And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt—”
Winter is here—Jeremy! Desolate winter! and the white fields are shivering in the sunlight—the old woods are solemn and sad—the voices of the air are hushed, and a quiet, save the moan of the wind, tells us that nature is passing through the dark valley, typical of death. We know that she will burst the stern fetters, and rising from her sleep, shall laugh again with infant glee in all her brooks; and spreading her motherly arms over the earth, will shower with parental liberality her treasures into our laps once more. Yet still we feel her silence—we are sad because of her desolation.
Winter is here—Jeremy! The long nights have come—the long, dark winter nights; and we draw the heavy curtains, and sit down in our warm parlors, carelessly to ponder and to dream. The light has gone out of the starry skies which bended over us in youth, and the dun clouds surge up from the horizon, and grow heavier and blacker as we muse—the Present is dreary! We turn back with memory, and over all the Past we wander. We remember the snug cottage nestled in the hills—the crackling faggots on the old hearth-stone—they have their young vivacity now, and the whole picture of our youthful home in this beautiful cloud-land rises gradually and expands before us. Faces all rosy with the light of the Immortals appear and vanish—bright wings of angels flash and fade to the view—and as the scene swells to our mental vision, the old familiar tones of the old familiar lips ring out their silver syllables again. We listen to the joyous laugh, as to the gushing of music, and almost feel the presence of soft hands in ours. The glad, beaming face of the young creature we first worshiped, with all the innocence of love’s first delusion, sparkles with the radiant beauty of those happy hours. The mother in that quiet chamber, with the dim lamp and the snowy curtains gleaming out from the corner, where we knelt at her side and uttered the evening prayer, lifts her white hands to our brow again, and says, “God bless and keep thee, my boy!” God help us now—how have we wandered since our souls felt that earnest benediction!
Winter is here! and the long, stormy nights have come, Jeremy—the nights of dread and desolation to the poor. The roar of the tempest has the voice of a demon out there! Do the moan and the howl, which sound so fearfully now, stir in the heart a thought of the perishing ones, who, in the midst of this splendid city, sit shivering, ragged, and starved? The pale brow and the hollow eye of the consumptive mother, sitting desolate amid her famishing ones, grow paler and sadder as the storm rolls on! Does her low wail of agony reach the ears of angels to-night? If not—God help her!
Scores of Christian churches stand grandly out in the storm, and bravely defy the tempest. They are tenantless, now, of the rosy lips and bright eyes which have looked appealingly to Heaven, and muttered prayers for the poor. Are willing hands employed to-night in confirmation of the Sunday’s sincerity? Or do cards, the piano, or the dance, lend a sorry confirmation of the utter hollowness of words? Is all the wealth and splendor of Gothic steeples and stained-glass—the majestic column—the lordly porch, and the sweeping aisle, but the magnificence of delusion?—mere monuments of the wickedness of man endeavoring to cheat the Creator with tinsel—with show, not worth—with words, not deeds! God help the homeless, Jeremy, where this is true! And help the disciple, too, who prays, but never thinks! God bless the humble Christian, who labors and cares for THE POOR!
“Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you