A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  There’s a song in the air! 
  There’s a star in the sky! 
  There’s a mother’s deep prayer
  And a baby’s low cry! 
And the star rains its fire while the Beautiful sing, For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king.

    There’s a tumult of joy
    O’er the wonderful birth,
    For the virgin’s sweet boy
    Is the Lord of the earth. 
Ay! the star rains its fire and the Beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king.

    In the light of that star
    Lie the ages impearled;
    And that song from afar
    Has swept over the world. 
Every hearth is aflame, and the Beautiful sing In the homes of the nations that Jesus is King.

    We rejoice in the light,
    And we echo the song
    That comes down through the night
    From the heavenly throng. 
Ay! we shout to the lovely evangel they bring, And we greet in his cradle our Saviour and King.
                        J.G.  Holland.

THE WONDERFUL WORLD

“Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,—­
World, you are beautifully drest.

“The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree,
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

“You friendly Earth! how far do you go
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
With cities and gardens, and cliffs, and isles
And people upon you for thousands of miles?

“Ah, you are so great, and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers, to-day,
A whisper inside me seemed to say,
’You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot: 
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!”
                       William B. Rands.

NOBODY KNOWS

Often I’ve heard the Wind sigh
  By the ivied orchard wall,
Over the leaves in the dark night,
  Breathe a sighing call,
And faint away in the silence,
  While I, in my bed,
Wondered, ’twixt dreaming and waking,
  What it said.

Nobody knows what the Wind is,
  Under the height of the sky,
Where the hosts of the stars keep far away house
  And its wave sweeps by—­
Just a great wave of the air,
  Tossing the leaves in its sea,
And foaming under the eaves of the roof
  That covers me.

And so we live under deep water,
  All of us, beasts and men,
And our bodies are buried down under the sand,
  When we go again;
And leave, like the fishes, our shells,
  And float on the Wind and away,
To where, o’er the marvellous tides of the air,
  Burns day.
                           Walter de la Mare.