Works

A BUNCH of Christmas Roses, dear,
To greet my fairest child,
I plucked them in my garden where
The drifting snow lay piled.

I cannot bring thee violets dear,
Or cowslips growing wild,...

Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky...

Well for youth to seek the strong,
Beautiful, and brave!
We, the old, who walk along
Gently to the grave,
Only pay our court to thee,
Child of all Eternity!

We are old who once were young,...

I may not go to-night to Bethlehem,
Nor follow star-directed ways, nor tread
The paths wherein the shepherds walked, that led
To Christ, and peace, and God's good will to men.
...

Let working-clothes be laid aside,
And Industry in festal garb arrayed;
Let busy brain and hand from toil and trade
Relax at Christmas-tide.

As moments pass by dial, so...

How sweet the brazen belfries chime
Across the hills and through the dales,
And o'er the breasts of meadowed vales,
Beneath the smiles of Christmas time!
Rough sorrow's thorny fingers grow...

Say, I like toys,
Christmas toys.
Remember when we were boys
Long ago?
Then you were a kid
Not a beau.
And on Christmas Day,
Oh, say,
We got up in the dark
And had a jolly lark...

I count my treasures o'er with care.--
The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.

Long years ago this holy time,
My little one--my all to me--...

A CAROL.


Oh, happy Christmas, full of blessings, come!
Now bid our discords cease;
Here give the weary ease;
Let the long-parted meet again in peace;
Bring back the far-away;...

Columbus is an easy one
To draw, for when the picture's done,
Where is the captious critic who
Can say the likeness is not true?

Christ never did so great a work but there
His human nature did in part appear;
Or ne'er so mean a piece but men might see
Therein some beams of His Divinity:
So that in all He did there did combine...

Our Boys Who Have Gone to the Front

...

One birth our Saviour had; the like none yet
Was, or will be a second like to it.

Christ took our nature on Him, not that He
'Bove all things loved it for the purity:
No, but He dress'd Him with our human trim,
Because our flesh stood most in need of Him.

Christ, He requires still, wheresoe'er He comes
To feed or lodge, to have the best of rooms:
Give Him the choice; grant Him the nobler part
Of all the house: the best of all's the heart.

Christ was not sad, i' th' garden, for His own
Passion, but for His sheep's dispersion.

Justly our dearest Saviour may abhor us,
Who hath more suffered by us far, than for us.

Thy former coming was to cure
My soul's most desp'rate calenture;
Thy second advent, that must be
To heal my earth's infirmity.

Christ, when He hung the dreadful cross upon,
Had, as it were, a dereliction
In this regard, in those great terrors He
Had no one beam from God's sweet majesty.

'Twas a score of years since I'd heard the pipes,
But the other night I heard them;
There are sweet old memories in my heart,
And the music woke and stirred them.

In the armories, at the big parade...