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.”

p. 13A Song of Low Degree

p. 13

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.

Lord

p. 15A German Christmas Eve

p. 15

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 ‘Grüss Gott!’ and ‘All’ Heil!’ of the countryside, which town life quickly stamps out along with many other gentle observances.

It

“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 Jäger’s cottage for the food spread for them. 

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