The Sad Shepherd by Henry van Dyke. One darkness, out of the valley
of Gardens, where a film of newfall and snow lay smooth as feathers on
the breast of a dove. The ancient pools of Solomon looked up into the
night sky with dark, tranquil eyes wide open and passive, reflecting the crisp
stars and the small round moon. The full springs, overflowing on the hill
side, melted their way through the field of white in winding channels, and
along their course the grass was green even in the dead of winter. But
the Sad Shepherd walked far above the friendly valley, in a region where ridges
of gray rock welted and scarred the back of the earth, like wounds of
half forgotten strife and battles long ago. The solitude was forbidding and disquieting.
The keen air that searched the wanderer had no pity in it, and the
myriad glances of the night were curiously cold. His flock straggled after him.
The sheep, weather beaten and dejected, followed the path with low heads,
nodding from side to side, as if they had traveled far and found little
pasture. The black, lop eared goats leaped upon the rocks, restless and
ravenous, tearing down the tender branches and leaves of the dwarf oaks and wild
olives. They reared up against the twisted trunks and crawled and scrambled along the
boughs. It was like a company of gray, downcast friends and a troop
of merry, little black devils. Following the sad shepherd afar off. He
walked, looking on the ground, paying small heed to them now and again.
When the sound of pattering feet and panting breath, and the rustling and
rending among the copses fell too far behind, he drew out his shepherd's pipe,
and blue a strain of music, shrill and plaintive, quavering and lamenting
through the hollow night. He waited while the little troops of gray and black
scuffled and bounded and trotted near to him. Then he dropped the pipe into
its place again, and strode forward, looking on the ground. The fitful,
shivery wind that rasped the hill top fluttered the rags of his long mantle
of Tyrian blue, torn by thorns and stained by travel, The rich tunic
of striped silk beneath it was worn thin, and the girdle about his loins
had lost all its ornaments of silver and jewels. His curling hair hung down,
disheveled under a turban of fine linen in which the gilt threads were frayed
and tarnished, and his shoes of soft leather were broken by the road.
On his brown fingers, the places of the vanished rings were still marked in
white skin. He carried not the long staff nor the heavy nail studded of
the shepherd, but a slender stick of carved cedar, battered and scratched by
hard usage, and the handle, which must once have been of precious metal,
was missing. He was a strange figure for that lonely place and that
humble occupation, A branch of faded beauty from some royal garden, tossed by
rude winds into the wilderness, a pleasure craft adrift, buffeted and broken on
rough seas. But he seemed to have passed beyond caring. His young face
was frayed and threadbare as his garments. The splendor of the moonlight flooding the
wild world meant as little to him as the hardness of the rugged track which
he followed. He wrapped his tattered mantle closer around him and strode ahead,
looking on the ground. As the path dropped from the summit of the ridge
to the valley of mills and passed among huge broken rocks, three men sprang
at him from the shadows. He lifted his stick, but let it fall
again, and a strange ghost of a smile twisted his face as they gripped
him and threw him down. You are rough beggars, he said. Say
what you want. You are welcome to it. Your money dog of a
courtier, they muttered fiercely, Give us your golden collar, Herod's hound,
quick or you die. The quicker the better, he answered, closing his
eyes. The bewildered flock of sheep and goats, gathered in a silent ring,
stood at gaze while the robbers fumbled over their master. This is a
stray dog, said one, He has lost his collar. There is not
even the price of a mouthful of wine on him. Shall we kill him
and leave him for the vultures? What have the vultures done for us?
Said another, that we should feed them. Let us take his cloak and
drive off his flock and leave him to die in his own time. With
a kick and a curse, they left him. He opened his eyes and
lay quiet for a moment with his twisted smile, watching the stars. You
creep like snails, he said, I thought you had marked my time to
night, but not even that is given to me for nothing. I must
pay for all. It seems far away. Slowly scattering and receding, he
heard the rustling and bleating of his frightened flock as the robbers, running and
shouting, tried to drive them over the hills. Then he stood up and
took the shepherd's pipe, a worthless bit of reed, from the breast of
his tunic. He blew again, that plaintive, piercing air, sounding it
out over the ridges and distant thickets. It seemed to have neither beginning nor
end, a melancholy, pleading tune that searched forever after something lost while he
played, the sheep and the goat slipping away from their captors by roundabout ways,
hiding behind the laurel bushes. Following the dark gullies leaping down the broken
cliffs came circling back to him, one after another, and as they came.
