The Gray Brethren | Page 3

and we cry, in the words of the Song of Songs which is
Solomon's: "O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret
places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice;
for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely." "Rise up, my
love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is
over and gone."

A Song of Low Degree

Lord, I am small, and yet so great, The whole world stands to my estate,
And in Thine Image I create. The sea is mine; and the broad sky Is

mine in its immensity: The river and the river's gold; The earth's hid
treasures manifold; The love of creatures small and great, Save where I
reap a precious hate; The noon-tide sun with hot caress, The night with
quiet loneliness; The wind that bends the pliant trees, The whisper of
the summer breeze; The kiss of snow and rain; the star That shines a
greeting from afar; All, all are mine; and yet so small Am I, that lo, I
needs must call, Great King, upon the Babe in Thee, And crave that
Thou would'st give to me The grace of Thy humility.

A German Christmas Eve

It was intensely cold; Father Rhine was frozen over, so he may speak
for it; and for days we had lived to the merry jangle and clang of
innumerable sleigh bells, in a white and frost-bound world. As I passed
through the streets, crowded with stolidly admiring peasants from the
villages round, I caught the dear remembered 'Gruss Gott!' and 'All'
Heil!' of the countryside, which town life quickly stamps out along with
many other gentle observances.
"Gelobt sei Jesu Christ!" cried little Sister Hilarius, coming on me
suddenly at a corner, her round face aglow with the sharp air, her arms
filled with queer-shaped bundles. She begs for her sick poor as she goes
along--meat here, some bread there, a bottle of good red wine: I fancy
few refuse her. She nursed me once, the good little sister, with
unceasing care and devotion, and all the dignity of a scant five feet.
"Ach, Du lieber Gott, such gifts!" she added, with a radiant smile, and
vanished up a dirty stairway.
In the Quergasse a jay fell dead at my feet--one of the many birds
which perished thus--he had flown townwards too late. Up at the
Jagdschloss the wild creatures, crying a common truce of hunger,
trooped each day to the clearing by the Jager's cottage for the food
spread for them. The great tusked boar of the Taunus with his brother
of Westphalia, the timid roe deer with her scarcely braver mate, foxes,
hares, rabbits, feathered game, and tiny songbirds of the woods,
gathered fearlessly together and fed at the hand of their common
enemy--a millennial banquet truly.
The market-place was crowded, and there were Christmas trees
everywhere, crying aloud in bushy nakedness for their rightful fruit.

The old peasant women, rolled in shawls, with large handkerchiefs tied
over their caps, warmed their numb and withered hands over little
braziers while they guarded the gaily decked treasure-laden booths,
from whose pent-roofs Father Winter had hung a fringe of glittering
icicles.
Many of the stalls were entirely given over to Christmas-tree
splendours. Long trails of gold and silver Engelshaar, piles of
candles--red, yellow, blue, green, violet, and white--a rainbow of the
Christian virtues and the Church's Year; boxes of frost and snow,
festoons of coloured beads, fishes with gleaming scales, glass-winged
birds, Santa Klaus in frost-bedecked mantle and scarlet cap, angels with
trumpets set to their waxen lips; and everywhere and above all the
image of the Holy Child. Sometimes it was the tiny waxen Bambino, in
its pathetic helplessness; sometimes the Babe Miraculous, standing
with outstretched arms awaiting the world's embrace--Mary's Son, held
up in loving hands to bless; or the Heavenly Child-King with crown
and lily sceptre, borne high by Joseph, that gentle, faithful servitor. It
was the festival of Bethlehem, feast of never-ending keeping, which
has its crowning splendour on Christmas Day.
A Sister passed with a fat, rosy little girl in either hand; they were
chattering merrily of the gift they were to buy for the dear Christkind,
the gift which Sister said He would send some ragged child to receive
for Him. They came back to the poor booth close to where I was
standing. It was piled with warm garments; and after much consultation
a little white vest was chosen--the elder child rejected pink, she knew
the Christkind would like white best- -then they trotted off down a
narrow turning to the church, and I followed.
The Creche stood without the chancel, between the High Altar