Child Stories from the Masters | Page 7

old he was. He thought: "There is no joy in the world; there is nothing good and perfect in the whole world!" He closed his tired eyes and leaned his head back. The lamp burned low, and the place was very still for a long time. And then there suddenly broke the most beautiful music right under his window; children were singing, and men and women, and above it all bells were ringing--wonderful, joyous bells.
"Can it be," said the old man--"can it be that anyone is really joyful in the world?" He rose up and went to the window, and thrust back the great curtain.
And lo! it was morning!
The most beautiful, shining morning; people were pouring out of all the houses, smiling and singing, and bowing to one another; little children were going together with flowers in their hands, singing, and answering the tones of the great bells; and one little child, as it passed, looked right up at the great Doctor Faust, and held out its white lily. The bells chimed, and the singing grew sweeter and clearer.
"If there is something joyful in the world, surely some one will tell me," said the man; and he went out into the morning.
It had rained in the night; there were pools in the street, and the leaves glistened. "How bright the light is!" he thought, and "how strange the flowers look blooming in the sun!" But the birds flew away when he came, and this made the strange longing in the lonely man's heart grow into pain. So he stepped back in the shadow and looked into all the happy faces as they passed, and listened to the singing.
But no one stopped to tell him anything. They were so full of joy that they did not feel his touch, and his words when he spoke were swept right up into the song and the pealing of the joy-bells.
Girls in white veils, with stalks of the most beautiful lilies in their hands, passed him in a long line, and the boys came after, in new clothes, and shoes that squeaked. But he only saw their shining, upturned faces. They were so beautiful as they sang, that tears stood in the smiling eyes of all the fathers and mothers and neighbors who followed after. Little children holding each other's hands went together, and one little one had a queer woolly lamb on wheels trundling behind him.
"Can it be," said the old man, "that there is a deep joy in the world? will no one tell me?" And he turned and went with the people; and after awhile he met a young girl.
She was not singing, but the most beautiful light shone from her face; so he knew she was thinking of the deep joy, and he asked her what it was, and why the people were glad.
She looked at him with loving wonder, and then she told him it was Easter morning, when everything in the wide world remembers fully that the joy can never die. "It is here always," she told him.
"Always?" said the old man; and he shook his head sadly.
"Always," she said; and she took his hand and led him out of the throng into the most beautiful ways. He did not know that in the whole world there were such wonderful grassy lanes. Why, there were hedges with star-flowers here and there; apple trees were blooming, and between the cottages there were gardens where seed had sprung up in rows.
In some of the houses people were going about their homely tasks, and they were singing softly, or saying the most gentle words to one another as they worked. And before a very humble door, where only one tall lily bloomed, there sat a beautiful mother with a baby on her knee and a little one beside her; and they were looking straight into her eyes, listening to the wonderful story of the Easter morning. The father stopped to listen too, and in every single face shone the same holy light.
It shone even in the face of the Faust as he passed.
And behold, when Margaret looked at him he had grown young. His hair glinted in the sun and the wonder had come back to his eyes. Butterflies circled above them, and they went on and on, free and glad together, and the holy light was over everything.
But the poet tells us that afterwards Faust traveled into a very strange, far world, where there was never any silence or living flowers. Nothing was perfect or holy there, and Margaret could not go. But they tell us that whenever he looked away from this strange world, he heard again the singing, and smelled the faint fragrance of lilies, and it seemed to him that he was there again in the light,