He interrupted his playing now and then to call them by name. When
they were nearly all assembled, he went down swiftly toward the lower valley,
and they followed him. Panting. At the last crook of the path on
the steep hill side, a straggler came after him along the cliff. He
looked up and sought outlined against the sky. Then he sought leap and slip
and fall beyond the path into a deep cleft. Little fool, he said,
fortune is kind to you. You have escaped for the big trap of
life. What you are crying for help? You are still in the trap,
And I must go down to you, little fool, for I am
a fool too. But why I must do it, I know no more
than you know. He lowered himself quickly and perilously into the cleft and found
the creature with its leg broken and bleeding. It was not a sheep,
but a young goat. He had no cloak to wrap it in, but
he took off his turban and unrolled it and bound it around the trembling animal.
Then he climbed back to the path and strode on at the head of
his flock, carrying the little black kid in his arms. There were houses
in the valley of the mills, and in some of them lights were burning,
and the drone of the millstones, where the women were still grinding,
came out into the night like the humming of drowsy bees. As the women
heard the pattering and bleating of the flock, they wondered who was passing so
late. One of them, in a house where there was no mill but
many lights, came to the door and looked out, laughing, her face
and bosom bare. But the sad shepherd did not stay. His long sh
shadow, and the confused mass of lesser shadows behind him drifted down the white
moonlight, past the yellow bars of lamp light that gleamed from the doorways.
It seemed as if he were bound to go somewhere and would not delay.
Yet, with all his haste to be gone, it was plain that he
thought little of where he was going, For when he came to the foot
of the valley where the paths divided, he stood between them, staring vacantly,
without a desire to turn this way, or that the imperative of choice
halted him like a barrier. The balance of his mind hung even because both
scales were empty. He could act, he could go, for his strength
was untouched, but he could not choose, for his will was broken within
him. The path to the left went up toward the little town of Bethlehem,
with huddled roofs and walls in the silhouette along the double crested hill.
It was dark and foreboding as a closed fortress. The sad shepherd looked at
it with indifferent eyes. There was nothing there to draw him. The path
to the right round through rock strewn valleys toward the dead Sea, but rising
out of that crumpled wilderness a mile or two away, the smooth, white
ribbon of a chariot road lay upon the flank of a cone shaped mountain and
curled in loops toward its peak. There, the great cone was cut squarely
off, and the leveled summit was capped by a palace of marble, with
round towers at the corners and flaring beacons along the walls, and the glow
of an immense fire hidden in the central courtyard painted a false dawn on the
eastern sky. All down the clean cut mountain slopes, on terraces and blind
arches, the lights flashed from lesser pavilions and pleasure houses. It was the
secret orchard of Herod and his friends, their trysting place with the spirits of
mirth and madness. They called it the mountain of the Little Paradise. Rich
gardens were there, and the cool water from the pools of Solomon flashed in
the fountains, and trees of the knowledge of good and evil fruited blood red
and ivory white above them, and smooth, curving, glistening shapes whispering softly
of pleasure, lay among the flowers and glided behind the trees. All this
was now hidden in the dark. Only the strange bulk of the mountain,
a sharp black pyramid, girded and crowned with fire, loomed across the night,
a mountain once seen, never to be forgotten. The sad shepherd remembered
it well. He looked at it with the eyes of a child who has
been in hell. It burned him from afar. Turning neither to the right
nor to the left, he walked without a path, straight out upon the
plain of Bethlehem, still whitened in the hollows, and on the sheltered side
of its rounded hillocks by the veil of snow. He faced a wide and
empty world to the west in sleeping Bethlehem, to the east, in flaring
Herodium. The life of man was infinitely far away from him. Even the
stars seemed to withdraw themselves against the blue black of the sky. They diminished
and receded till they were like pin holes in the vault above him. The
moon in mid heaven shrank into a bit of burnished silver, hard and glittering,
immeasurably remote. The ragged inhospitable ridges of Toccoa lay stretched in mortal slumber
along the horizon, and between them he caught a glimpse of the sunken Lake
of Death, darkly gleaming in its deep bed. There was no movement,
no sound on the plain where he walked, except the soft padding feet of
his dumb, obsequious flock. He felt an endless isolation strike cold to his
heart, against which he held the limp body of the wounded kid, wondering
the while, with a half contempt for his own foolishness, why he took
such trouble to save a tiny scrap of the worthless tissue which is called life.
