voices be the voices of peace."

The young Christ turned, for He heard Mary calling to the sheep and goats,
and knew that dayset was come and that in the valleys the gloaming was
already rising like smoke from the urns of the twilight. When He looked
back He saw by the pool neither the Son of Joy nor the Son of Sorrow, but
seven white doves were in the cedar beyond the pool, cooing in low ecstasy
of peace and awaiting through sleep and dreams the rose-red pathways of
the dawn. Down the long grey reaches of the ebbing day He saw seven birds
rising and falling on the wind, black as black water in caves, black as
the darkness of night in old pathless woods.

And that is how the first doves became white, and how the first crows
became black and were called by a name that means the clan of darkness,
the children of the wind.



THE CHILD JESUS IN THE GARDEN

AUTHOR UNKNOWN


Cold was the day, when in a garden bare,
Walked the Child Jesus, wrapt in holy thought;
His brow seemed clouded with a weight of care;
Calmness and rest from worldly things he sought.

Soon was his presence missed within his home;
His mother gently marked his every way;