elight.

And this is why on Christmas morn
The world should smile and wear its brightest glow:
Because some nineteen hundred years ago
A little child was born.

January, 1885.

These winter days are passing fair!
As if a breath of spring
Had permeated all the air,
And touched each living thing
With thankfulness for such a boon--
Discounting with a scoff
The almanac's report that "June
Is yet a long way off!"

We quarrel with the calendar--
For May has been misplaced--
And doubt the tale oracular
Of "Janus, double-faced;"
For this "ethereal mildness" looks
Toward shadowy delights
Of roseate bowers, of cosy nooks,
Of coming thermal nights.

Let robes diaphanous succeed
Dense garments made of fur,
And overcoats maintain the lead--
Among the things that were!
The wisely-rented sealskin sacque,
By many a dame possessed,
Be quickly relegated back
To its moth-haunted chest!

While every portly alderman,
In linen suit arrayed,
Manipulates the palm-leaf fan
And seeks the cooling shade;
And he perspires who not in vain
Suggests his funny squibs,
By poking his unwelcome cane
In other people's ribs.

Who dares to fling opprobrium
On January now?
As to a potentate we come
With reverential bow,
Because it doth not yet appear
That Time hath ever seen
The ruler of th' inverted year
In more benignant mien.

O Boreas! do not lie low--
That is, if "lie" thou must--
Upon our planet; do not blow
With fierce and sudden gust,
But come so gently, tenderly--
As come thou surely wilt--
That we may have sweet dreams of thee,
Beneath "our crazy quilt!"

Sweet Peas.

By helpful fingers taught to twine
Around its trellis, grew
A delicate and dainty vine;
The bursting bud, its blossom sign,
Inlaid with honeyed-dew.

Developing by every art
To floriculture known,
From tares exempt, and kept apart,
Careful, as if in some fond heart
Its legume germs were sown.

So thriving, not for me alone
Its beauty and perfume--
Ah, no, to rich perfection grown
By flower mission loved and known
In many a darkened room.

And once in strange and solemn place,
Mid