My sweet little neighbor Bessie
I thought was busy with play,
When she turned, and brightly questioned,
"Say, what is the Easter day?"
"Has nobody told you, darling--
Do they 'Feed His Lambs' like this?"
I gathered her to my bosom,
And gave her a tender kiss.
Away went the cloak for dolly,
And away went dolly too,
As again she eagerly questioned,
With eyes so earnest and blue:
"Is it like birthdays or Christmas--
Or like Thanksgiving Day;
Do we just be good like Sunday,
Or run and frolic and play?
"I know there's flowers to it,
And that is most all I know;
I've got a lovely rosebush,
And a bud begins to grow."
Then in words most few and simple
I told to the gentle child
The story whose end is Easter--
The Life of the Undefiled.
Told of the manger of Bethlehem,
And about the glittering star
That guided the feet of the shepherds
Watching their flocks from afar,
Told of the lovely Mother,
And the Baby who was born
To live on the earth among us
Bearing its sorrows and scorn.
And then I told of the life He lived
Those wonderful thirty years,
Sad, weary, troubled, forsaken,
In this world of sin and tears,
Until I came to the shameful death
That the Lord of Glory died,
Then the tender little maiden
Uplifted her voice and cried.
I came at length to the garden
Where they laid His form away,
And then in the course of telling
I came to the Easter day--
The day when sorrowing women
Came there to the grave to moan,
And the lovely shining angels
Had rolled away the stone.
I think I made her understand
As well as childhood can,
About the glorified risen life
Of him who was God and Man.
This year the fair Easter lilies
Will gleam through a mist of tears,
For I shall not see sweet Bessie
In all of the coming years.
When the snow lay white and thickest
She quietly went away
To learn from the lips of angels
The meaning of Easter day.
We put on the little body
The garments worn in life,
And laid her deep in the frozen earth
Away from all noise and strife.
We took all the dainty playthings,
And the dollies new and old,
And placed them in a sacred spot
With a tress of shining gold.
Were it not for the star of Bethlehem,
And the dawn of Easter day,
It would be to us most bitter
To put our darling away.
But we know that as the hard brown earth
Holds lilies regal and white,
So the lifeless, empty, useless clay
Held once an angel of light.
And I hope on the Easter morning
To look from the grave away,
Thinking not of the child that _was_,
But the child that _is_ to-day.
EMILY BAKER SMALLE.
[Illustration: MY SWEET LITTLE NEIGHBOR BESSIE.]
_Volume 13, Number 24._ Copyright, 1886, by D. Lothrop & Co.
_April 17, 1886._