Are we not sworn to serve our King?
He sworn with us to be?
The birds that chant before the spring,
Are truer far than we.
SORROW IN WINTER.
THE dreary morning of my woe
Has slowly crept to light again :
Cold winter day, arrayed in snow,
And stripped of flowers and waving gra
The land is dumb and stiff and grim,
And wrinkled o'er with frosty rifts;
Through heaven the hurrying vapors skim
On earth the hissing snow storm drifts.
The naked branches of the wood
Are shivering in the ashen light;
A seal is laid upon the flood;
The evergreens are piled with white.
No cattle browse, no small bird sings,
No motion breaks the dismal sleep,
Save where yon roaring torrent flings
Its icy burdens down the steep.
Love knows no season: forth I go,
Upon my holy mission bent,
And on thy grave the fair white snow
Seems nature's cloth of sacrament.
I kneel, and with me kneels the dead;
The bread is broken, the wine is poured;
We eat and drink with Him who bled
To join our souls, with Christ our Lord.
GEORGE HENRY BOKER.
The Book of the Dead.
How like a human birth the waking hour
Of the child-year! The weak and querulous gale 'Mid tears of rain doth lift a kindred wail: Blankly the sun's eye stares: the air doth lower Dense as a listless ear. Beneath a shower
Of snow fresh-fallen, those branches white and
As new-born limbs lie prone, with only power
Given to endure, what wind soe'er prevail.
The baby lips that pout their hungering
Do not more wistfully the nurse invite
Than every spiral leaf-bud yearns for spring:
And as the young blue eyes wax deep and bright
While the soul greatens, so the growing light
Widens by morn and eve its azure ring.
HENRY G. HEWLETT
An English Year.
56 A WINTER NIGHT.—A WINTER HOPE.
THE winter wind is raving fierce and shrill
And chides with angry moan the frosty skies,
The white stars gaze with sleepless Gorgon eyes
That freeze the earth in terror fixed and still.
We reck not of the wild night's gloom and chill,
Housed from its rage, dear friend; and fancy flies,
Lured by the hand of beckoning memories,
Back to those summer evenings on the hill
Where we together watched the sun go down
Beyond the gold-washed uplands, while his fires
Touched into glittering life the vanes and spires
Piercing the purpling mists that veiled the town.
The wintry night thy voice and eyes beguile,
Till wake the sleeping summers in thy smile.
A WINTER HOPE.
O WINTER, thou art warm at heart;
Thine every pulse doth throb and glow,
And thou dost feel life's joy and smart,
Beneath the blinding snow.
Thine is the scent of bursting bud,
Of April shower and violet;
Thou feelest spring in all thy blood
Yearn up like sweet regret.
O sweet and rare thy visions are,
The flashing scythe, the new-mown hay,
The reaper's dance beneath the star,
The splendor of the day,
The shining grass, the peaceful stream,
The purple beauty of the hill,
No frost can blight thy blessèd dream,
Thy heart no wind can chill.
The winter of my sharp distress, May catch the vision of summer love, And outstretched hands that bless.
WINTER in the world it is
Round about the unhoped kiss
Whose dream I long have sorrowed o'er,
Round about the longing sore,
That the touch of thee shall turn
Into joy too deep to burn.
Round thine eyes and round thy mouth
Pass no murmurs of the south,
When my lips a little while
Leave thy quivering tender smile,
As we twain, hand holding hand,
Once again together stand.
Sweet is that, as all is sweet;
For the white drift thou shalt meet,
Kind and cold-cheeked and mine own,
Wrapped about with deep-furred gown
In the broad-wheeled chariot;
Then the north shall spare us not;
The wide-reaching waste of snow
Wilder, lonelier yet shall grow
As the reddening sun falls down;
But the wardens of the town
When they flash the torches out
O'er the snow amid their doubt,
And their eyes at last behold
Thy red-litten hair of gold,
Shall they open, or in fear
Cry, "Alas! what cometh here?
Whence hath come this Heavenly One
To tell of all the world undone?"
They shall open, we shall see
The long street litten scantily
By the long stream of light before
The guest-hall's half-opened door;
And our horses' bells shall cease
As we reach the place of peace.
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