The light in her chamber is extinguished, and the moonbeams are streaming in through the window. A few hours since she watched their silvery radiance stealing, unheeded and unseen, into yon crowded room, drowned in the flood of artificial light which filled it, and then she had thought these rays an emblem of Heaven’s Viceroy—conscience—unknown and unnoticed, perchance, by those gay people round about her, but even then marking with silent finger upon its everlasting tablets, the hidden things of that unseen and inner life in long detail, moment, and hour, and day, for each one of them. But now, in the silence of her own room, these beams have another similitude to Christian, as they pour in unconfined, filling the quiet chamber. They tell her of peace, peace full, sweet, and unmeasured,—not the peace of a rejoicing and triumphant spirit,—the sunbeams are liker it,—but of one borne down with trial and sorrow, with a sore fight of affliction, with a fear and anguish in times past, yet now at rest. Oh, happy contradiction! distracted with cares and anxieties, yet calm amid them all, full of the memories of bygone sorrow, of forebodings of sorrows yet to come, but peaceful withal, how blessed the possession!
It falls upon her form, that gentle moonshine, and her features are lit up as with a twilight ray of heaven: it lingers over her treasures as though it loved them for her sake. It streams upon that portrait on the wall, and illuminates its pensive and unchanging face, as with the shadow of a living smile; and Christian’s heart grows calm and still within her beating breast, like an infant’s, and holy scenes of old come up before her liquid eyes, like ancient pictures, with that steadfast face upon the wall shining upon her in every one; not so constant in its sad expression, but varying with every varying scene, till the gathering tears hang on her cheeks like dewdrops, and she may not look again.
And there is peace in that household this night, peace and sweet serenity, and gentle hopefulness; for a blessing is on its prayer-hallowed roof and humble threshold, and angels stand about its quiet doorway, guarding the children of their King—the King of Kings.
CHRISTIAN MELVILLE.
EPOCH IV.
There is no emblem of our lives so fit
As the brief days of April, when we sit
Folding our arms in sorrow, our sad eyes
Dimmed with long weeping; lo! a wondrous ray,
Unhoped-for sunshine bursting from the skies
To chase the shadow of our gloom away.
And lest the dazzling gladness blind us, lo!
An hour of twilight quiet followeth slow,
Moistening our eyelids with its grateful tears,
Strengthening our vision for the radiant beam
That yet shall light these unknown future years,—
Each joy, each grief, in its appointed room,
Ripening the precious fruit for heaven’s high harvest home.