In The Yule-Log Glow Volume Iv Part 20

Oh, the black, dividing sea and alien plain!

Youth was cheap--wherefore we sold it. Gold was good--we hoped to hold it, And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.

Gray dusk behind the tamarisks--the parrots fly together-- As the sun is sinking slowly over home; And his last ray seems to mock us, shackled in a lifelong tether That drags us back, howe'er so far we roam.

Hard her service, poor her payment--she in ancient, tattered raiment-- India, she the grim stepmother of our kind.

If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter, The door is shut--we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks--the owls begin their chorus-- As the conches from the temple scream and bray.

With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless years before us, Let us honor, O, my brothers, Christmas Day!

Call a truce, then, to our labors--let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For, if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

_Rudyard Kipling._

CHRISTMAS VIOLETS.

Last night I found the violets You sent me once across the sea; From gardens that the winter frets, In summer lands they came to me.

Still fragrant of the English earth, Still humid from the frozen dew, To me they spoke of Christmas mirth, They spoke of England, spoke of you.

The flowers are scentless, black, and sere, The perfume long has pa.s.sed away; The sea whose tides are year by year Is set between us, chill and gray.

But you have reached a windless age, The haven of a happy clime; You do not dread the winter's rage, Although we missed the summer-time.

And like the flower's breath over sea, Across the gulf of time and pain, To-night returns the memory Of love that lived not all in vain.

_Andrew Lang._

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Season's Reveries]

d.i.c.kENS RETURNS ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

(A ragged girl in Drury Lane was heard to exclaim, "d.i.c.kens dead? Then will Father Christmas die, too?" June 9, 1870.)

"d.i.c.kens is dead!" Beneath that grievous cry London seemed s.h.i.+vering in the summer heat; Strangers took up the tale like friends that meet: "d.i.c.kens is dead!" said they, and hurried by; Street children stopped their games--they knew not why, But some new night seemed darkening down the street; A girl in rags, staying her way-worn feet, Cried, "d.i.c.kens dead? Will Father Christmas die?"

City he loved, take courage on thy way!

He loves thee still in all thy joys and fears: Though he whose smiles made bright thine eyes of gray-- Whose brave sweet voice, uttering thy tongueless years, Made laughters bubble through thy sea of tears-- Is gone, d.i.c.kens returns on Christmas Day!

_Theodore Watts._

A GRIEF AT CHRISTMAS.

FROM "IN MEMORIAM."

_First Year._

The time draws near the birth of Christ The moon is hid; the night is still; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round, From far and near, on mead and moor, Swell out and fail, as if a door Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind, That now dilate, and now decrease, Peace and good-will, good-will and peace, Peace and good-will, to all mankind.

This year I slept and woke with pain, I almost wish'd no more to wake, And that my hold on life would break Before I heard those bells again:

But they my troubled spirit rule, For they controll'd me when a boy; They bring me sorrow touched with joy, The merry merry bells of Yule.

With such compelling cause to grieve As daily vexes household peace, And chains regret to his decease, How dare we keep our Christmas-eve;

Which brings no more a welcome guest To enrich the threshold of our night With shower'd largess of delight, In dance and song and game and jest.

Yet go, and while the holly boughs Entwine the cold baptismal font, Make one wreath more for Use and Wont, That guard the portals of the house;

Old sisters of a day gone by, Gray nurses, loving nothing new; Why should they miss their yearly due Before their time? They too will die.

With trembling fingers did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth; A rainy cloud possess'd the earth, And sadly fell our Christmas-eve.

At our old pastimes in the hall We gambol'd, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all.

We paused: the winds were in the beech: We heard them sweep the winter land; And in a circle hand-in-hand Sat silent, looking each at each.

Then echo-like our voices rang; We sung, tho' every eye was dim, A merry song we sang with him Last year: impetuously we sang:

We ceased: a gentler feeling crept Upon us: surely rest is meet.

"They rest," we said, "their sleep is sweet,"

And silence follow'd, and we wept.

Our voices took a higher range; Once more we sang: "They do not die Nor lose their mortal sympathy, Nor change to us, although they change;

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail With gather'd power, yet the same Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, from veil to veil."

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, Draw forth the cheerful day from night: O Father, touch the east, and light The light that shone when Hope was born.

_Second Year._