Black night behind the tamarisks--the owls begin their chorus--
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O, my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors--let us feast with friends and
neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For, if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

_Rudyard Kipling._

CHRISTMAS VIOLETS.

Last night I found the violets
You sent me once across the sea;
From gardens that the winter frets,
In summer lands they came to me.

Still fragrant of the English earth,
Still humid from the frozen dew,
To me they spoke of Christmas mirth,
They spoke of England, spoke of you.

The flowers are scentless, black, and sere,
The perfume long has passed away;
The sea whose tides are year by year
Is set between us, chill and gray.

But you have reached a windless age,
The haven of a happy clime;
You do not dread the winter's rage,
Although we missed the summer-time.

And like the flower's breath over sea,
Across the gulf of time and pain,
To-night returns the memory
Of love that lived not all in vain.

_Andrew Lang._

[Illustration: The Season's Reveries]

DICKENS RETURNS ON CHRISTMAS DAY.

(A ragged girl in Drury Lane was heard to exclaim, "Dickens dead? Then
will Father Christmas die, too?" June 9, 1870.)

"Dickens is dead!" Beneath that grievous cry
London seemed shivering in the summer heat;
Strangers took up the tale like friends that meet:
"Dickens is dead!" said they, and hurried by;
Street children stopped their games--they knew not why,
But some new night seemed darkening down the street;
A girl in rags, staying her way-worn feet,
Cried, "Dickens dead? Will Father Christmas die?"

City he loved, take courage on thy way!
He loves thee still in all thy joys and fears:
Though he whose smiles made bright thine eyes of gray--
Whose brave sweet voice, uttering thy tongueless years,
Made laughters bubble through thy sea of tears--
Is gone, Dickens returns on Christmas Day!

_Theodore Watts._

A GRIEF AT CHRISTMAS.

FROM "IN MEMORIAM."

_First Year._

The time draws near the birth of Christ