Even when a man does not know or care where he is going.
If he steps onward, he will get there in an hour or more.
Of walking over the plain, the sad shepherd came to a sheep fold of
gray stones, with a rude tower beside it. The fold was full of
sheep, and at the foot of the tower a little fire of thorns was
burning, around which four shepherds were crouching, wrapped in their thick woolen coats.
As the stranger approached, they looked up, and one of them rose
quickly to his feet, grasping his knotted club. But when they saw the
flock that followed the sad shepherd, they stared at each other and said,
it is one of us, a keeper of sheep. But how comes he
here in this rain? It is what men wear in king's houses. No,
said the one who was standing. It is what they wear when they
have been thrown out of them. Look at the rags. He may be
a thief and a robber with his stolen flock. Salute him when he comes
near, said the oldest shepherd. Are we not four to one? We
have nothing to fear from a ragged traveler. Speak him fair. It is
the will of God, and it costs nothing peace be with you, brother,
cried the youngest shepherd. May your mother and father be blessed. May
your heart be enlarged, the stranger answered, and may all your families be
more blest than mine, For I have none. A homeless man, said
the old shepherd has either been robbed by his fellows or punished by God.
I do not know which it was, answered the stranger. The end is
the same as you see by your speech. You come from Galilee. Where
are you going? What are you seeking here? I was going nowhere,
my masters, But it was cold on the way there, and my feet
turned to your fire. Come then, if you are a peaceable man,
and warm your feet with us. Heat is a good gift, Divide it,
and it is not less. But you shall have bread and salt too,
if you will. May your hospitality enrich you. I am your unworthy
guest, but my flock. Let your flock shelter by the south wall of
the fold. There is good picking there and no wind. Come you and
sit with us. So they all sat down by the fire, and the
sad shepherd ate of their bread but sparingly, like a man to whom hunger
brings a need, but no joy in the satisfying of it, and the
others were silent for a proper time out of courtesy. Then the oldest shepherd
spoke, My name is Zadok, the son of Eliezer of Bethlehem. I
am the chief shepherd of the flocks of the temple, which are before you
in the fold. These are my sister's sons, Jotham and Shamma and Nathan.
Their father, Elkanah, is dead. And but for these I am
a childless man. My name, replied the stranger is Amile, the son
of Jocanin, of the city of Bessidah by the Sea of Galilee, And
I am a fatherless man. It is better to be childless than fatherless,
said Zadok. Yet it is the will of God that children should bury their
fathers. When did the blessed Jocanin die? I know not whether he be
dead or alive. It is three years since I looked upon his face or
had word of him. You are in exile, then has he cast you
off? It was the other way, said Amle, looking on the ground.
At this, the shepherd Shama, who had listened with doubt in his
face, started up in anger. Pig of a Galilean. He cried,
despiser of parents, breaker of the law. When I saw you coming,
I knew you for something vile. Why do you darken the night for us
with your presence? You have reviled him who begot you away, or we
stone you? And Myles did not answer or move. A twisted smile passed
over his bowed face again, as he waited to know the Shepherd's will with
him, even as he had waited for the robbers. But Zadok lifted his
hand. Not so hasty, Shama ben Elkanah, you also break the law
by judging a man unheard. The Rabbis have told us that there is a
tradition of the elders, a rule as wholly as the law itself, that
a man may deny his father in a certain way without sin. It is
a strange rule, and it must be very holy, or it would not
be so strange. But this is the teaching of the elders. A son
may say of anything for which his father asks him, a sheep, or
a measure of corn, or a field, or a purse of silver,
it is corban a gift that I have vowed unto the Lord. And so
his father shall have no more claim upon him. Have you, said,
Corban to your father, Amle ben Jocanin, have you made a vow unto
the lord? I have said, Korban, answered a Myle, lifting his
face still shadowed by that strange smile. But it was not the lord who
heard my vow. Tell us what you have done, said the old man
sternly, For we will neither judge you nor shelter you unless we hear your
story. There is nothing in it, replied Amle indifferently. It is an
old story. But if you are Cureurius, you shall hear it. Afterward
you shall deal with me as you will. So the shepherds, wrapped in
their warm cloaks, sat listening with grave faces and watchful, unsearchable eyes,
while a mile in his tattered silk, sat by the sinking fire of thorns
and told his tale with a voice that had no room for hope or fear,
a cool, dead voice that spoke only of things. Ended two night
fire in my father's house. I was the second son. My brother was
honored and trusted in all things. He was a prudent man, and profitable
to the household. All that he counseled was done all that he wished he
had. My place was a narrow one. There was neither honor nor joy
in it, for it was filled with daily tasks and rebukes. No one
cared for me. My mother sometimes wept when I was rebuked. Perhaps she
was disappointed in me, but she had no power to make things better.
