POETRY.
CHRISTMAS.
Now the year is closing to the season set apart When the mother draws her wanderers homeward to her heart: As through air enchanted currents on man's errand run, So at Christmastide the crying of a mother to her son From the tense soul leaps and thrills out, questing till it find Answering thrill of dear remembrance, yearning down the wind, And is heard.—How many thousand mothers by the fire Sit in silence, and this Christmas, lingering in long desire, Gaze with inward eyes a-strain to picture what is felt, What is prayed, what done, what suffered, yonder on the veldt !
And how many sons, by camp fires, or in morning's chilly start, Feel a silent mother draw them homeward to her heart !
Not yours only, 0 you English mothers. Yonder where Blackened walls and hearthstones naked in the noonday glare .
Cry of your sons' passage on the desolated plain, Tears remember the beloved slayer, the dear slain. Other women send their aching souls out on the wind, Other sons with tender aspiration of the mind Seek a home, now hid in ashes.—Let the long-drawn fight Flame and smoulder, droop and rally—God defend the right; But let mothers on all mothers' woe have pity, sire on sire— For where merchandise of war is bartered, blood and fire, Still some woman claims each dealer in the dreadful mart, Draws him, gaunt, fierce-eyed, and weather-beaten, to hei heart, In the season, in the blessed season, When the mother draws her children homeward to her heart.
STEPHEN GWYNN.
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