Open the window, wide. How serene and peaceful it is out yonder, where the stars gleam and sparkle—some faint and small as a diamond speck, others large, clear, and dazzling, as the eyes of angels gazing through the dim void earthward to that little room where Baby sleeps the sleep of death. It may have been the shadowing of that radiance, attendant on the sinless ones, whom we call angels, which had cast athwart the infant’s features a sheen of glory, and changed them into the seeming of a sleeping cherub, or perchance the immortal glow that shimmered, widening and circling as it fell, was but the forerunner of that celestial band who bridge space and suffer little children to go unto Him!
See the mother kneeling beside her dead babe, her slender frame convulsed with agony. Not a tear, not a sob, that breaks forth for her lost darling but freights its newly awakened soul and holds it backward from the angels. How can it soar while the kindred spirit below wails its absence, and every moan shouts, trumpet tongued, “Come back! Come back!”
“It was my world,” she says, “my whole world, and it has gone from me like a vision. Alas! Common things live on; earth’s mighty heart still throbs! Creation lifts its voice in sea and air, and in the world’s great mart. Music, life, and motion are everywhere, save in my babe.”
Alas! for thee, fond mother, whose vision mounts no higher than the baby’s cot. Alas! for thee!
Frail, yet beautiful, were the creatures who entered at the open window. Softly as kindly thoughts that gathered round the infant sleeper in wonder, and laid a ring of flowers about it, until they formed a rosy cradle. And then, as the sighing wind or those more delicate strains heard in dreams, the voices of the elfins rose upon the stillness of the night like silver bells.
Solemn was their chant, and weird and fanciful, which anon changed to lighter vein and measure. The mourner heard the sounds, and wondered as the cadence rose and fell upon her grief-dulled ears, but the singers were invisible to her.
“Nurslings of the summer air
Buzz, buzz, here, there.
So we! quaint and gay,
Antic gambol,
Gnome and Fay.
“Whispering to the smiling moon,
Trill, trill, ‘Come soon.’
So we! quaint and gay,
Antic gambol,
Gnome and Fay.
“As the breezes come and go.
Hum, hum. Just so.
So we! quaint and gay,
Antic gambol,
Gnome and Fay.”
As a single drop of water contains things with life and being, which cannot be seen with the naked eye, so in space dwell the creatures of the imagination, both wise and beautiful, being full of love and sympathy for mankind and goodwill towards women and young children. Show me a selfish, disobedient boy, or a naughty girl, who ever saw a fairy. You can’t. I defy you to produce one. But many a bright youth and pretty maiden, who love truth and obedience better than play or lollies, can testify that the lovely persons who came to them in dreams were the same who now stood round the cradle of the dead baby.
How these wee people had loved it, and had kept watch and ward over it, ever since they had espied it in its basket cradle downstairs! Fresh from the mysterious star-world, of which they knew nothing, they had marvelled at it, and had crowed and cooed and sung to it, until it had begun to know them, and answer after its fashion, and laugh, and shake its fat, dimpled fists and crow too.
How they had watched it when it slept, and filled its tiny brain with innocent visions pure as the setting sun! How they had caused their magic to mantle its slumber, and the little rosebud mouth to open out in smiles! How silent and still now! No smile parts the pale lips. Not all the witchcraft in Fairyland, nor all the songs sung by sprite or fay to fretful babyhood, can lift but even one slender hair from those drooping eyelids which shroud the dim, blue eyes.
“Baby’s dead,” said one, and “Dead, dead, dead,” repeated all the elfin circle.
“Let us bear it hence unto the open glade. The bright beams of the morning sun will bring back its look of gladness, and we shall hear its voice again.”
“Ay, bear it hence,” replied the chorus.
Cradled in the wild flowers they had spread around it, the elfins carried off their silent burden, and laid it gently within a scented grove, and as the glorious morn broke forth to life and gladness, the birds gathered together in the fairy haunt and sang a requiem.
Up rose the sun and filled the dell with golden splendour. Its shining beams spread through the foliage in amber-coloured radiance, and played about the fair head of the dead baby until the creatures around shrank back in awe at the sight; but the sun brought no light to its eyes, nor smile to its lips. And so they carried the infant back again within its little room, and departed wondering.
Oh, weeping mother, whose bitter tears have drenched thy baby’s winding sheet, had’st thou faith even as a grain of mustard seed in the Master, thou couldst see above thee, beyond that cold, dead clay, the forms of angels bearing thy little one to eternal rest.
Oh, ye parents, shall I preach to you, as well as to your children? Ye who, when your daily task is done, sit brooding o’er the loss of some fondly remembered child, now sleeping its long sleep in death, take heart if ye have loved it; then it is not dead, but lives again within you. Love cannot die, for it is as immortal as the soul. Like Jacob’s ladder, it is the broad pathway from Paradise to earth, by which our little ones come back to us in visions and in dreams to give us assurance of the tender care of God.