The Ravens and the Angels Part 13

Yet, even as they knelt, they saw that the little company was not abiding. There was a continual movement and change in it. The voices changed. The sweetest and best trained were continually breaking off, in obedience to some summons the children could not hear; and others who, like themselves, had all their music to learn, were coming in their place.

An awe and trembling came again over the children; and the brother whispered,--

"Can we be right? Can this be the Cathedral? No one seems to stay!

Whither can they go?"

And the sister answered in a soft whisper,--

"We will wait to see. Can they be going to the _other music_?"

Scarcely had the words died from her lips when a maiden who had been kneeling close beside them, from whose liquid voice and clear reverent utterance the children had been learning the words of the song, and from whose pale radiant face they had been drinking in its joyful meaning, suddenly ceased her singing, and looking up for a moment with an earnest listening gaze, she seemed to hear some welcome irresistible call, for she said,--

"For me? Can it be indeed for _me_?" And softly touching the children's forehead with a touch that seemed to them a blessing, she murmured, "You will be called too, by-and-by." Then noiselessly she rose and glided away through the shadow of the arches towards the east, and up a flight of steps the children had not observed before.

They followed her with eager, anxious gaze, and for a moment, ere she glided out of sight, there was the streaming of a flood of golden sunshine down the gloom, from an open door, and once more the sound of that perfect music they had heard at first.

At that moment there was a pause in the service, and a silver-haired old man came to the children and bid them welcome.

"You look sad and bewildered, my children," he said.

"Oh, father! tell us what it means," they whispered. "Can we be in the right place? We thought we were coming to a place of light and of heavenly singing, full of rejoicing worshippers who delighted to stay there. But this seems a place of gloom and of graves. Here the worshippers are a little broken band, and even these do not stay. All is changing and imperfect. What does it mean?"

The old man smiled. "Where do you think you are?" he said.

"In the Cathedral," they answered. "Are we not in the Cathedral?"

"You are, and you are not!" he said. "This is part of the Cathedral. But it is only the Crypt. The Church cemetery and the Cathedral school. The choir children are trained here. But the true Cathedral is above; and, of necessity, when the choristers are trained, they are called up to join the services there."

When the children heard this they understood it all.

Thankfully they went to learn their part in the Psalm with the choir children.

And knowing the Crypt to be only a crypt, its gloom was wonderfully brightened to them. Its stray sunbeams grew clear and golden, now that they were understood to be only earnests of the golden day above. Its broken hymns grew tenfold sweeter, now that they were felt to be but the learning of the anthems to be sung above.

Precious was every hard lesson of the singing, precious every thin silver thread of the light, for they were the foretaste or the preparation of the moment when the door of the true Temple should open, and the shadows flee away.

BURIED WITH CHRIST.

Moans of sharpest agony, Faintly moaning ceaselessly, "Earth is all one grave to me!"

Greenest fields but churchyard turf, Sunniest seas but deadly surf; Purest skies one vaulted tomb, Death in all homes most at home.

Moans of sharpest agony!

Back from far they came to me, Echoed from the crystal sea, As a chant of victory; From the sea's translucent verge Back in triumph pealed the dirge:-- "Earth is all one grave to thee?

What besides could earth now be, Since He died upon the tree, Since He died on earth for thee?

Since beneath it He lay, dim, Cold and still each tortured limb, Buried are His own with Him, Yet the dirge is all a hymn.

Wouldst thou take the crypt's chill damps, And its few sepulchral lamps, For His temple s.p.a.ces high, For His depths of starry sky?

Wouldest thou? Not so would they Who one moment breathe His day, Who for one brief moment's s.p.a.ce Have the vision of His face.

Earth has light for earth's great strife,-- Where He liveth, there is Life.

"Earth is all one grave to thee?

Yet lift up thine eyes and see!

For the stone is rolled away, And He standeth there to-day; Patiently by thee will stay Till thy heart 'Rabboni' say!

(He will not forget the clay, Thine, nor theirs, by night or day.) That 'Rabboni!' faint through fears, Sobbed in agony of tears,-- That alone thy heart can clear Those far-off Amens to hear, That alone can tune thy heart In those songs to take her part.

