duty banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home--estrangements there were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet erelong, though causeless, complete--changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in the innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet came thereby at last to be friends no more--unrequited love broke some bonds--requited love relaxed others--the death of one altered the conditions of many--and so--year after year--the Christmas Meeting was interrupted--deferred--till finally it ceased with one accord, unrenewed and unrenewable. For when Some Things cease for a time--that time turns out to be forever.

Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be--should these imperfect remembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life's busy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards the inditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts--for his, though "absent long and distant far," has never been utterly forgetful of the loves and friends.h.i.+ps that charmed his youth. To be parted in body is not to be estranged in spirit--and many a dream and many a vision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pa.s.s before the mind of one whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather the expression of a doubt--of a fear--than a belief or a conviction. The soul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through all intervening darkness--and of those more especially dear it keeps within itself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think it not, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishable as they are hallowed.

All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists of morning--ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing that famous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnight hush--methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music--