Old winter, with a rugged beard as gray
As the long moss upon the apple-tree;
Blue-lipt, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose,
Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way
Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows.
They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth,
Old winter! seated in thy great armed-chair,
Watching the children at their Christmas mirth;
Or circled by them as thy lips declare
Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire,
Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night;
Pausing at times to rouse the smouldering fire,
Or taste the old October brown and bright.
_Robert Southey._
DECEMBER.
And after him came next the chill December:
Yet he, through merry feasting which he made,
And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;
His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad:
Upon a shaggy-bearded goat he rode,
The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years,
They say, was nourisht by th' Idæan Mayd;
And in his hand a broad deep bowle he beares,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peeres.
_Edmund Spenser._
CHRISTMAS WEATHER IN SCOTLAND.
A winter day! the feather-silent snow
Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays
A fairy carpet on the barren lea.
No sun, yet all around that inward light
Which is in purity,--a soft moonshine,
The silvery dimness of a happy dream.
How beautiful! afar on moorland ways,
Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens,
(Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands
Stands like a mournful phantom,) hidden clouds
Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch
Is plumed and tasselled, till each heather stalk
Is delicately fringed. The sycamores,
Through all their mystical entanglement
Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green
Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air
In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone
Of limber bees that in the monk's-hood bells
House diligent; the imperishable glow
Of summer sunshine never more confessed
The harmony of nature, the divine,
Diffusive spirit of the beautiful.
Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed
Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run
The children in bewildering delight.
There is a living glory in the air,--
A glory in the hushed air, in the soul
A palpitating wonder hushed in awe.
Softly--with delicate softness--as the light
Quickens in the undawned east; and silently--
With definite silence--as the stealing dawn
Dapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall,
With indecisive motion eddying down,
The white-winged flakes,--calm as the sleep of sound,
Dim as a dream. The silver-misted air
Shines with mild radiance, as when through a cloud
Of semilucent vapor shines the moon.
I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun,
Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly,
Spreading fierce orange o'er the west) a scene
Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields,
Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked trees
Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges, thickly grown,
Twined into compact firmness, with no leaves,
Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun
To lustre touched the tremulous water-drops.
Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do
In fabling poem and provincial song,
The ploughboy shouted to his reeking train;
And at the clamor, from a neighboring field
Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks
More clamorous; and through the frosted air,
Blown wildly here and there without a law,
They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks.
Red sunset brightened all things; streams ran red
Yet coldly; and before the unwholesome east,
Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down
The hill, with a dry whistle, by the fire
In chamber twilight rested I at home.
But now what revelation of fair change,
O Giver of the seasons and the days!
Creator of all elements, pale mists,
Invisible great winds and exact frost!
How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow?
What though we know its essence and its birth,
Can quick expound, in philosophic wise,
The how, and whence, and manner of its fall;
Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life--
The life that is in snow! The virgin-soft
And utter purity of the down-flake,
Falling upon its fellow with no sound!
Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes
Fall gently, with the gentleness of love!
The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft,
Pure uniformity is gently born
Warmth and rich mildness, fitting the dead roots
For the resuscitation of the spring.
Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale,
Calmed every wind and loaded every grove;
And looking through the implicated boughs
I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow,
Refined by morning-footed frost so still,
Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush
Breathes through the air, it seems the fairy glen
About some phantom palace, pale abode
Of fabled Sleeping Beauty. Songless birds
Flit restlessly about the breathless wood,
Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm;
And as they quickly spring on nimble wing
From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls
Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear
Outshining of all purity, which takes
The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam.
No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud.
The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloud
The housewife's voice is heard with doubled sound.
I have not words to speak the perfect show;
The ravishment of beauty; the delight
Of silent purity; the sanctity
Of inspiration which o'erflows the world,
Making it breathless with divinity.
So thus with fair delapsion softly falls
The sacred shower; and when the shortened day
Dejected dies in the low streaky west,
The rising moon displays a cold blue night,
And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice.
