I SOUGHT my thoughts to telegraph, And hastened to enquire.

The clerk replied, a Christmas laugh

Could not be sent by wire : I therefore tried the telephone, But this was little better :-No other process being known, I've put them in a letter.

EDEN HOOPER.

A GLEE FOR WINTER.

HENCE, rude Winter! crabbed old fellow,
Never merry, never mellow.
Well-a-day! in rain and snow
What will keep one's heart aglow?
Groups of kinsmen, old and young,
Oldest they old friends among!
Groups of friends so old and true,
That they seem our kinsmen too!
These all merry all together,
Charm away chill Winter weather!

What will kill this dull old fellow?

Ale that's bright, and wine that's mellow!

Dear old songs for ever new ;

Some true love, and laughter too;
Pleasant wit, and harmless fun,
And a dance when day is done!
Music-friends so true and tried-
Whispered love by warm fireside-
Mirth at all times all together-
Make sweet May of Winter weather!

ALFRED DOMETT.

Flotsam and Jetsam. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)

THE CHRISTMAS OF THE FOREIGN CHILD.

Translated from Friederich Rueckert.

AMID a spacious town

The Christmas lights are blazing, Beneath the cold night's frown

A foreign child is gazing Sadly up and down.

In every house he sees

Fond fingers interwining; Through lamp-illumined trees

The bright warm rooms are shining: Ah! bitter sights are these! He weeping speaks, "To-night, To every child is given A Christmas tree and light; But I by earth and heaven Am now deserted quite. "A sister's gentle hand

Had given me all I needed, If I at home did stand;

But here I am unheeded,
In this cold foreign land.
"Will none the orphan see,

And let him in for pity?
O God; and can it be,
That in this crowded city
There is no place for me?

"Will no kind hand relieve

The orphan's deep dejection?
Alas! I must receive

But only the reflection
Of this strange Christmas Eve!"
He taps with fingers thin

On window and on shutter;

They hear not, for the din,

The weak words he doth utter,

Nor let the orphan in.

The father's lessons mild

The listening boy's ear drinketh; The Christmas gifts are piled

By mother's hands. None thinketh Of that poor orphan child.

"O Christ! my Saviour dear,

No father and no mother
Have I my heart to cheer;
Be all to me no other
Consoler have I here."

Cold, cold his small hand grows,
He rubs his frozen fingers;

He shivers in his clothes,

And in the white street lingers,

With eyes that will not close.

Told how their King from His Own fair dominions

Was come to reign o'er men

The Saviour of the world in manger lying-
A hapless new-born child;
Redemption thus for all creation buying-
And Peace and Mercy mild:

So for His sake we bless the children's faces
And greet them far and wide
Where'er they cluster in their fireside places
At holy Christmas-tide.

H. M. BURNSIDE.

AT his birth a star,

Unseen before in heaven, proclaims him come ;
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold.
His place of birth, a solemn Angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night;
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire
Of squadroned Angels hear his carol sung.
A virgin is his mother, but his sire

The power of the Most High: He shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign
With Earth's wide bounds, his glory with the
Heavens.

JOHN MILTON. Paradise Lost.

WHO can forget, never to be forgot,

The time, that all the world in slumber lies: When, like the stars, the singing angels shot

To earth, and heaven awakèd all his eyes, To see another sun at midnight rise On earth? was never sight of pareil fame: For God before, man like himself did frame, But God himself now like a mortal man became.

A child he was, and had not learned to speak,
That with his word the world before did make :
His mother's arms him bore, he was so weak,
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.
GILES FLETCHER.

CHRISTMAS EMBLEMS.

I.

A LOWLY THRONE.

"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them."-Rev. xxi. 3.

Lo, God with men shall dwell!

The Ruler of the whirlwind and the storm,
The dread Controller of the billows' swell,
Shall wear a human form!

What glittering hall of Kaiser or of King
Shall hold the Holy Thing?

O height and depth of love!

He in whose presence angels veil their eyes, The Bearer of the Name all names above, In yon rough manger lies!

Brother, make pure thy heart; thy King shall deign On that poor throne to reign.

ONCE in royal David's city Stood a lowly cattle shed, Where a mother laid her Baby,

In a manger for His bed; Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little Child.