I felt that I was a beast of burden, fed only in order that
I might be useful. And the dull life irked me like an ill fitting
harness. There was nothing in it. I went to my father and claimed
my share of the inheritance. He was rich, he gave it to me.
It did not impoverish him, and it made me free. I said
to him, Corbaan, and shook the dust of Bethsida from my feet.
I went out to look for mirth and love and joy, and all that
is pleasant to the eyes and sweet to the taste. If a god made
me, thought I, he made me to live. And the pride of
life was strong in my heart and in my flesh. My vow was offered
to that well known God. I served him in Jerusalem, in Alexandria,
in Rome. For his altars are everywhere, and men worship him openly or
in secret. My money and youth made me welcome to his followers, and
I spent them both freely, as if they could never come to an end.
I clothed myself in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously. Every
day. The wine of Cyprus and the dishes of Egypt and Syria were on
my table. My dwelling was crowded with merry guests. They came for what
I gave them. Their faces were hungry, and their soft touch was like
the clinging of leeches. To them. I was nothing but money and youth,
no longer a beast of burden, a beast of pleasure. There was
nothing in it From the richest fare. My heart went away empty, and
after the wildest banquet, my soul fell drunk and solitary into sleep. Then
I thought, power is better than pleasure. If a man will feast and
revel, let him do it with the great They will favor him and raise
him up for the service that he renders them. He will obtain place and
authority in the world, and gain many friends. So I joined myself to
Herod. When the sad Shepherd spoke this name, his listeners drew back from
him, as if it were a defilement to hear it. They spat upon
the ground and cursed the Adumian, who called himself their king a slave.
Jotham cried, a bloody tyrant and a slave from Idam, a fox,
a vile beast who devours his own children. God burn him in Gehenna.
The old Zadok picked up a stone and threw it into the darkness, saying,
slowly, I cast the stone upon the grave of the Idumian, the
blasphemer, the defiler of the temple. God send us soon, the deliverer,
the promised one, the true King of Israel. And myle made no
sign, but went on with his story. Herod used me well for his
own purpose. He welcomed me to his palace and his table, and gave
me a place among his favorites. He was so much my friend that he
borrowed my money. There were many of the nobles of Jerusalem with him,
sadducees and proselyttes from Rome and Asia, and women from everywhere. The law
of Israel was observed in the open court when the people were watching, but
in the secret feasts there was no law but the will of Herod. And
many deities were served, but no God was worshiped there. The captains and
the princes of Rome consorted with the High Priest and his sons by night,
and there was much coming and going by hidden ways. Everybody was a borrower
or a lender, a buyer or a seller of favors. It was a
house of diligent madness. There was nothing in it. In the midst of
this whirling life, a great need of love came upon me, and I
wished to hold some one in my inmost heart. At a certain place in
the city, within closed doors, I saw a young slave girl dancing.
She was about fifteen years old, thin and supple. She danced like a
reed in the wind. But her eyes were weary as death, and her
white body was marked with bruises. She stumbled and the men laughed at her.