Thicker than bees, about the waxing moon
Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills
Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night,
Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs
Black-waving, solemn. O'er the Luggie-stream
Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps
With elfin feet around each stone and reed,
Working fine masonry; while o'er the dam,
Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear
And nitrous air. All the dark, wintry hours
Sharply the winds from the white level moors
Keen whistle. Timorous in his homely bed
The school-boy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolves
Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books
He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull
Howling. And when at last the languid dawn
In wind redness re-illumines the east
With ineffectual fire, an intense blue
Severely vivid o'er the snowy hills
Gleams chill, while hazy, half-transparent clouds
Slow-range the freezing ether of the west.
Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts
Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling
A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day:
While grandfather over the well-watched fire
Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.
Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls,
And to the polished smoothness curlers come
Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours
The clinking stones are slid from wary hands,
And Barleycorn, best wine for surly airs,
Bites i' th' mouth, and ancient jokes are cracked.
And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun,
Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glow
Sinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds,
His flaming retinue, with dark'ning glow
Diverge! The broom is brandished as the sign
Of conquest, and impetuously they boast
Of how this shot was played,--with what a bend
Peculiar--the perfection of all art--
That stone came rolling grandly to the Tee
With victory crowned, and flinging wide the rest
In lordly crash! Within the village inn
They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff
The beaded Usqueba with sugar dashed.
O, when the precious liquid fires the brain
To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth
And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps
Of horny hands o'er tables of rough oak!
What singing of Lang Syne till tear-drops shine,
And friendships brighten as the evening wanes!
_David Gray._
SIR GALAHAD.
When on my goodly charger borne
Thro' dreaming towns I go,
The cock crows ere the Christmas morn,
The streets are dumb with snow.
The tempest crackles on the leads
And, ringing, springs from brand and mail;
But o'er the dark a glory spreads,
And gilds the driving hail.
_Lord Tennyson._
[Illustration: "Too Happy, Happy Tree"]
A THOUGHT FOR THE TIME.
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.
In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.
Ah! would't were so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passéd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbéd sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.
_John Keats._
BALLADE OF THE WINTER FIRESIDE.
An ingle-blaze and a steaming jug;
A lamp and a lazy book;
And, deep in a doubled, downy rug
Your feet to the warmest nook.
And wherever the eye may crook,
A print or a tumbled tome--
For the kettle sings on the blackened hook,
And hey! for the sweets of home!
What though the traveller toil and tug
Where sleety drifts be shook?
What though i' the churchyard graves be dug;
And sweethearts be forsook?
A hearth, and a careful cook,
And cares may go or come!
For the kettle sings on the blackened hook,
And hey! for the sweets of home!
But--curtains down and an elbow hug;
A maid that comes to a look;
A boy to carry a rimy log
From over the frozen brook--
And, a fig for the cawing rook,
Or ghosts in the ruddy gloam!
For the kettle sings on the blackened hook,
And hey! for the sweets of home!
_Envoi._
And yet--or I be mistook--
To a friend the cup should foam;
For the kettle sings on the blackened hook,
And hey! for the sweets of home!
_H. S. M._
A CATCH BY THE HEARTH.
Sing we all merrily
Christmas is here,
The day that we love best
Of days in the year.
Bring forth the holly,
The box, and the bay,
Deck out our cottage
For glad Christmas-day.
Sing we all merrily,
Draw round the fire,
Sister and brother,
Grandson and sire.
SALLY IN OUR ALLEY.
When Christmas comes about again,
O then I shall have money;
I'll hoard it up, and box it all,
I'll give it to my honey:
I would it were ten thousand pound,
I'd give it all to Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
_H. Carey._
LITTLE MOTHER.
A GERMAN FANCY.
Little mother, why must you go?
The children play by the white bedside,
The world is merry for Christmas-tide,
And what would you do in the falling snow?
They sleep by now in the ember-glow,
Hushed to dream in a child's delight,
For wonders happen on Christmas night:
Little mother, why must you go?
The flakes fall and the night grows late.
Oh, slender figure and small wet feet,
Where do you haste through the lamp-lit street,
And out and away by the fortress gate?
It is drear and chill where the dear lie dead,
Yet light enough with the snow to see;
But what would you do with that Christmas-tree
At the tiny mound that is baby's bed?