C. F. ALEXANDER.

Hymns for Little Children. (J. Masters.)

II.

INCENSE, MYRRH, AND GOLD.

"When they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."Matt. ii. 11.

Hush! before the Infant tender.

See the sages' hoards unrolled;
Each in turn, a suppliant bender,
Offers gifts of royal splendour,
Tokens of the heart's surrender,

Treasures fair and manifold

Heavenward incense, healing myrrh, and allcompelling gold.

Where the Saviour intercedeth,

Earthly gifts no more are doled;
Yet our offerings still He needeth-
Clear-eyed Faith that upward leadeth,
Love, to bind the heart that bleedeth,

Hope that nothing may withhold;

Bring Him these, the spirit's gifts of incense, myrrh, and gold.

III.

DONE UNTO HIM.

"Ye have done it unto Me."-Matt. xxv. 40.

"Oн, to kneel as they who knelt

On that first sweet Christmas Day!

Oh, to feel as Mary felt,

At whose blissful breast He lay ! To grace His feet, like her in later years,

With costliest ointment and with deepest tears!"

Though the heavens hold Him now
Whom the manger held of yore,
Breaking heart and aching brow

Earth shall bear for evermore.

Bring one faint smile to weary eyes and dimBrother, thou, too, hast ministered to Him.

IV.

ONE OF THE SHEPHERDS.

YEA, all is still again!

The keen sweet silence tingles in my brain.

The voice, the vision, too,

Have passed away into the solemn blue.

There lingers not a gleam

To tell of that-nay, nay, it was no dream,
Only the stars on high

Quiver as they would break from out the sky.
I tread on solid ground;

This is my friend-there lie my sheep around.
There is no change-no change-
Save in my heart. Oh, beautiful and strange !
Come, brothers, let us go

And see this thing the Lord hath made us know.

And speckled Vanity

Will sicken soon and die,

And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould; And Hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea, Truth and Justice then

Will down return to men,

Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between,

Throned in celestial sheen,

With radiant feet the tissued clouds down

steering;

And Heaven, as at some festival,

Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall. JOHN MILTON.

Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity.

ANOTHER CHRIST SONG.
FROM heaven the angel-troop come near,
And to the shepherds plain appear;
A tender little child, they cry,
In a rough manger lies hard by,
In Bethlehem, David's town of old,
As Prophet Micah has foretold;
'Tis the Lord Jesus Christ, I wis,
Who of you all the Saviour is.

And ye may well break out in mirth,
That God is one with you henceforth;
For he is born your flesh and blood—
Your brother is the eternal Good.

He will nor can from you go hence;
Set you in him your confidence.
Let many battle on you make,
Defy them-he can not forsake.
What can death do to you, or sin?
The true God is to you come in.
Let hell and Satan raging go-
The Son of God's your comrade now.

At last you must approval win,
For you are now of God's own kin.
For this thank God, ever and aye,
Happy and patient all the day. Amen.

GEORGE MACDONALD.
Exotics. (Strahan.)

AND ye, beneath life's crushing load, Whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing;

Oh! rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.

E. H. SEARS.

"A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR."

THE Sweet-breath'd Spring we do not blame,
Because as in the days of old

The flow'rs peep forth the very same,
Rosy and white and gold.

We do not quarrel with the night

Because upon our sins and jars
She still rains down the same pure light
Of all her throbbing stars.

And love, true love will never flout
That on returning Christmas days
The same affection still goes out

In just the same old phrase.

FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

A CHRISTMAS CARD FOR A CHILD. To catch old Christmas in the morning air

A child stole out and wandered on the heath; And there sate Christmas, blowing foggy breath, Cross-legged upon a stile, and cried, "Look here, This smile's for you-a good, wide smile, my dear, Of bright red gums, and rare plum-pudding

teeth,

And jolly old wrinkles round my holly wreath; Ho, ho, for Christmas and a glad New Year!" That child was I; and every year, in snow Or mist or rain, to that same heath I go,

And there sits Christmas on the self-same stile; And of the dear, sweet days we talk awhile, Laughing and crying at the things we know, But parting ever with a hug and smile.

THEODORE WATTS. From THE ATHENÆUM, by permission.