Speaker 1: The orphan's dream of Christmas. It was Christmas Eve, and
lonely by a garret window, high where the city chimneys
barely spared a hand's breadth of the sky, sat a
child in age, but weeping, with a face so small
and thin that it seemed too scant a record to
have eight years traced therein Oh, grief looks most distorted
when his hideous shadow lies on the clear and sunny
life stream that doth fill a child's blue eyes. But
her eye was dull and sunken, and the whiteened cheek
was gaunt, and the blue veins on the forehead were
the penciling of want. And she wept for years like jewels,
till the last year's bitter gall like the acid of
the story in itself, had melted all but the Christmas
time returned as an old friend for whose eyes she
would take down all the pictures sketched by faithful memory
of those brilliant Christmas seasons, when the joyous laugh went round,
and sweet words of love and kindness were no unfamiliar sound.
When lit by the log's red luster, she her mother's
face could see, and she rocked the cradle sitting on
her own twin brother's knee, of her father's pleasant stories,
of the riddles and the rhymes, all the kisses and
the presents that had marked those Christmas times. Twas as
well that there was no one, for it were a
mocking strain to wish her a merry Christmas, for that
could not come again. How there came a time of struggling, when,
in spite of love and faith grinding poverty would only
in the end give place to death. How her mother
grew heart broken when her toil worn father died, took
her baby in her bosom, and was buried by his side.
How she clung unto her brother as the last spar
from the wreck, But stern death had come between them.
While her arms were round his neck. There were now
no loving voices, And if a few hands offered bread,
they were none to rest in blessing on the little
homeless head. Or if any gave her shelter, it was
less of joy than fear. For they welcomed crime more
warmly to the self same room with her. But at
length they all grew weary of their sick and useless guest.
She must try a workhouse, welcome for the helpless and distressed.
But she prayed, and the unsleeping in his ear, that
whisper caught, so he sent down Sleep, who gave her
such a respite as she sought, drew the fair head
to her bosom, pressed the wedded eyelid's close, and with
softly falling kisses, lulled her gently to repose. Then she
dreamed the angels sweeping with their wings the sky aside
raised her swiftly to the country where the blessed ones abide,
to a bower all flushed with beauty by a shadowy arcade,
where a mellowness like moonlight by the tree of life
was made, where the rich free it sparkled starlike, and
pure flowers of fadeless eye poured their fragrance on the
waters that in crystal beds went by, where bright hills
of pearl and amber closed, the fair green valleys round
and with rainbow light but lasting, where their glistening summits crowned.
Then that distant burning glory mid a gorgeousness of light,
the long vista of archangels could scarce chasten to her sight.
There sat one, and her heart told her twas the
same who for our sin was once born a little
baby in the stable of an inn. There was music, Oh,
such music. They were trying the old strains that a
certain group of shepherds heard on Old Judea's plains. But
when that divinest chorus, to a softened trembling, fell, Love's
true ear discerned the voices that on earth she loved
so well. At a tiny grotto's entrance, a fair child
her eyes behold, with his ivory shoes hidden neath his
curls of living gold, And he asks them is she coming?
But ere anyone can speak. The white arms of her
twin brother are once more about her neck. Then they
all come round her greeting. But she might have well
denied that her beautiful young sister is the poor pale
child that died, and the careful look hath vanished from
her father's tearless face. And she does not know her
mother till she feels the old embrace. Oh, from that
ecstatic dreaming, must she ever wake again to the cold
and cheerless contrast to a life of lonely pain. But
her maker's sternest servant to her side on tiptoe steps,
told his message in a whisper, and she stirred not
as she slept. Now the Christmas morn was breaking with
a dim, uncertain hue, and the chilling breeze of morning
came the broken window through, and the hair upon her
forehead was it lifted by the blast or the brushing
wings of Sarah with their burden as they passed. All
the festive bells were chiming to the myriad hearts below,
But that deep sleep still hung heavy on the sleeper's
thoughtful brow. To her quiet face, the dream light had
a lingering glory given, but the child herself was keeping
her Christmas Day in heaven. And of the Orphan's Dream
of Christmas by Anonymous