Sally in Our Alley.

217

SALLY IN OUR ALLEY.

When Christmas comes about again,
O then I shall have money;
I'll hoard it up, and box it all,
I'll give it to my honey:

I would it were ten thousand pound,
I'd give it all to Sally;

She is the darling of my heart,

And she lives in our alley.

K

19

H. Carey.

LITTLE MOTHER.

A GERMAN FANCY.

Little mother, why must you go?
The children play by the white bedside,
The world is merry for Christmas-tide,
And what would you do in the falling snow?

They sleep by now in the ember-glow,
Hushed to dream in a child's delight,
For wonders happen on Christmas night:
Little mother, why must you go?

The flakes fall and the night grows late.
Oh, slender figure and small wet feet,
Where do you haste through the lamp-lit

street,

And out and away by the fortress gate?

It is drear and chill where the dear lie dead,
Yet light enough with the snow to see;

But what would you do with that Christmas

tree

At the tiny mound that is baby's bed?

Little Mother.

A Christmas-tree with its tinsel gold!

219

Oh, how should I not have a thought for thee, When the children sleep in their dream of

glee,

Poor little grave but a twelvemonth old!

Little mother, your heart is brave,

You kiss the cross in the drifted snow,
Kneel for a moment, rise and go

And leave your tree by the tiny grave.

While the living slept by the warm fireside, And flakes fell white on your Christmas toy, I think that its angel wept for joy

Because you remembered the one that died.

Rennell Rodd.

OCCIDENT AND ORIENT.

How will it dawn, the coming Christmas-day? 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?

Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with

mist,

And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves, And rose-buds mouldering on the dripping porch;

On twilight, without rise or set of sun,

Till beetles drone along the hollow lane

And round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats Hawk the pale moths of winter? Welcome then,

At best, the flying gleam, the flying shower,
The rain-pools glittering on the long white roads,
And shadows sweeping on from down to down
Before the salt Atlantic gale! Yet come
In whatsoever garb, or gay or sad,

Occident and Orient.

221

Come fair, come foul, 'twill still be Christmas

day.

How will it dawn, the coming Christmas-day?
To sailors lounging on the lonely deck
Beneath the rushing trade-wind? or, to him
Who by some noisome harbor of the east
Watches swart arms roll down the precious
bales,

Spoils of the tropic forests; year by year
Amid the din of heathen voices, groaning,

Himself half heathen? How to those-brave

hearts!

Who toil with laden loins and sinking stride
Beside the bitter wells of treeless sands

Toward the peaks which flood the ancient Nile,
To free a tyrant's captives? How to those-
New patriarchs of the new-found under world—
Who stand like Jacob, on the virgin lawns,
And count their flocks' increase? To them that
day

Shall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze

Of full midsummer sun: to them that morn Gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft Shall tell of naught but summer; but to them, Ere yet, unwarned by carol or by chime,

They spring into the saddle, thrills may come From that great heart of Christendom which

beats