The daily Green Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1861-1865, 1863-12-24

/ garI2ndS
With thankful hearts and helpful hands,
We keep festival.
Why do we thus keep Christmas morui
] 1t is the day that Christ was born
And on this Christmas morning.
/ When the frost is at the door,
Dear child, in your warm, pleasant home
Think of the sick and poor
SO shall you well keep Christmas morn,
The day our Saviour, Christ was born
The most catholic form of keeping holiday
I is by mirth and feasting, and in this regard
Christmas has long stood pre-eminent 1t is a
cosmopolitan Thanksgiving, with an added
dover of innocent merriment, day whose good
cheer has warmed the icy heart Of winter for
more than thousand years. As saith Jolly
! George Wither
Now all our neis h5ors' chimneys smoke
And Christmas blocks burning
Their oyens they with baked meats choke,
And all their spits are turning.
Without the door let sorrow lie,
And if for cold it hap to die,
Wen bury it in a Christmas pie,
And eVefm1 re be merry.
As the arbutus hugs the sod, so closely
among the appetites are twned the affections
he must have sorry nature whose heart does
not beat widely and warmly when the stomach
Is full SO, wherever it is observed, the Christ.
mas festival has always been day for glad re-
unions, welcome and fOrgvn 49, On this sub
{ L'N'NA
how gracefully the same pen has touched the
amenities Of peace, whose more recent Efforts
blot the record Of the war
Ye who have loved each other
Sister, and frien }, and brother
In this fast fading year,
Mother and sire and child,
Dung man and maiden mild,
Come gather here;
And let your hearts grow ondef,
AS memory shall pord der
Each past unbrokelt
Old loves AMI younger woong
Are sweet in the reviewing
Under the holly bough.
Ye who have nourished sadness,
Enstrauged from hope and gadness,
In this fast fading year ;
Ye with o'erburdened mind,
Made aliens from your kind,
C enc gather here
Let not the useless sorrow
Pursue you nignt and morrow
IT e'er you hoped, hope
rake hea {, uncioud your faces,
And join in embraces
Under the holly bough,
And anent the same subject borrow we these
brief, bright words from the more gifted pen
and larger heart OF Thackeray
Evenings knew
Happy as this,
Faces we
Pleasant to see,
Kind hearts and true,
Gentle and just,
Peace to your dust
We singround the tree.
Care like dun
Sits at the gate
let the dog wait
Happy wen be
DRINK, every one,
Pile up the Goals;
Fill the red bowls
Round the cid tree!
Let us temper, not shadow, these sunny and
genial songs with lines from the fervent HYMN
OF Horatius Bonar, which shall only deepen |
their warmth and glow, as the rays of the lamp
above melt and blend with the flashing freight |
that dances on the wall:
He has come The Christ Of God,
Left for us his glad abode
Shopping from his tn one Of bliss
TO this darksome wilderness
He has Come, the Prince Of Peace
Come to bid our cease,
Come 10 scatter with his light,
All the shadows Of our night.
So too sings the quaint and picturesque George
Herbert, IN the little volume of poems photo
graphed from the deeply gr4ved records of his
own heart, and touchlngly bequeathed to " the
advantage Of any poor, detected soul -
The Shephe ds sing, and shall silent bo?
My Got, no hymne Tor thee2
My SOULS a shepherd too flock it feeds
OF thoughts and words and deeds
The pasture is Thy vord, tho streams thy grace,
Enriehug all the place;
Shepherd and flock shall sing and ali my powers
0ut-sing the daylight hours
A kindly lesson Is conveyed in the location of
Christmas, not quite at the end of the year.
One precious week still remains in which to re.
trieve the lost remember the forgotten and fill
to the brim the measure of our efforts and
achievements But when they lie about Us like
fallen leaves, we feel that the years best fruit
is in the tiny buds that fold the germ of the fu-
ture, a future in which the craded summer, now
rocked by bleak winds upon swayiug boughs,
shall unfold in bloom and blessing, and our
tinid newborn thought shall become deed.
For what says the German Christmas carol?
In the ending of the year
Light and life to man appear
And the holy Babe il here
BY the Virgin Mary:
For the Word becometh Flesh
BY the Virgin Mary.
Then, while our virgin resolves are yet un-
stained, let us echo once again those never too
oft-repeated words of Tennyson -
Ring out, wild bells to the wild sky
The flying cloud the frosty Ii ght
The year is dying in the night
Ring out wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new
Ring, happy bells, across the snow
The year Is going, Let him 20
Ring out the false, ring in the true
Nor can we close these selections without three