قراءة كتاب The Hidden Servants and Other Very Old Stories
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اللغة: English
The Hidden Servants and Other Very Old Stories
الصفحة رقم: 3
class="italics">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.
CONTENTS
Il Crocifisso della Providenza
The Eldest Daughter of the King
THE HIDDEN SERVANTS
A sheltered nook on a mountain side,Shut in, and guarded, and fortifiedBy 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 stoneIn God's great temple; for this aloneWas 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 grownEre 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 lentTo the little cell, till it came to lookLike 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 aloftFrom the plains below where her work was done,And the hills grew green in the warming sun.