A Christmas-tree with its tinsel gold!
Oh, how should I not have a thought for thee,
When the children sleep in their dream of glee,
Poor little grave but a twelvemonth old!
Little mother, your heart is brave,
You kiss the cross in the drifted snow,
Kneel for a moment, rise and go
And leave your tree by the tiny grave.
While the living slept by the warm fireside,
And flakes fell white on your Christmas toy,
I think that its angel wept for joy
Because you remembered the one that died.
_Rennell Rodd._
OCCIDENT AND ORIENT.
How will it dawn, the coming Christmas-day?
A northern Christmas, such as painters love,
And kinsfolk shaking hands but once a year,
And dames who tell old legends by the fire?
Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearléd ice,
Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,
And makes the old man merry with the young
Through the short sunshine, through the longer night?
Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,
And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves,
And rose-buds mouldering on the dripping porch;
On twilight, without rise or set of sun,
Till beetles drone along the hollow lane
And round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats
Hawk the pale moths of winter? Welcome then,
At best, the flying gleam, the flying shower,
The rain-pools glittering on the long white roads,
And shadows sweeping on from down to down
Before the salt Atlantic gale! Yet come
In whatsoever garb, or gay or sad,
Come fair, come foul, 'twill still be Christmas-day.
How will it dawn, the coming Christmas-day?
To sailors lounging on the lonely deck
Beneath the rushing trade-wind? or, to him
Who by some noisome harbor of the east
Watches swart arms roll down the precious bales,
Spoils of the tropic forests; year by year
Amid the din of heathen voices, groaning,
Himself half heathen? How to those--brave hearts!
Who toil with laden loins and sinking stride
Beside the bitter wells of treeless sands
Toward the peaks which flood the ancient Nile,
To free a tyrant's captives? How to those--
New patriarchs of the new-found under world--
Who stand like Jacob, on the virgin lawns,
And count their flocks' increase? To them that day
Shall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze
Of full midsummer sun: to them that morn
Gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft
Shall tell of naught but summer; but to them,
Ere yet, unwarned by carol or by chime,
They spring into the saddle, thrills may come
From that great heart of Christendom which beats
Round all the worlds; and gracious thoughts of youth;
Of steadfast folk, who worship God at home,
Of wise words, learnt beside their mother's knee;
Of innocent faces, upturned once again
In awe and joy to listen to the tale
Of God made man, and in a manger laid:
May soften, purify, and raise the soul
From selfish cares, and growing lust of gain
And phantoms of this dream, which some call life,
Toward eternal facts; for here or there
Summer or winter, 'twill be Christmas-day.
Blest day, which aye reminds us year by year
What 'tis to be a man: to curb and spurn
The tyrant in us: that ignobler self
Which boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute,
And owns no good save ease, no ill save pain,
No purpose, save its share in that wild war
In which, through countless ages, living things
Compete in internecine greed--ah, God!
Are we as creeping things, which have no Lord?
That we are brutes, great God, we know too well:
Apes daintier-featured; silly birds who flaunt
Their plumes, unheeding of the fowler's step;
Spiders who catch with paper, not with webs;
Tigers who slay with cannon and sharp steel,
Instead of teeth and claws; all these we are.
Are we no more than these save in degree?
No more than these; and born but to compete--
To envy and devour, like beast or herb
Mere fools of nature; puppets of strong lusts,
Taking the sword to perish with the sword
Upon the universal battle-field,
Even as the things upon the moor outside?
The heath eats up green grass and delicate flowers,
The pine eats up the heath, the grub the pine,
The finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch;
And man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey,
Eats what he lists;--the strong eat up the weak;
The many eat the few; great nations, small;
And he who cometh in the name of all
Shall, greediest, triumph by the greed of all;
And armed by his own victims, eat up all.
While even out of the eternal heavens
Looks patient down the great magnanimous God
Who, Maker of all worlds, did sacrifice
All to himself. Nay, but himself to one
Who taught mankind on that first Christmas-day
What 'twas to be a man: to give not take;
To serve not rule; to nourish not devour;
To help, not crush; if need, to die, not live.
