DECEMBER.

And after him came next the chill December: Yet he, through merry feasting which he made, And great bonfires, did not the cold remember; His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad: Upon a s.h.a.ggy-bearded goat he rode, The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years, They say, was nourisht by th' Idaean Mayd; And in his hand a broad deep bowle he beares, Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peeres.

_Edmund Spenser._

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.

How beautiful! afar on moorland ways, Bosomed by mountains, darkened by huge glens, (Where the lone altar raised by Druid hands Stands like a mournful phantom,) hidden clouds Let fall soft beauty, till each green fir branch Is plumed and ta.s.selled, till each heather stalk Is delicately fringed. The sycamores, Through all their mystical entanglement Of boughs, are draped with silver. All the green Of sweet leaves playing with the subtle air In dainty murmuring; the obstinate drone Of limber bees that in the monk's-hood bells House diligent; the imperishable glow Of summer sunshine never more confessed The harmony of nature, the divine, Diffusive spirit of the beautiful.

Out in the snowy dimness, half revealed Like ghosts in glimpsing moonshine, wildly run The children in bewildering delight.

There is a living glory in the air,-- A glory in the hushed air, in the soul A palpitating wonder hushed in awe.

Softly--with delicate softness--as the light Quickens in the undawned east; and silently-- With definite silence--as the stealing dawn Dapples the floating clouds, slow fall, slow fall, With indecisive motion eddying down, The white-winged flakes,--calm as the sleep of sound, Dim as a dream. The silver-misted air Shines with mild radiance, as when through a cloud Of semilucent vapor shines the moon.

I saw last evening (when the ruddy sun, Enlarged and strange, sank low and visibly, Spreading fierce orange o'er the west) a scene Of winter in his milder mood. Green fields, Which no kine cropped, lay damp; and naked trees Threw skeleton shadows. Hedges, thickly grown, Twined into compact firmness, with no leaves, Trembled in jewelled fretwork as the sun To l.u.s.tre touched the tremulous water-drops.

Alone, nor whistling as his fellows do In fabling poem and provincial song, The ploughboy shouted to his reeking train; And at the clamor, from a neighboring field Arose, with whirr of wings, a flock of rooks More clamorous; and through the frosted air, Blown wildly here and there without a law, They flew, low-grumbling out loquacious croaks.

Red sunset brightened all things; streams ran red Yet coldly; and before the unwholesome east, Searching the bones and breathing ice, blew down The hill, with a dry whistle, by the fire In chamber twilight rested I at home.

But now what revelation of fair change, O Giver of the seasons and the days!

Creator of all elements, pale mists, Invisible great winds and exact frost!

How shall I speak the wonder of thy snow?

What though we know its essence and its birth, Can quick expound, in philosophic wise, The how, and whence, and manner of its fall; 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 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; And looking through the implicated boughs I see a gleaming radiance. Sparkling snow, Refined by morning-footed frost so still, Mantles each bough; and such a windless hush Breathes through the air, it seems the fairy glen About some phantom palace, pale abode Of fabled Sleeping Beauty. Songless birds Flit restlessly about the breathless wood, Waiting the sudden breaking of the charm; And as they quickly spring on nimble wing From the white twig, a sparkling shower falls Starlike. It is not whiteness, but a clear Outshining of all purity, which takes The winking eyes with such a silvery gleam.

No sunshine, and the sky is all one cloud.

The vale seems lonely, ghostlike; while aloud The housewife's voice is heard with doubled sound.

I have not words to speak the perfect show; The ravishment of beauty; the delight Of silent purity; the sanct.i.ty Of inspiration which o'erflows the world, Making it breathless with divinity.

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. O'er the Luggie-stream Gathers a veiny film of ice, and creeps With elfin feet around each stone and reed, Working fine masonry; while o'er the dam, Dashing, a noise of waters fills the clear And nitrous air. All the dark, wintry hours Sharply the winds from the white level moors Keen whistle. Timorous in his homely bed The school-boy listens, fearful lest gaunt wolves Or beasts, whose uncouth forms in ancient books He has beheld, at creaking shutters pull Howling. And when at last the languid dawn In wind redness re-illumines the east With ineffectual fire, an intense blue Severely vivid o'er the snowy hills Gleams chill, while hazy, half-transparent clouds Slow-range the freezing ether of the west.

Along the woods the keenly vehement blasts Wail, and disrobe the mantled boughs, and fling A snow-dust everywhere. Thus wears the day: While grandfather over the well-watched fire Hangs cowering, with a cold drop at his nose.

Now underneath the ice the Luggie growls, And to the polished smoothness curlers come Rudely ambitious. Then for happy hours The clinking stones are slid from wary hands, And Barleycorn, best wine for surly airs, Bites i' th' mouth, and ancient jokes are cracked.

And oh, the journey homeward, when the sun, Low-rounding to the west, in ruddy glow Sinks large, and all the amber-skirted clouds, His flaming retinue, with dark'ning glow Diverge! The broom is brandished as the sign Of conquest, and impetuously they boast Of how this shot was played,--with what a bend Peculiar--the perfection of all art-- That stone came rolling grandly to the Tee With victory crowned, and flinging wide the rest In lordly crash! Within the village inn They by the roaring chimney sit, and quaff The beaded Usqueba with sugar dashed.

O, when the precious liquid fires the brain To joy, and every heart beats fast with mirth And ancient fellowship, what nervy grasps Of h.o.r.n.y hands o'er tables of rough oak!

What singing of Lang Syne till tear-drops shine, And friendships brighten as the evening wanes!

_David Gray._

SIR GALAHAD.

When on my goodly charger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go, The c.o.c.k crows ere the Christmas morn, The streets are dumb with snow.

The tempest crackles on the leads And, ringing, springs from brand and mail; But o'er the dark a glory spreads, And gilds the driving hail.

_Lord Tennyson._

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Too Happy, Happy Tree"]

A THOUGHT FOR THE TIME.

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them; Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne'er remember Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.

Ah! would't were so with many A gentle girl and boy!

But were there ever any Writhed not at pa.s.sed joy?

To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steal it, Was never said in rhyme.

_John Keats._

BALLADE OF THE WINTER FIRESIDE.

An ingle-blaze and a steaming jug; A lamp and a lazy book; And, deep in a doubled, downy rug Your feet to the warmest nook.

And wherever the eye may crook, A print or a tumbled tome-- For the kettle sings on the blackened hook, And hey! for the sweets of home!

What though the traveller toil and tug Where sleety drifts be shook?

What though i' the churchyard graves be dug; And sweethearts be forsook?

A hearth, and a careful cook, And cares may go or come!

For the kettle sings on the blackened hook, And hey! for the sweets of home!

But--curtains down and an elbow hug; A maid that comes to a look; A boy to carry a rimy log From over the frozen brook-- And, a fig for the cawing rook, Or ghosts in the ruddy gloam!

For the kettle sings on the blackened hook, And hey! for the sweets of home!

_Envoi._

And yet--or I be mistook-- To a friend the cup should foam; For the kettle sings on the blackened hook, And hey! for the sweets of home!