Harrison S. Morris

“ AUNT MARY. A CORNISH CHRISTMAS CHANT.
Now of all the trees by the king's highway,
Which do you love the best?
O! the one that is green upon Christmas-day,
The bush with the bleeding breast.
Now the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our dear Aunt Mary's tree.
Its leaves are sweet with our Saviour's name,
'Tis a plant that loves the poor:
Summer and winter it shines the same
Beside the cottage door.
O! the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our kind Aunt Mary's tree.
'Tis a bush that the birds will never leave:
They sing in it all day long ”

“ Enter Christmas, with two or three of the guard, attired in round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high-crowned hat, with a brooch, a long, thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, his scarfs and garters tied cross, and his drum beaten before him.
Why, gentlemen, do you know what you do? ha! would you have kept me out? Christmas, old Christmas, Christmas of London, and Captain Christmas? Pray you, let me be brought before my lord chamberlain, I'll not be answered else: 'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all: I have seen the time you have wish'd for me for a merry Christmas ”

“ The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of day to the objects below;
When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
[Pg 146] More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name:
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! now, Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Dunder and Blixen!
To the top of the stoop, to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" ”

“ Pierces the keen seraphic flame
From orb to orb, from veil to veil."
[Pg 179] Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night:
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
Second Year.
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possessed the earth,
And calmly fell on Christmas-eve:
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost. ”

“ Black night behind the tamarisks—the owls begin their chorus—
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O, my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors—let us feast with friends and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For, if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past. ”

“ So fast the Cynthian mountains pour'd their snow,
When once they felt the sun so near them glow,
That Nilus Egypt lost, and to a sea did grow.
The angels carolled loud their song of peace;
The cursed oracles were strucken dumb;
To see their Shepherd the poor shepherds press;
To see their King, the kingly sophies [S] come;
And them to guide unto his Master's home,
A star comes dancing up the orient,
That springs for joy over the strawy tent,
Where gold, to make their prince a crown, they all present. ”

“ What Christmas ghost can make us chill—
Save these that troop in mournful row,
The ghosts we all can raise at will?
The beasts can talk in barn and byre
On Christmas-eve, old legends know.
As one by one the years retire,
We men fall silent then, I trow—
Such sights has memory to show,
Such voices from the distance thrill.
Ah me! they come with Christmas snow,
The ghosts we all can raise at will. ”

“ WASSAILING CAROL.
We wish you merry Christmas, also a glad New Year;
We come to bring you tidings to all mankind so dear:
We come to tell that Jesus was born in Bethl'em town,
And now He's gone to glory and pityingly looks down
On us poor wassailers,
As wassailing we go;
With footsteps sore
From door to door
We trudge through sleet and snow.
A manger was His cradle, the straw it was His bed,
The oxen were around Him within that lowly shed ”

“ DICKENS RETURNS ON CHRISTMAS DAY.
(A ragged girl in Drury Lane was heard to exclaim, "Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die, too?" June 9, 1870.)
"Dickens is dead!" Beneath that grievous cry
London seemed shivering in the summer heat;
Strangers took up the tale like friends that meet:
"Dickens is dead!" said they, and hurried by;
Street children stopped their games—they knew not why,
But some new night seemed darkening down the street;
A girl in rags, staying her way-worn feet,
Cried, "Dickens dead? Will Father Christmas die?" ”

“ Have rubbed all the hair from the top of his head.
And my brain being bare
Of my cover of hair,
Is rapidly losing its power, my pet!
Sometimes, after all's fixed,
I get everything mixed,
And you must forgive if I ever forget.
Good-by, Ethel dear!
May the coming New Year
Bring all kinds of blessings to you from above;
Make you happier and better:
And so my long letter
Must close, with a great deal of Santa Claus's love. ”

“ And they bear one o'er the field-path who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly—
Call on Rama—he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
[Pg 172] With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"
High noon above the tamarisks—the sun is hot above us—
As at home the Christmas Day is breaking wan,
They will drink our healths at dinner—those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone! ”

“ Frost-pearl'd are all the boughs of forests old,
The sheep are huddling close upon the wold,
And over them the stars tremble on high.
Pure joys these winter nights around me lie;
'Tis fine to loiter through the lighted streets
At Christmas-time, and guess from brow and pace
The doom and history of each one we meet,
What kind of heart beats in each dusky case;
Whiles, startled by the beauty of a face
In a shop-light a moment. Or instead,
To dream of silent fields where calm and deep
The sunshine lieth like a golden sleep—
Recalling sweetest looks of summers dead. ”

“ THE CHILD JESUS. A CORNISH CAROL.
Welcome that star in Judah's sky,
That voice o'er Bethlehem's palmy glen!
The lamp far sages hailed on high,
The tones that thrilled the shepherd men:
Glory to God in loftiest heaven!
Thus angels smote the echoing chord;
Glad tidings unto man forgiven,
Peace from the presence of the Lord.
The Shepherds sought that birth divine,
The Wise Men traced their guided way ”

“ That we might rise,—
From low estate of men
Let's sing Him up again!
Each man wind up his heart
To bear a part
In that angelic choir and show
His glory high as He was low.
Let's sing towards men good-will and charity,
Peace upon earth, glory to God on high!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Jeremy Taylor.
[Pg 227]
CHRISTMAS IN CUBA.
On the hill-side droops the palm,
The air is faint with flowers,
In the wondrous, dream-like calm
Of tropical morning hours.
Like a mirror lies the bay,
And softly on its breast,
In the glow of coming day,
The vessels sway at rest. ”

