CRADLE-SONG SONG FOR CHRISTMAS.
HILD, when on this night you lie
Softly, undisturbedly,
On as white a bed of down
As any child’s in London Town,
By a fire that all the night
Keeps your chamber warm and light:
Dream, if dreams are yet your law,
Your bed of down a bed of straw,
Only warmed and lighted by
One star in the open sky.
Sweet you’ll sleep then, for we know
Once a Child slept sweetly so.
THE MOON UPON HER WATCH-TOWER.
HE moon upon her watch-tower
With her golden eye
Guarded the quarters
East and West the sky.
Just as midnight
Was stepping past
One drew his first breath,
One drew his last.
The moon upon her watch-tower
Rang a soundless bell—
It might have been for welcome,
It might have been farewell.
A BURYING.
SEE the twelve fair months go by
Bearing a coffin shoulder-high.
What, laughing? Pretty pall-bearers,
Pitiless of the buried years,
Have ye never a tear to shed
Nor sigh to drop for the newly-dead,
Nor marble grief to mark his grave?—
No, none of these; but see, we have
Green seed to mingle with his earth.—
What, is not this a burying?—— Nay, a birth.