Oh, blessed day which givest the eternal lie
To self and sense and all the brute within;
Oh, come to us, amid this war of life,
To hall and hovel, come, to all who toil
In senate, shop, or study; and to those
Who sundered by the wastes of half a world
Ill warned, and sorely tempted, ever face
Nature's brute powers and men unmanned to brutes,
Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas-day.
Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem,
The kneeling shepherds and the Babe Divine,
And keep them men indeed, fair Christmas-day.
_Charles Kingsley._
THE BLESSED DAY.
Awake, my soul, and come away:
Put on thy best array;
Lest if thou longer stay
Thou lose some minutes of so blest a day.
Go run
And bid good-morrow to the sun;
Welcome his safe return
To Capricorn,
And that great morn
Wherein a God was born,
Whose story none can tell
But He whose every word's a miracle.
To-day Almightiness grew weak;
The Word itself was mute and could not speak.
That Jacob's star which made the sun
To dazzle if he durst look on,
Now mantled o'er in Bethlehem's night,
Borrowed a star to show Him light!
He that begirt each zone,
To whom both poles are one,
Who grasped the zodiac in His hand
And made it move or stand,
Is now by nature man,
By stature but a span;
Eternity is now grown short;
A King is born without a court;
The water thirsts; the fountain's dry;
And life, being born, made apt to die.
_Chorus._
Then let our praises emulate and vie
With His humility!
Since He's exiled from skies
That we might rise,--
From low estate of men
Let's sing Him up again!
Each man wind up his heart
To bear a part
In that angelic choir and show
His glory high as He was low.
Let's sing towards men good-will and charity,
Peace upon earth, glory to God on high!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
_Jeremy Taylor._
CHRISTMAS IN CUBA.
On the hill-side droops the palm,
The air is faint with flowers,
In the wondrous, dream-like calm
Of tropical morning hours.
Like a mirror lies the bay,
And softly on its breast,
In the glow of coming day,
The vessels sway at rest.
Through the tremulous air I hear
The chiming of Christmas bells,
As the sun rises burning and clear
Over the ocean swells.
And birds with singing sweet
Proclaim the glorious morn
When angels thronged to greet
The Christ-child newly born.
But with strong desire I sigh
For a frozen land afar,
Under a cold gray sky,
Where glistens the northern star;
Where a winter of rest and sleep
Embraces mountain and plain,
And meadows their secret keep
To tell it in spring again.
Dearer the pine-clad hills
And valleys wrapped in snow,
Dearer the ice-bound rills,
And roaring winds that blow,
Than this tropical calm, and perfume
Of jasmine and lily and rose,
These flowers that always bloom,
This nature without repose.
Alas for the delight
Of a distant fireside,
Where loving hearts unite
To keep this Christmas-tide!
Where the hemlock and the pine
Sweet memories recall,
As their fragrant boughs entwine
Around the panelled wall.
O Christ-child pure and fair,
Draw near and dwell with me;
Thy love is everywhere,
On land and on the sea.
I grasp Thy saving hand,
And while to Thee I pray,
Alone, in a foreign land,
I bless this Christmas-day.
_Helen S. Conant._
FAREWELL TO CHRISTMAS.
Now farewell, good Christmas,
Adieu and adieu,
I needs now must leave thee,
And look for a new;
For till thou returnest,
I linger in pain,
And I care not how quickly
Thou comest again.
But ere thou departest,
I purpose to see
What merry good pastime
This day will show me;
For a king of the wassail
This night we must choose,
Or else the old customs
We carelessly lose.
The wassail well spiced
About shall go round,
Though it cost my good master
Best part of a pound:
The maid in the buttery
Stands ready to fill
Her nappy good liquor
With heart and good-will.
And to welcome us kindly
Our master stands by,
And tells me in friendship
One tooth is a-dry.
Then let us accept it
As lovingly, friends;
And so for this Twelfth-day
My carol here ends.
_New Christmas Carols, A.D. 1661._
THE NEW YEAR.
Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himself's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look, as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall,
Than direst mischiefs can befall.
But stay! but stay! methinks my sight,
Better inform'd by clearer light,
Discerns sereneness in that brow,
That all contracted seem'd but now.
His reversed face may show distaste,
And frown upon the ills are past;
But that which this way looks is clear,
And smiles upon the new-born year.
He looks, too, from a place so high,
The year lies open to his eye;
And all the moments open are
To the exact discoverer.
Yet more and more he smiles upon
The happy revolution.
Why should we then suspect or fear
The influences of a year,
So smiles upon us the first morn,
And speaks us good as soon as born?
Plague on't! the last was ill enough,
This cannot but make better proof;
Or, at the worst, as we brush'd through
The last, why so we may this too;
And then the next in reason should
Be superexcellently good:
For the worst ills (we daily see)
Have no more perpetuity
Than the best fortunes that do fall;
Which also bring us wherewithal
Longer their being to support
Than those do of the other sort;
And who has one good year in three,
And yet repines at destiny,
Appears ungrateful in the case,
And merits not the good he has.
Then let us welcome the new guest
With lusty brimmers of the best;
Mirth always should good fortune meet,
And render e'en disaster sweet;
And though the princess turn her back,
Let us but line ourselves with sack,
We better shall by far hold out
Till the next year she face about.
_Charles Cotton._
A HAPPY NEW YEAR.
The old year now away is fled,
The new year it is enteréd,
Then let us now our sins down-tread
And joyfully all appear.
Let's merry be this holiday,
And let us now both sport and play,
Hang sorrow, let's cast care away:
God send you a happy New Year!
For Christ's circumcision this day we keep,
Who for our sins did often weep;
His hands and feet were wounded deep,
And His blessed side with a spear.
His head they crownéd then with thorn,
And at Him they did laugh and scorn,
Who for to save our souls was born:
God send us a happy New Year!
And now with New-Year's gifts each friend
Unto each other they do send;
God grant we may all our lives amend,
And that the truth may appear.
Now like the snake cast off your skin
Of evil thoughts and wicked sin,
And to amend this New Year begin:
God send us a happy New Year!
And now let all the company
In friendly manner all agree,
For we are here welcome, all may see,
Unto this jolly good cheer.
I thank my master and my dame,
The which are founders of the same;
To eat, to drink now is no shame:
God send us a merry New Year!
Come, lads and lasses every one,
Jack, Tom, Dick, Bessy, Mary, and Joan,
Let's cut the meat up unto the bone,
For welcome you need not fear;
And here for good liquor we shall not lack,
It will whet my brains and strengthen my back;
This jolly good cheer it must go to wrack:
God send us a merry New Year!
Come, give's more liquor when I do call,
I'll drink to each one in this hall;
I hope that so loud I must not bawl,
But unto me lend an ear;
Good fortune to my master send,
And to my dame which is our friend,
Lord bless us all, and so I end:
God send us a happy New Year!
_New Christmas Carols, A.D. 1642._
NEW-YEAR'S GIFTS.
The young men and maids on New-Year's day,
Their loves they will present
With many a gift both fine and gay,
Which gives them true content:
And though the gift be great or small,
Yet this is the custom still,
Expressing their loves in ribbons and gloves,
It being their kind good-will.
Young bachelors will not spare their coin,
But thus their love is shown;
Young Richard will buy a bodkin fine
And give it honest Joan.
There's Nancy and Sue with honest Prue,
Young damsels both fair and gay,
Will give to the men choice presents again
For the honor of New-Year's day.
Fine ruffs, cravats of curious lace,
Maids give them fine and neat;
For this the young men will them embrace
With tender kisses sweet:
And give them many pleasant toys
To deck them fine and gay,
As bodkins and rings with other fine things
For the honor of New-Year's day.
It being the first day of the year,
To make the old amends,
All those that have it will dress good cheer,
Inviting all their friends
To drink great James's royal health,
As very well subjects may,
With many healths more, which we have store,
For the honor of New-Year's day.
_A Cabinet of Choice Jewels, A.D. 1688._
THE END OF THE PLAY.