“ Yet, oh, the inner beauty and the life—
The life that is in snow! The virgin-soft
And utter purity of the down-flake,
Falling upon its fellow with no sound!
Unblown by vulgar winds, innumerous flakes
Fall gently, with the gentleness of love!
The earth is cherished, for beneath the soft,
Pure uniformity is gently born
[Pg 208] Warmth and rich mildness, fitting the dead roots
For the resuscitation of the spring.
Now while I write, the wonder clothes the vale,
Calmed every wind and loaded every grove ”

“ The ravishment of beauty; the delight
Of silent purity; the sanctity
Of inspiration which o'erflows the world,
Making it breathless with divinity.
[Pg 209] So thus with fair delapsion softly falls
The sacred shower; and when the shortened day
Dejected dies in the low streaky west,
The rising moon displays a cold blue night,
And keen as steel the east wind sprinkles ice.
Thicker than bees, about the waxing moon
Gather the punctual stars. Huge whitened hills
Rise glimmering to the blue verge of the night,
Ghostlike, and striped with narrow glens of firs
Black-waving, solemn. ”

“ A northern Christmas, such as painters love,
And kinsfolk shaking hands but once a year,
And dames who tell old legends by the fire?
Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearléd ice,
Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,
And makes the old man merry with the young
Through the short sunshine, through the longer night? ”

“ Good tidings unto man forgiven,
Peace from the presence of the Lord.
Robert Stephen Hawker.
[Pg 89]
LONG AGO.
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Our God, heaven cannot hold Him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay ”

“ God will forfeit peace on earth
If men fall out at Christé's birth.
Christmas tipples every wine,
English, French, and Gascon fine
And Angevine;
Clinks with neighbor and with guest,
Empties casks with gibe and jest—
The year's for rest!
God sends to men the joy of earth
Who broach good cheer for Christé's birth. ”

“ My carol here ends.
New Christmas Carols, A.D. 1661.
[Pg 231]
THE NEW YEAR.
Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star
Tells us the day himself's not far;
And see where, breaking from the night,
He gilds the western hills with light.
With him old Janus doth appear,
Peeping into the future year,
With such a look, as seems to say,
The prospect is not good that way.
Thus do we rise ill sights to see,
And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy;
When the prophetic fear of things
A more tormenting mischief brings,
More full of soul-tormenting gall,
Than direst mischiefs can befall. ”

“ Nature's brute powers and men unmanned to brutes,
Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas-day.
Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem,
The kneeling shepherds and the Babe Divine,
And keep them men indeed, fair Christmas-day. ”

“ CHRISTMAS IN INDIA.
Dim dawn the tamarisks—the sky is saffron-yellow—
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the day, the staring eastern day, is born. ”

“ That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake;
See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
Whom all the world is not enough to hold!
Who of His years or of His age hath told?
Never such age so young, never a child so old.
And yet but newly He was infanted,
And yet already He was sought to die;
Yet scarcely born, already banished;
Not able yet to go, and forced to fly:
But scarcely fled away, when by and by
[Pg 86] The tyrant's sword with blood is all defiled,
And Rachel, for her sons, with fury wild,
Cries, "O thou cruel king, and O my sweetest Child!" ”

“ Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
To man, of all beasts, be not Thou a stranger;
Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou may'st have
A better lodging than a rock or grave.
The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be? ”

“ His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad:
Upon a shaggy-bearded goat he rode,
The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years,
They say, was nourisht by th' Idæan Mayd;
And in his hand a broad deep bowle he beares,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peeres.
Edmund Spenser.
[Pg 205]
CHRISTMAS WEATHER IN SCOTLAND.
A winter day! the feather-silent snow
Thickens the air with strange delight, and lays
A fairy carpet on the barren lea.
No sun, yet all around that inward light
Which is in purity,—a soft moonshine,
The silvery dimness of a happy dream. ”

“ Summer or winter, 'twill be Christmas-day.
Blest day, which aye reminds us year by year
What 'tis to be a man: to curb and spurn
The tyrant in us: that ignobler self
Which boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute,
And owns no good save ease, no ill save pain,
No purpose, save its share in that wild war
In which, through countless ages, living things
Compete in internecine greed—ah, God!
Are we as creeping things, which have no Lord?
That we are brutes, great God, we know too well:
Apes daintier-featured; silly birds who flaunt
Their plumes, unheeding of the fowler's step ”

“ Minced-Pie, like a fine cook's wife, drest neat; her man carrying a pie, dish, and spoons.
Gambol, like a tumbler, with a hoop and bells; his torch-bearer armed with a colt-staff, and a binding cloth.
[Pg 132] Post and Pair, with a pair-royal of aces in his hat; his garment all done over with pairs and purs; his squire carrying a box, cards, and counters.
New-Year's-Gift, in a blue coat, serving-man like, with an orange, and a sprig of rosemary gilt on his head, his hat full of brooches, with a collar of ginger-bread, his torch-bearer carrying a march-pane with a bottle of wine on either arm. ”

“ Youth was cheap—wherefore we sold it. Gold was good—we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.
Gray dusk behind the tamarisks—the parrots fly together—
As the sun is sinking slowly over home ”