Francesca Alexander - The Hidden Servants and Other Very Old Stories

"But, Father, it never can be true!
What? – I by the side of a saint like you?
Ah no! You never to me were sent.
'T was some one else whom the angel meant!"

"No! Listen to me – 'T was you , my son!
Our Master said that a service done
To a child of His in time of need
Is done to Himself in very deed,
And is with love by Himself received!
So do not think I have been deceived,
But keep those words on your heart engraved
Of the humble woman whose life you saved,
God will remember , and trust His care.
He will not forget you here nor there!"

"O Father, Father! And can it be
That the Lord in heaven remembers me?
And yet I had felt it must be true,
For the woman spoke as if she knew!
But when was ever such mercy shown,
And is this the love He bears His own?
Are these the blessings He holds in store?
Oh, let me serve Him for evermore!"

And when, at the close of another day,
The hermit wearily made his way
Up the mountain path, from stone to stone,
He did not climb to his cell alone.
The mountebank, still with wondering face,
Came with him up to that peaceful place!

Together with thankful hearts they went,
Thenceforth together their lives were spent.
And, ere the summer had reached its close,
Another cell from the rocks arose;
The beech, in its strong and stately growth,
Spread one green canopy over both.
On summer evenings, when shepherds guide
Their flocks to rest on the mountain side,
They heard above, in the twilight calm,
Two voices, chanting the evening psalm;
And one was agèd, and one was young,
But never was hymn more sweetly sung!

In love and patience, by deed and word,
They helped each other to serve the Lord, —
Together to pray, to learn, to teach, —
Till a deeper blessing fell on each.
Their souls grew upward from day to day;
But he who farthest had gone astray,
Who, lowest fallen, had hardest striven,
Who most had sinned and been most forgiven,
Erelong in the heavenly race outran
The older, milder, and wiser man.
Two years he dwelt with his agèd friend,
Then made a blessèd and peaceful end;
And, when his penitent life was done,
The hermit wept as he would for a son!

Ten years had over the mountain passed,
Since that poor mountebank breathed his last,
Helped, to the end, by a woman's prayer,
Ten years; and the hermit still was there.
Grown older, thinner, with shoulders bent,
He seldom forth from his shelter went.
But those he had helped in former days
With prayers and counsel, in thousand ways,
Were mindful of him, and brought him all
He needed now, for his wants were small.
And happy they were their best to give,
If only their mountain saint would live!
For in his living their lives were blest;
And if he longed for the perfect rest,
Patient he was, and content to wait,
While God should please, at the heavenly gate.
Beautiful now his face had grown,
But the beauty was something not his own, —
A solemn light from the blessèd land
Within whose border he soon must stand.
Little he said, but his every word
Was saved and treasured by those who heard,
To be a blessing in years to come,
When he should be theirs no more; and some
Who brought their little to help his need,
Went home with their souls enriched indeed!

One autumn morning he sat alone,
Outside his cell; and the warm sun shone
With a friendly light on his silver hair,
Through the branches, smooth and almost bare,
Of the beech-tree, now, like him, grown old.
The night before had been sharp and cold;
And the frost was white on leaf and stem
Wherever the rocks still shaded them,
But where the sunbeams had found their way,
In glittering, crystal drops it lay;
And fallen leaves at his feet were strewn,
Yellow and wet, over turf and stone.

He sat and dreamed, as the agèd do,
While, drifting backward, he lived anew
The years that never again should be.
A placid dream – for his soul was free
From all the troubles of long ago,
The doubts, the conflict he used to know!
Doubts of himself, and a contest grim
With evil spirits that strove for him.
Now all was over; that troubled day
Was like a storm that had passed away.

It seemed to him that his voyage was o'er;
His ship already had touched the shore.
Yet once he sighed; for he knew that he
Was not the man he had hoped to be,
And, looking back on his journey past,
He felt – what all of us feel at last!
And his soul was moved to pray once more
The prayer he had made twelve years before,
Only to know, before he died,
If he were worthy to stand beside
One of God's children, or great or small,
Who served Him truly; and that was all!

It was not long ere the angel came,
Who, gently calling the saint by name,
Said: "Come, for thou hast not far to go.
One step, and I to thine eyes will show
The very dwelling that shelters now
Two souls as near to the Lord as thou!"

The hermit rose; and with reverent tread
He followed on as the angel led.
Where a single cleft the rocks between
Gave passage out of the valley green
They passed, and stood in the pathway steep:
The rocks about them were sunken deep
In fern, and bramble, and purple heath,
That sloped away to the woods beneath;
While far below, and on every side,
Were endless mountains, and forests wide,
And scattered villages here and there,
That all looked near in the clear, dry air.
And here a church, with its belfry tall;
And there a convent, whose massive wall
Rose grave and stately above the trees.
The hermit willingly looked at these;
For hope they gave him that now, at least,
Some praying brother or toiling priest
Might be his mate; but it was not so!
The angel showed him, away below,
A slope where a little mountain-farm
Lay, all spread out in the sunshine warm,
Along the side of a wooded hill.
It looked so peaceful and far and still!
And when his eye on the farmhouse fell,
The angel said: "It is there they dwell!
Two women in heart and soul like thee.
Go, find them, Brother, and thou shalt see
All that thou art in their lives displayed."
Before the hermit an answer made,
The angel back to the skies had flown;
He stood in the rocky path alone.

Along the broken and winding way
Between the heath and the boulders gray;
Through lonely pastures that led him down
To oaken woods in their autumn brown;
And o'er the stones of a rippling stream,
The hermit passed, like one in a dream!
As though the vision, had made him strong:
He hardly knew that the way was long.

'T was almost noon when he came in sight
Of the little farmhouse, low and white:
A sheltered lane by the orchard led,
Where mountain ash, with its berries red,
Rose high above him; and brambles, grown
All over the rough, low wall of stone,
And tangled brier with thorny spray,
And feathered clematis, edged the way.
Then, turning shortly, a view he caught
Of both the women for whom he sought.

One, spinning, sat by the open door;
Her spindle danced on the worn stone floor.
The other, just from the forest come,
Had brought a bundle of branches home,
And spread them now in the sun to dry;
But both looked up as the saint drew nigh.
Then, on a sudden, the spindle stopped,
The branches all on the grass were dropped.
He heard them joyfully both exclaim,
"The Saint! The hermit!" And forth they came
To bid him welcome, and made request
That he would enter their house to rest.