“O my love!” cries Neil MacDonald;
“O my love! my love!” cries she;
And their lips are met together
Under the boughs of the holly tree.
Bitter the frost upon the moor-side,
Bitter the frost, but what recks he,
With his arms about Fiorna
Under the boughs of the holly tree!
“What is that I hear, beloved?
What is that dark shape I see?”
“You but dream, my Neil MacDonald,
Under the boughs of the holly tree.”
“He dreams not, your Neil MacDonald,
Sister, false as the falsest be!”
Hark!—the clan-call of MacGregor
Under the boughs of the holly tree!
Hark!—the clan-call of MacGregor!—
Every man has a weird to dree!
He has dreed his, Neil MacDonald,
Under the boughs of the holly tree.
The Star of Bethlehem
Out of the past’s black night
There shines one star
Whose light
Is more than countless constellations are.
High in the east it gleams;—
This radiant star
Whose beams
Are more to man than all the planets are.
Still be thy light displayed,
O Bethlehem star,
Nor fade
Until the circling systems no more are!