THE LEGEND OF THE SAINTFOIN

"The country folk do hold this plant to be in very truth the hay that lay in the manger of Bethlehem. And though it were midwinter, the legend tells, it blossomed red."

OLD HERBAL.

ELCHIOR, Gaspar, and Balthazar,

M Led aright by the beckoning star

Come where the gazing shepherds are,
(I heard a Maid lullaby sing.)

Come where the stable's shelter stands,
A maiden holds in her mother's hands,
A young child wrapped in swaddling bands,
(Now hush thee, my heavenly King.)

Joseph, come rede me this thing, she said,
The hay that lies at my young son's head,
Hath blossomed anew as it were not dead.
(I hear a Maid lullaby sing)

And he that stood with the feeding kine
Answered Mary, thy child divine
Is come, and behold it for a sign,
(Now hush thee, my heavenly King.)

Mary, now cradle thy young child low,
The night has fallen, the great winds blow,
And sheep are lost in the driving snow,
And many are wandering.

God send we all when He comes our way, May know Christ's coming and bid Him stay, May find new life like the Holy Hay,

And a soul's awakening.

PAMELA TENNANT

ODE ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S

T

NATIVITY

HIS is the month, and this the happy morn

Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing

That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious Form, the Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and, here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to this His new abode,

Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons
bright?

See how from far, upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet;
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;
Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the angel quire

From out his secret altar touch'd with hallow'd

fire.

JOHN MILTON

THREE YEARS SHE GREW

T

HREE

grew years she

in sun and shower,

Then nature said, "A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown;

This child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me.
The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

"She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn,
Or up the mountain springs;

And her's shall be the breathing balm,
And her's the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

"The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend;