"MacDONALD, George - The Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

She was a curious child, with black, glittering eyes, and dark hair; at the
mercy of every wandering wind; a frolicsome, daring girl, who laughed more than
she smiled. She was generally in attendance on her sister, and was always
finding and bringing her strange things. She never pulled a primrose, but she
knew the haunts of all the orchis tribe, and brought from them bees and
butterflies innumerable, as offerings to her sister. Curious moths and
glow-worms were her greatest delight; and she loved the stars, because they were
like the glow-worms. But the change had affected her too; for her sister saw
that her eyes had lost their glittering look, and had become more liquid and
transparent. And from that time she often observed that her gaiety was more
gentle, her smile more frequent, her laugh less bell-like; and although she was
as wild as ever, there was more elegance in her motions, and more music in her
voice. And she clung to her sister with far greater fondness than before.
The land reposed in the embrace of the warm summer days. The clouds of heaven
nestled around the towers of the castle; and the hearts of its inmates became
conscious of a warm atmosphere-of a presence of love. They began to feel like
the children of a household, when the mother is at home. Their faces and forms
grew daily more and more beautiful, till they wondered as they gazed on each
other. As they walked in the gardens of the castle, or in the country around,
they were often visited, especially the eldest sister, by sounds that no one
heard but themselves, issuing from woods and waters; and by forms of love that
lightened out of flowers, and grass, and great rocks. Now and then the young
children would come in with a slow, stately step, and, with great eyes that
looked as if they would devour all the creation, say that they had met the
father amongst the trees, and that he had kissed them; "And," added one of them
once, "I grew so big!" But when the others went out to look, they could see no
one. And some said it must have been the brother, who grew more and more
beautiful, and loving, and reverend, and who had lost all traces of hardness, so
that they wondered they could ever have thought him stern and harsh. But the
eldest sister held her peace, and looked up, and her eyes filled with tears.
"Who can tell," thought she, "but the little children know more about it than
we?"
Often, at sunrise, might be heard their hymn of praise to their unseen father,
whom they felt to be near, though they saw him not. Some words thereof once
reached my ear through the folds of the music in which they floated, as in an
upward snowstorm of sweet sounds. And these are some of the words I heard-but
there was much I seemed to hear which I could not understand, and some things
which I understood but cannot utter again.
"We thank thee that we have a father, and not a maker; that thou hast begotten
us, and not moulded us as images of clay; that we have come forth of thy heart,
and have not been fashioned by thy hands. It must be so. Only the heart of a
father is able to create. We rejoice in it, and bless thee that we know it. We
thank thee for thyself. Be what thou art-our root and life, our beginning and
end, our all in all. Come home to us. Thou livest; therefore we live. In thy
light we see. Thou art-that is all our song."
Thus they worship, and love, and wait. Their hope and expectation grow ever
stronger and brighter, that one day, ere long, the Father will show Himself
amongst them, and thenceforth dwell in His own house for evermore. What was once
but an old legend has become the one desire of their hearts.
And the loftiest hope is the surest of being fulfilled.