Sudden the cold airs swing.
Alone, aloud,
A verse of bells takes wing
And flies with the cloud.
UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN
Given, not lent,
And not withdrawn—once sent—
This Infant of mankind, this One,
Is still the little welcome Son.
New every year,
New-born and newly dear,
He comes with tidings and a song,
The ages long, the ages long.
Even as the cold
Keen winter grows not old;
As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,
And spring in the familiar green;
Sudden as sweet
Come the expected feet.
All joy is young, and new all art,
And He, too, Whom we have by heart.
A DEAD HARVEST
[IN KENSINGTON GARDENS]
Along the graceless grass of town
They rake the rows of red and brown,
Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay,
Delicate, neither gold nor grey,
Raked long ago and far away.
A narrow silence in the park;
Between the lights a narrow dark.
One street rolls on the north, and one,
Muffled, upon the south doth run.
Amid the mist the work is done.
A futile crop; for it the fire
Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.
So go the town’s lives on the breeze,
Even as the sheddings of the trees;
Bosom nor barn is filled with these.