'Tis Christmas Eve: the midnight chime
With mystic music fills the air,
And bears the news, "'Tis Christmas time,"
In sobbing wavelets everywhere.
Without, the weird wind whistles by;
Clothed is the ground with drifting snow;
Within, the yule logs, piled on high,
Their cheery warmth and comfort throw.
And in that cottage by the moor,
Where father, mother, mourning dwell.
The fire is bright, where hearts are sore
The chime to them a mournful knell.
"What's that?" the mother faintly said:
"Methought I heard a weary sigh."
The father sadly shook his head:
"Tis but the wind that wanders by."
Again the Dame, with drowsy start--
"It is no dream--I heard a groan."
Oh, the misgivings of her heart!
"'Tis but the music's murmuring moan."
They little thought, while thus they sighed,
That at their threshold, fainting, lay
The child for whom they would have died,
For whom they prayed both night and day.
'Twas bitter chill! The snowy fall
Came drifting slowly through the air,
And gently clothed with ghostly pall
The wasted form that slumbered there.
And all the live-long night she slept,
While breaking hearts within grew sore;
While father, mother, mourned and wept,
She lay in silence at the door.
Till, in the morning, all aglow,
The sun, in looking o'er the hill,
Like sculptured marble in the snow,
Saw Daisy, stony, stark, and still.
Then tenderly, in coffined state,
The hapless girl they grave-ward bore,
And, as they mourned her cruel fate,
Her tomb with flowers scattered o'er.
Leaving the broken-hearted child
To sleep in peace beneath the sod,
And he who first her heart beguiled
To cope with conscience and his God.