"Then thy cry of agony: 'Earth is all one grave to me,'

Echoing shall come back to thee In a chant of victory, Echoed from the crystal sea, From the living victors free, Ransomed everlastingly."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Partly suggested by a pa.s.sage in Longfellow's "Hyperion."

_The Sepulchre and the Shrine._

"Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

The great torrent of the First Crusade had been sweeping for weeks through the valley of the Danube. Along that "highway of nations" tribe after tribe had poured westward, leaving its deposit in castle and village, on dominant height and in sheltered hollow. And now the rush of men swept back eastward: no slowly advancing tide of emigration, but a wild torrent of enthusiasm, which would leave behind it nothing but graves and the bones of unburied thousands. And yet in that death were seeds of life.

Week after week the Lady of the Tannenburg had seen from the terrace of her castle the bands of peasants pa.s.s on their way,--men and women and little children, with the red-cross on the shoulder,--to the Tomb of Christ, to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the infidel. Mult.i.tudes almost entirely composed of the poor: no plumed helmets or richly caparisoned war-horses. The red-cross, of common stuff, was fastened on the poor garments of the peasants. The only chariots were the rough cart drawn by oxen taken from the plough, carrying the mothers and the little ones, who were too feeble to walk.

Of geography they knew little more than the children, who cried out as each town came in sight, "Is that Jerusalem?" The patient oxen would suffice to carry them and theirs, they thought, to the Master's Grave!

The rich had loans to effect, lands to sell, affairs to arrange, stewards and agents to appoint, before they could commence the perilous journey with a fitting escort. Moreover, to them the Holy Land contained something more than the Sepulchre of Christ. It contained rich Moslem cities to be plundered, fertile lands to be possessed, fair provinces to be reigned over. To the poor it contained only the Master's Grave. And He who leadeth the blind by a way that they know not, led the people then as now.

The rich, for the most part, came back impoverished. The poor, for the most part, never came back at all: but from their graves sprang the first-fruits of freedom for Europe. The religious enthusiasm for which they died had begun the emanc.i.p.ation of their cla.s.s. From chattels, attached to the soil like its crops and its stones, they had become men.

The Master's Grave was theirs to die for, as much as it was their lords'; the Master's will was theirs to live for, as much as for the n.o.blest.

Day by day the Lady of the Tannenburg had watched the pilgrim-bands pa.s.sing slowly in irregular groups through the broad valley beneath her.

Night by night she had seen the camp-fires gleaming through the pine-woods, and heard the "_Dieu le veut_" echo from crag to crag. Often she had sent her only child, young Rudolf, with a band of retainers, bearing bread and meat from her stores, fruit from her orchards, and wine from her vineyards, to be distributed among the pilgrims. And night by night, as the hosts pa.s.sed by, they knew the Lady's castle by the one steadfast light from one arched window, which never failed to shed its faint glow over the castle wall.

It was well known among them that scarcely a year before, her husband, Sir Rudolf of the Tannenburg, had died. It was said that he had been on the eve of joining the Crusade; and many a vow was made to the young Rudolf that his father's name should be faithfully remembered at the Holy Sepulchre. The boy knew that the tears which came into his mother's eyes when he told her of those vows were tears that heal. But at last one evening, as he rose from his prayer at her knee, he looked up into her face, while a sudden light broke over his, and said,--

"Mother, are not all the people going to the same Holy Grave?"

"The same? Surely, my son," she said, bowing her head reverently. "The Grave of Christ, our Lord."

"We have our own holy grave, mother!" he replied--"thou and I. But have we no share in this Grave of Christ?"

"Surely; their Lord is ours," she said; "and His Holy Sepulchre is ours, in common with all Christendom."

"Then, mother! mother!" he exclaimed, gazing full into her eyes, "let us also go to the Grave, to weep there, with all His Christendom. Let us do what my father meant to do. Who will remember his name as we would there?"

For a few moments she made no reply. The cas.e.m.e.nt stood open, although it was winter, and through the stillness of the frosty air echoed once more the solemn, "_Dieu le veut_."