“There’s sweetness in thy words, such sweetness as
Wells up from fragrant things tho’ they be dead,
A violet’s breath lives longer than its bloom,
So in this tender wish of thine I read
Once on a time thy love was mine.”
Jacynth:
“And Peace—
Sweet Peace, whose softest note can drown the cry
Of bitterness—Oh! I would have her keep
Thy company, go with thee all the day,
Sleep on thine heart from dusk till rosy dawn,
And all such pretty joys be borne to thee
As come with fragrant breath, and dewy lips,
And subtle tender touch, to keep our love
Towards God and man a warm and living thing.
A Happy Year!
A Happy, Happy Year!”
Derwent:
“Nay, from the velvet heart of flower in bloom
Comes this last wave of sweetness;
My Jacynth,
Love is not dead in that white breast of thine,
O glad bells! ring ye out to all the world,
A Happy Year!
A Happy, Happy Year!”
Her First Sleigh-ride
ALL night the snowflakes sought the earth—the snowflakes big and white—
They covered up the meadows brown, they bent the bushes slight!
At morn the sun with wondrous pomp came climbing o’er the hill,
And lent a thousand beauties to the world so fair and still.
Ruth at the old manse window stood, a wonder in her gaze,
“The earth was turned to fairyland” she cried out in amaze!
Her cousin Ronald laughed and said, “This is no fairyland,
But a Canadian landscape clothed in beauty wild and grand.”
“In Georgia you have naught like this—ice, snow and wintery gale—
The southern air is warm and soft, the southern girls are pale,”
Not pale the face she turned to him, in each soft cheek the red
Flamed up, “You need not say a word against the south,” she said,
“I envy not your rosy maids their color, or their land,
I love the warmth of our blue sky, the bloom on every hand,
Far more than all your snow-capped hills, and forests ghostly white,
And mournful winds that love to play a dirge both day and night!”
Thereat his father—kindly soul as ever put to sleep
Both saint and sinner in the pew, with sermon long and deep—
Bade him not tease a sister so, “Come, make your peace straightway,
Then harness and bring out Black Bess, for on this glorious day
My Ruth shall have a rare, good treat—a sleigh-ride, do you hear?
The air will warm up towards noon, for see the sky is clear,
Come, you should love each other well, so near of kin are you,
My child, in Ronald you shall have a brother good and true.”
“No brother I,” the graceless youth did hastily exclaim,
And Ruth, affronted, bade him wait until she made such claim,
Black Bess came prancing from her stall, so smooth, so shiny-skinned,
Give her the rein and she would race as swiftly as the wind,
She tossed her slender head and pawed the snow-drifts as she stood,
And shook her bells until they chimed, so eager was her mood,
“Whoa, Bess, be patient for awhile?” said Ronald, as with care
He tucked the robes so thick and warm about his cousin fair.