
In a quiet evening tucked away in his mother’s parlor, a young narrator drifts between the glow of a Christmas tree and the turning of the year. While the soft chime of bells and a familiar carol fill the air, an unexpected visitor steps into the room—an enigmatic messenger who seems to arrive straight from a divine proclamation. His presence is both humble and majestic, and the words he speaks ripple through the listener’s thoughts like vivid photographs on the walls.
The messenger’s discourse turns into a rapid fire of questions about courage, duty, and the weight of one’s deeds. He asks whether the listener has ever shouldered burdens, faced battles, or kept a moral flame alive against the winds of life. Overwhelmed yet fascinated, the narrator kneels, pleading for the impossible demands to be softened, yearning for a bridge between his modest self and the soaring expectations laid before him.
Language
da
Duration
~18 minutes (17K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by MFR, Palle Christoffersen, Jens Sadowski, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
Release date
2019-12-20
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1840–1921
Remembered less as a literary celebrity than as a spirited Danish educator, he wrote with the same moral seriousness and warmth that shaped his school life. His best-known surviving book, Et Juledigt, carries a reflective, old-fashioned Christmas mood.
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