She fell, and her mistress beat her, crying out that she would
fain be rid of such a heavy footed slave. I paid the price and
took her to my dwelling. Her name was Tamar. She was a daughter
of Lebanon. I robed her in silk embroidered linen. I nourished her with
tender care, so that beauty came upon her like the blossoming of an almond
tree. She was a garden enclosed breathing spices. Her eyes were like doves
behind her veil, Her lips were a thread of scarlet, Her neck was
a tower of ivory, and her breasts were as two fawns which fed among
the lilies. She was whiter than milk, and more rosy than the flower
of the peach, and her dancing was like the flight of a bird among
the branches. So I loved her. She lay in my bosom as a
clear stone that one has bought and polished and set in fine gold, at
the end of a golden chain. Never was she glad at my coming or
sorry at my going. Never did she give me anything except what I took
from her. There was nothing in it. Now, whether Herod knew of
the jewel that I kept in my dwelling, I cannot tell. It was
sure that he had his spies in all the city, and himself walked the
streets by night in a disguise. On a certain day he sent for me
and had me into his secret chamber, professing great love toward me, and
more confidence than in any man that lived. So I must go to Rome
for him, bearing a sealed letter and a private message to Caesar. All
my goods would be left safely in the hands of the King, my friend,
who would reward me double. There was a certain place of high authority
at Jerusalem, which Caesar would gladly bestow on a Jew who had done him
a service. This mission would commend me to him. It was a great
occasion suited to my powers. Thus Herod fed me with fair promises, and
I ran his errand there was nothing in it. I stood before Caesar and
gave him the letter. He read it and laughed, saying that a prince
with an incurable hunger is a servant of value to an emperor. Then he
asked me if there was nothing sent with the letter. I answered that there
was no gift, but a message for his private ear. He drew me
aside, and I told him that Herod begged earnestly that his dear son and
a Peter might be sent back in haste from Rome to Palestine, for the
king had great need of him. At this Caesar laughed again, to bury
him, I suppose, said he with his brothers Alexander and Aristobulus. Truly
it is better to be Herod's swine than his son. Tell the old fox,
he may catch his own prey with this. He turned from me,
and I withdrew, unrewarded, to make my way back as best I could
with an empty purse. To Palestine. I had seen the Lord of the
world. There was nothing in it. Selling my rings and bracelets, I
got passage on a trading ship for Joppa. There I heard that the king
was not in Jerusalem at his palace of the Upper City, but had gone
with his friends to make Mary for a month on the mountain of the Little
Paradise, On that hilltop over against us, where the lights are flaring to
night, in the banquet hall, where couches are spread for a hundred guests,
I found the listening shepherds spat upon the ground again, and Jotham muttered,
may the worms that devour his flesh never die. But Zadok whispered,
we wait for the Lord's salvation to come out of Zion. At this,
the sad shepherd, looking with fixed eyes at the firelet mountain far away,
continued his story. The king lay on his ivory couch, and the sweat
of his disease was heavy upon him, for he was old and his flesh
was corrupted, but his hair and his beard were dyed and perfumed, and
there was a wreath of roses on his head. The hall was full of
nobles and great men. The sons of the high priest were there, and
the servants poured their wine in cups of gold. There was a sound of
soft music, and all the men were watching a girl who danced in the
middle of the hall, and the eyes of Herod were fiery, like the
eyes of a fox. Was Tamar. She glistened like the snow on Lebanon,
and the redness of her was ruddier than a pomegranate, and her dancing
was like the coiling of white serpents. When the dance was ended, her
tendons threw a veil of gauze over her, and she lay among her cushions,
half covered with flowers, at the feet of the king. Through the
sound of clapping hands and shouting, two slaves led me behind the couch of
Herod. His eyes narrowed as they fell upon me. I told him the
message of Caesar, making it soft, as if it were a word that
suffered him to catch his prey. He stroked his beard softly, and his
look fell on Ta mar, I have caught it, he murmured, By
all the gods, I have always caught it. And my dear son Auntipeter,
is coming home of his own will I have lured him. He is
mine. Then a look of madness crossed his face, and he sprang up
with frothing lips and struck me. What is this? He cried? A
spy, a servant of my false son, A traitor in my banquet hall.
Who are you? I knelt before him, protesting that he must know
me, that I was his friend, his messenger, that I had left
all my goods in his hands, that the girl who had danced for him
was mine. At this his face changed again, and he fell back on
his couch, shaken with horrible laughter. Yours, he cried, When was
she yours? What is yours? I know you now, poor madman,
you are a mile a crazy shepherd from Galilee, who troubled us some time
since. Take him away, slaves. He has twenty sheep and twenty goats
among my flocks at the foot of the mountain. See to it that he
gets them, and drive him away. I fought against the slaves with my
bare hands, but they held me. I called to Tamar, begging her
to have pity on me, to speak for me, to come with me.
She looked up with her eyes like doves behind her veil, but there
was no knowledge of me in them. She laughed lazily, as if it
were a poor comedy, and flung a broken rose branch in my face.
Then the silver cord was loosened within me, and my heart went out,
and I struggled no more, there was nothing in it. Afterward, I
found myself on the road with this flock. I led them past Hebron to
the south country, and so by the veil of Eschkal, and over many
hills beyond the pools of Solomon, until my feet brought me to your fire.
