ng back,
Show blessings scattered all along thy track;
And bright-robed Hope, shaming thy dreams of youth,
Shall lead thee up from dreaming to the truth;
And Fancy, leaving every meaner thing,
Shall see fulfilled each bright imagining.
Then shall the ashes of thy musing be
Only the ashes of thy naughtiness;
The smoke, the remnant of thy vanity
And thorny passions, which entangled thee
Till thou didst pray deliverance; the clay,
That empty clay e'en, hath a power to bless,--
Empty for that a gem hath passed away,
To shine forever in eternal day.

HALCYON DAYS.

"Peace and good-will."

Who hath enchanted Goliath? He sleeps with a smile on his face, but his
secret is hid from the charmer. The treacherous will looks abashed on
the calm of his slumber, and laments, "The thing that I would I do not!"

Now while the halcyon broods through the Sabbath-days of winter, and,
looking from her nest, sees the waves of a summer calm and
brightness,--now while she meditates, with the eggs under her wings, of
a fast-approaching time when she shall teach her song to the little
flock that's coming,--let us also dream. The thing that hath been shall
be. Contentment, peace, and love! Fairy folk shall not personate this
blessedness for us. Who is your next-door neighbor? One face shines
serenely before me, and says, "The world is redeemed!" One voice,
sounding clear through all discords, has an echo, fine, true, and
eternal, in the midst of the Seraphim's praise.

Therefore, thou blue-winged halcyon, shall I sit beneath the dead
sycamore in whose topmost branches thy great nest is built,--finding
death crowned here, as everywhere, with life; here shall be told the
Christmas tale of contentment, peace, and love.

No tremulous tale of sorrow, of wrong endured and avenged; no report of
that Orthodox anguish which, renouncing the present, hopes only by the
hereafter; no story of desperate heroic achievement, or of
long-suffering patience, or even of martyrdom's glory. The sea is calm,
and the halcyon broods, and only love is eternal.

Let us not stint thee, as selfishness must; nor shame thee with praise
inadequate; nor walk with shod feet, as the base-bred, into thy palaces;
nor as the weak, nor as the wise, who so often profane thee, but as the
loving who love thee, holy Love, may we take thy name on our lips, and
lay our gift on thine altar! It is a Christmas offering