--
Against Oppression's ruthless band
Still unsubduable to stand,
A champion in the strife?

Think'st thou we suffer less, or feel
To-day's soul-piercing wounds do heal
The wounds of months and years?
Or that our eyes so long have been
Familiar with the hunger keen
Our babes endure, we gaze serene--
Strangers to scalding tears?--

Ah no! my brothers, not from me
Hath faded solemn memory
Of all your bitter grief:
This heart its pledges doth renew--
To its last pulse it will be true
To beat for your relief.

My rhymes are trivial, but my aim
Deem ye not purposeless:
I would the homely truth proclaim--
That times which knaves full loudly blame
For feudal haughtiness
Would put the grinding crew to shame
Who prey on your distress.

O that my simple lay might tend
To kindle some remorse
In your oppressors' souls, and bend
Their wills a cheerful help to lend
And lighten Labour's curse!

* * * * *

A night of snow the earth hath clad
With virgin mantle chill;
But in the sky the sun looks glad,--
And blythely o'er the hill,
From fen and wold, troops many a guest
To sing and smile at Thorold's feast.

And oft they bless the bounteous sun
That smileth on the snow;
And oft they bless the generous one
Their homes that bids them fro
To glad their hearts with merry cheer,
When Yule returns, in winter drear.

How joyously the lady bells
Shout--though the bluff north-breeze
Loudly his boisterous bugle swells!
And though the brooklets freeze,
How fair the leafless hawthorn-tree
Waves with its hoar-frost tracery!
While sun-smiles throw o'er stalks and stems
Sparkles so far transcending gems--
The bard would gloze who said their sheen
Did not out-diamond
All brightest gauds that man hath seen
Worn by earth's proudest king or queen,
In pomp and grandeur throned!

Saint Leonard's monks have chaunted mass,
And clown's and gossip's laughing face
Is turned unto the porch,--
For now comes mime and motley fool,
Guarding the dizened Lord Misrule
With mimic pomp and march;
And the burly Abbot of Unreason
Forgets not that the blythe Yule season
Demands his paunch at church;
And he useth his staff
While the rustics laugh,--
And, still, as he layeth his crosier about,
Laugheth aloud each clownish lowt,-