Here I rest on the way to nowhere. He sat silent, and
the four shepherds looked at him with amazement. It is a bitter tale,
said Shama, and you are a great sinner. I should be a fool
not to know that, answered the sad shepherd. But the knowledge does me
no good. You must repent, said Nathan, the youngest shepherd, in
a friendly voice. How can a man repent? Answered the sad shepherd unless
he has hope. But I am sorry for everything, and most of all
for living. Would you not live to kill the fox? Herod, asked
Jotham fiercely. Why should I let him out of the trap? Answered the
sad shepherd? Is he not dying more slowly than I could kill him?
You must have faith in God, said Zadok, earnestly and gravely. He
is too far away. Then you must have love for your neighbor. He
is too near. My confidence in man was like a pool by the wayside.
It was shallow, but there was water in it, and sometimes a
star shown there. Now the feet of many beasts have trampled through it,
and the jackals have drunken of it, and there is no more water.
It is dry, and the mire is caked at the bottom. Is there
nothing good in the world. There is pleasure, but I am sick of
it. There is power, but I hate it. There is wisdom,
but I mistrust it. Life is a game, and every player is for
his own hand. Mine is played. I have nothing to win or lose.
You are young, you have many years to live. I am old,
yet the days before me are too many. But you travel the road
you go forward. Do you hope for nothing? I hope for nothing,
said the sad shepherd. Yet if one thing should come to me, it
might be the beginning of hope. If I saw a man or woman a
deed of kindness without a selfish reason, and a proof of love gladly given
for its own sake, only that I might turn my face toward that light
till that comes. How can I have faith in God whom I have never
seen. I have seen the world which He has made, and it brings
me no faith. There is nothing in it. Amle ben Jochanan, said
the old man sternly. You are a son of Israel, and we have
had compassion on you according to the law. But you are an apostate,
an unbeliever, and we can have no more fellowship with you, lest a
curse come upon us. The company of the desperate brings misfortune. Go your
way and depart from us, for our way is not yours. So the
sad shepherd thanked them for their entertainment, and took the little kid again in
his own arms, and went into the night, calling his flock. But
the youngest shepherd, Nathan, followed him a few steps and said, there
is a broken field at the foot of the hill. It is old and
small, but you may find shelter there for your flock, where the wind
will not shake you. Go your way with God, brother, and see
better days. Then a Mile went a little way down the hill and sheltered
his flock in a corner of the crumbling walls. He lay among the sheep
and the goats, with his face upon his folded arms. And whether the
time passed slowly or swiftly, he did not know, for he slept he
waked as Nathan came, running and stumbling across the scattered stones. We have
seen a vision, he cried, A wonderful vision of angels. Did you
not hear them? They sang loudly, of the Hope of Israel. We
are going to Bethlehem to see this thing which has come to pass. Come
you and keep watch over our sheep while we are gone. Of angels.
I have seen and heard nothing, said a Mile, But I will guard
your flock with mine, since I am in debt to you for bread and
fire. So he brought the kid in his arms, and the weary flock
straggling after him, to the south wall of the great Fold again and sat
there by the embers at the foot of the tower, while the others were
away. The moon rested like a ball on the edge of the western hills
and rolled behind them. The stars faded in the east, and the fires
went out. On the mountain of the little Paradise. Over the hills of
Moab, a great flood of dawn rose slowly, and arrows of red shot
far up before the sunrise. The shepherds returned full of joy and told what
they had seen. It was even as the angel said unto us, said
Shama, and it must be true. The King of Israel has come.
The faithful shall be blessed. Herod shall fall, cried Jotham, lifting his
clenched fist toward the dark peaked mountain burn black Adoumian in the bottomless pit where
the fire is not quenched, Zadok spoke more quietly. We found the new
born child of whom the angels told us, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying
in a manger. The ways of God are wonderful. His salvation comes out
of darkness, and we trust in the promised deliverance. But you a mild
ben jochanan, except you believe you shall not see it yet. Since you
have kept our flocks faithfully, and because of the joy that has come to
us, I give you this piece of silver to help you on your way.
But Nathan came close to the sad Shepherd and touched him on the shoulder
with a friendly hand. Go you also to Bethlehem, he said, in
a low voice, For tis good to see what we have seen, and
we will keep your flock until you return. I will go, said a
looking into his face, for I think you wish me well. But whether
I shall see what you have seen, and whether I shall ever return,
I know not. Farewell. Three dawn, the narrow streets of Bethlehem were
waking to the first stir of life, as the Sad Shepherd came into the
town with the morning and passed through them like one walking in his sleep.
