WINTER.
275
Though she know not pity, love will not withhold;
There are those who have hunger to bear with the cold;
There are homes that are no homes! no work and no wage,
No sunshine for childhood, no comfort for age,
No food and no fire; but sickness, with care
And poverty, dreary companions! are there.
·····
Oh! sweet to sit around the board
That Providence hath blessed,—
And sweet to draw the curtain round our warm and sheltered rest;
To see the faces at whose smile the household hearth grows bright,
And to feel that, 'mid the darkness, in our dwellings there is light!
If we have done what love might do, and wished that it were more,
To keep the grim wolf yet awhile without the poor man's door;
And if our day hath not gone down, without its kind relief
To some of those its sad dawn woke to misery and grief,
A¥e need not fear the frost and cold; we have found out a charm,
To keep our House, and Home, and Heart, and all our Being warm!
Kind Christmas comes with all its gifts, and absent friends seem near,
There are those who have hunger to bear with the cold;
There are homes that are no homes! no work and no wage,
No sunshine for childhood, no comfort for age,
No food and no fire; but sickness, with care
And poverty, dreary companions! are there.
·····
Oh! sweet to sit around the board
That Providence hath blessed,—
And sweet to draw the curtain round our warm and sheltered rest;
To see the faces at whose smile the household hearth grows bright,
And to feel that, 'mid the darkness, in our dwellings there is light!
If we have done what love might do, and wished that it were more,
To keep the grim wolf yet awhile without the poor man's door;
And if our day hath not gone down, without its kind relief
To some of those its sad dawn woke to misery and grief,
A¥e need not fear the frost and cold; we have found out a charm,
To keep our House, and Home, and Heart, and all our Being warm!
Kind Christmas comes with all its gifts, and absent friends seem near,
