Read Ebook: The Last Christmas Tree: An Idyl of Immortality by Allen James Lane

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Ebook has 90 lines and 7325 words, and 2 pages

"Had they realized how alone in the universe they were, would they not have turned to each other for happiness?"

"Would not all have helped each?"

"Would not each have helped all?"

"The longest of their rivers was the river of their own blood."

"If they could have caught it in the basin of some empty sea, they could have floated on it all their fleets of battleships."

Once in the night they spoke together:

"And all his gods, his many gods in many lands with many faces--they all sleep now in their ancient temples; it is at last the true twilight of the gods."

"They set shepherds over them. Then the shepherds declared themselves appointed by the Creator of the universe to lead other men as their sheep: now what difference is there between the sheep and the shepherds?"

"The shepherds lie with the sheep in the same white pasture. They were all sheep: they had no shepherd."

"And their sins were the sins of sheep, but the sins of silly sheep."

"Still, what think you became of all that men did? How could all that perish? It was so solid, so enduring; it was so splendid; it seemed worthy to be immortal."

"What became of Science? How could all that Science was come to naught?"

"And his Art--that inner light of himself which was Art? Do his pictures hang nowhere? Is his music never to be heard again?"

"And the love that was in him--was it but a blind force rising into him as the power of the clouds?"

"What became of the woman who threw herself away for love: did she find no one at last to weep at the feet of, no one who would free her soul from her body?"

"What became of the man who was false: did he ever find a Power that could make him true?"

"What became of the man who threw himself away in being true: did any Power ever make good to him his ruin?"

"The young soldier who poured out his life's blood for his country: was he never to have any country?"

On the long road of the ages here and there they loitered with their thoughts:

"But he did fill the world with a great light of himself, with the splendor of what he was."

"And yet it was but half his life, half his glory. He forever dwelt in less than half of the light of his race: the rest he himself put out yet never knew the darkness it left him in. More than half his light he put out in neglected childhood and in youth slain on the battlefield."

"All the greatest names up and down the terrible field of his history--there were just as many that he threw away: he dwelt in half the light of his race."

If there had been a clock to measure the hour it must now have been near midnight as it was reckoned in old human times. Suddenly the fir below spoke out hopefully:

"May they not after all be gathered elsewhere, strangely altered yet the same? Is some other star their safe habitation? Were they right, sheep that they were, in thinking themselves immortal? Are they now in some other world?"

"What know we? What knew he? That was the mystery."

The winds caught the word and carried it away:

"Mystery--mystery--mystery."

"Our fathers remembered the day when he went into the woods and cut down one of our people and took it into his house. On the evergreen he set the star: they were for his youth and his immortality. Around those emblems children pressed their faces and reaching out plucked gifts from the branches. The myriads and myriads of the children! What became of them?"

"Be still!" whispered the fir tree above. "At that moment, while you spoke, I felt the soft fingers of a child searching my boughs. Was not this what in human times they called Christmas Eve? There they are again, the fingers of a child!"

"Hearken!" whispered the fir below. "Down in the valley elfin horns are blowing and elfin drums beat. Do you not hear them--faint and far away. And that sound--was it not the bells of the reindeer! It passed: it was a wandering soul of Christmas."

"But they are all around me! They are all around you! Myriads and myriads are coming, are on the way toward us, the last of their Christmas trees. The souls of all children, wide-awake, are gathering about us ere we pass into the earth's sleep."

"The souls of the children visit us ere we sleep."

Not long after this the fir standing below spoke for the last time:

"Comrade, it is the end for me. The cap of snow is on my head. I follow all things."

The snow closed over it.

The other fir now stood alone. The snow crept higher and higher. Late in the long night it communed once more, solitary:

"I, then, close the train of earthly things. And I was the emblem of immortality; let the highest be the last to perish! Power, that put forth all things for a purpose, you have fulfilled, without explaining it, that purpose. I follow all things into their sleep."

The sun rose clear: all the mountain tops were white and cold and at peace.

The long war between the crystal and the planet was over: the snowflake had conquered.

The earth was dead.

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