The courtyard of the Great Khan and the open rooms around it were crowded with
travelers, rousing them from their night's rest and making ready for the day's journey.
In front of the stables half hollowed in the rock beside the inn,
men were saddling their horses and their beasts of burden, and there was much
noise and confusion. But beyond these, at the end of the line,
there was a deeper grotto in the rock, which was used only when the
nearer stalls were full. At the entrance of this an ass was to and
a man of middle age stood in the doorway. The sad shepherd saluted him
and told him his name. I am Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth,
replied the man. Have you also seen the angels of whom your brother shepherds
came to tell us? I have seen no angels, answered am ile,
nor have I any brothers among the shepherds. But I would fain see what
they have seen. It is our first born son, said Joseph, and
the Most High has sent him to us. He is a marvelous child.
Great things are foretold of him. You may go in, but quietly,
for the child and his mother marry our sleep. So the sad shepherd went
in quietly. His long shadow entered before him, for the sunrise was flowing
into the door of the grotto. It was made clean and put in order,
and a bed of straw was laid in a corner on the ground.
The child was asleep, but the young mother was waking, for She had
taken him from the manger into her lap, where her maiden veil of white
was spread to receive him, and she was singing very softly as she bent
over him in wonder and content. And Myles saluted her and kneeled down to
look at the child. He saw nothing different from other young children. The
mother waited for him to speak of angels, as the other shepherds had done.
The sad shepherd did not speak, but only looked, and as he
looked, his face changed. You have suffered pain and danger and sorrow for
his sake, he said gently. They are past, she answered, and
for his sake I have suffered them gladly. He is very little and helpless.
You must bear many troubles for his sake. To care for him is
my joy, and to bear him lightens my burden. He does not know
you, he can do nothing for you. But I know him. I
have carried him under my heart. He is my son and my king.
Why do you love him? The mother looked up at the sad shepherd with
a great reproach in her soft eyes. Then her look grew pitiful as it
rested on his face. You are a sorrowful man, she said, I
am a wicked man, he answered. She shook her head gently. I
know nothing of that, she said, But you must be very sorrowful,
since you are born of a woman, and yet you ask a mother why
she loves her child. I love him for love's sake, because God has
given him to me. So the mother Mary leaned over her little son again
and began to croon a song, as if she were alone with him.
But Emile was still there, watching and thinking, and beginning to remember.
It came back to him that there was a woman in Galilee who had wept
when he was rebuked, whose eyes had followed him when he was unhappy,
as if she longed to do something for him, whose voice had broken and
dropped silent while she covered her tear stained face. When he went away,
his thoughts flowed swiftly and silently toward her and after her, like rapid waves
of light. There was a thought of her bending over a little child in
her lap, singing softly for pure joy, and the child was himself.
There was a thought of her lifting a little child to the breast that had
borne him as a burden and a pain, to nourish him there as a
comfort and a treasure, and the child was himself. There was a thought
of her watching and tending and guiding a little child from day to day,
from year to year, putting tender arms around him, bending over his first
wavering steps, rejoicing in his joys, wiping away the tears from his eyes,
as he had never tried to wipe her tears away. And the child
was himself. She had done everything for the child's sake, but what had
the child done for her sake? And the child was himself. That was
what he had come to, after the night fire had burned out, after
the darkness had grown thin and melted in the thoughts that pulsed through it like
rapid waves of light. And that was where he had come to in the
early morning, himself, a child in his mother's arms. Then he arose
and went out of the grotto, softly, making the threefold sign of reverence,
and the eyes of Mary followed him with kind looks. Joseph of Nazareth
was still waiting outside the door. How was it that you did not see
the angels? He asked, were you not with the other shepherds? No,
answered, Emma, I was asleep, but I have seen the mother
and the child. Blessed be the house that holds them. You are strangely
clad for a shepherd, said Joseph. Where do you come from, from
a far country, replied a myle, from a country that you have never
visited. Where are you going now, asked Joseph. I am going home,
answered a Myle, to my mother's and my father's house in Galilee.
Go in peace, friend, said Joseph, And the sad shepherd took up
his battered staff and went on his way, rejoicing. And of the sad
Shepherd, A Christmas story by Henry van Dyke,