Let us watch till the first vague star, wife,
Has dawned o’er the glooming snow;
For if ever our lost ones may wander from the realms of their rest, I believe
That they seek us as visiting angels in the dusk of the Christmas Eve.
And our lonelier anguish of longing,
Our thrills of in tenser despair,
Are born—who may tell?—of a viewless embrace
Or a shadowy hand on our hair!
O, the darlings are near us to-night, wife, as we watch the soft hearth-glimmer weave
Strange pictures on ceiling and curtain in the dusk of the Christmas Eve!