Our students at Mount Hope spend a lot of time studying great men of the western world. This classical year in particular, our classrooms are full of the stories of Achilles and Hector, Odysseus and Aeneas, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and too many more to name. Studying these illustrious figures makes for excellent discussion of what, exactly, made each one great. Was it a particular virtue? Remarkable skill, maybe in rhetoric or in military tactics? A perfect storm of historical events that set the guy up for success? Whatever the case, there’s a lot to be learned from the skills and virtues of famous men.
At the same time, our students also learn that not all virtue is bright and shiny. They know, for instance, that keeping the Fourth Commandment—listening to their parents or doing their homework—doesn’t necessarily look or feel very glorious. Getting an ice pack for somebody, helping a kindergartener tie his shoe, or being patient with a classmate will not earn one a place in the history books. These good deeds might not be recognized by anyone at all. But our students know the blessing of being virtuous anyway. They hear all the time in chapel and religion class how God exalts the lowly and works through humble means to accomplish His work. Some of the 3rd-5th students, when finishing a book of Greek myths, loved the characters of Baucis and Philemon—a humble old couple who simply showed hospitality to strangers—as much or more than mighty Hercules or daring Bellerophon. It’s wonderful to know that our students are being formed to think this way.
And maybe it isn’t surprising that Christians, especially, see the beauty of lowly virtue. Our Lord Himself came humble and despised; and yet He is virtue itself, because He is love itself. The cross, though appearing weak and foolish, is His glory and our salvation. There is nothing more beautiful in all the world. So when we see reflections of this lowly virtue in other places, whether in stories or in everyday life, we recognize a hidden beauty and glory far greater than Achilles’ triumph in battle or Alexander’s conquest of the world.
As in my last article, Christina Rossetti has a poem for this! “The Lambs of Grasmere” captures the praise of humble virtue in a most lovely and moving story. Once, during a disastrous winter in Grasmere (a village in northwestern England), the pastureland had flooded and the flocks couldn’t eat. Many sheep died. The newborn lambs, without mothers to nurse them, were left to perish from hunger. Their shepherds then undertook the arduous task of saving them from starvation. Here is the text of the poem:
The upland flocks grew starved and thinned:
Their shepherds scarce could feed the lambs
Whose milkless mothers butted them,
Or who were orphaned of their dams.
The lambs athirst for mother’s milk
Filled all the place with piteous sounds:
Their mothers’ bones made white for miles
The pastureless wet pasture grounds.
Day after day, night after night,
From lamb to lamb the shepherds went,
With teapots for the bleating mouths
Instead of nature’s nourishment.
The little shivering gaping things
Soon knew the step that brought them aid,
And fondled the protecting hand,
And rubbed it with a woolly head.
Then, as the days waxed on to weeks,
It was a pretty sight to see
These lambs with frisky heads and tails
Skipping and leaping on the lea,
Bleating in tender, trustful tones,
Resting on rocky crag or mound,
And following the beloved feet
That once had sought for them and found.
These very shepherds of their flocks,
These loving lambs so meek to please,
Are worthy of recording words
And honor in their due degrees:
So I might live a hundred years,
And roam from strand to foreign strand,
Yet not forget this flooded spring
And scarce-saved lambs of Westmoreland.
In the final stanza, Rossetti praises the shepherds (and, interestingly, the trusting lambs too) as “worthy of recording words / And honor in their due degrees.” What appeared to be drudgery—carrying out hot teapots of milk, or patiently trusting the shepherds’ care—was actually glorious, worthy of memory and verse. And the hardship did not last forever. When grassy pastures finally returned, the lambs not only frolicked about in health and happiness, but they loved and trusted the shepherds more than ever, who “once had sought for them and found.”
However humble and dull our daily exercise of virtue may seem, it is worthy of praise, because it reflects the love of Christ. Thank God that our greatness isn’t in being an Alexander or a Hannibal, but in being His own lamb—loving Him, loving one other, and being saved by His great love.
In Christ,
Miss Hahn
Painting: Shepherd with Sheep by Thomas Sidney Cooper, 1868
