THE HAPPY TIME
Two gloomy scenes may be,
Or count you three:
A building hope all crushed at morn,
A bridal day in clouds of rain,
And night that keeps a mother's pain
For tidings of a child forlorn.
Of happy times count more,
Admit these four:
A flower of promise rich with day,
A son with victories that wear
A halo on his mother's way:
And friends whose hearts ring like a chime
Across the world at Christmas time.
THE TIME OF TRUCE
Two young lads from childhood up
Drank together friendship's cup:
Joe was glad with Bill at play,
Bill was home to Joe alway.
On their friendship came the blight
Of a little thoughtless fight;
Then, alas! each passing day
Farther bore these friends away.
There was grief in either heart,
Bleeding deep from sorrow's dart,
When in thoughtfulness again
Each beheld the other's pain.
But the shades of night are furled
When the morning takes the world,
And the Christmas days of peace
Make our little quarrels cease.
Bill and Joe on Christmas Day
Met as in the olden way;
Bill put out his hand to Joe,—
It was Christmas Day, you know.
Bill and Joe are friends again,
And to them long years remain;
Time may take them far away,
They keep Christmas every day.
BETHLEHEM
O ye who sail Potomac's even tide
To Vernon's shades, our Chieftain's hallowed mound;
Or who at distant shrines high paeans sound
In Alfred's cult, old England's morning pride;
Or seek Versailles, conceited as a bride,
With garish memories of kins strewn round;
Or lay your spirit's cheek on Forum ground,
For here a mighty Caesar lived and died:
To these and other stones, O ye who speed,
Since there, forsooth, a prince was passing great,
More zealous let your heart's adoring heed
The Child most Royal in a crib's estate.
No poor so poor, no king more king than He:
Come, better pilgrims, to this mystery.