cause you remembered the one that died.

_Rennell Rodd._

OCCIDENT AND ORIENT.

How will it dawn, the coming Christmas-day?
A northern Christmas, such as painters love,
And kinsfolk shaking hands but once a year,
And dames who tell old legends by the fire?
Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearled ice,
Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,
And makes the old man merry with the young
Through the short sunshine, through the longer night?

Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,
And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves,
And rose-buds mouldering on the dripping porch;
On twilight, without rise or set of sun,
Till beetles drone along the hollow lane
And round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats
Hawk the pale moths of winter? Welcome then,
At best, the flying gleam, the flying shower,
The rain-pools glittering on the long white roads,
And shadows sweeping on from down to down
Before the salt Atlantic gale! Yet come
In whatsoever garb, or gay or sad,
Come fair, come foul, 'twill still be Christmas-day.

How will it dawn, the coming Christmas-day?
To sailors lounging on the lonely deck
Beneath the rushing trade-wind? or, to him
Who by some noisome harbor of the east
Watches swart arms roll down the precious bales,
Spoils of the tropic forests; year by year
Amid the din of heathen voices, groaning,
Himself half heathen? How to those--brave hearts!
Who toil with laden loins and sinking stride
Beside the bitter wells of treeless sands
Toward the peaks which flood the ancient Nile,
To free a tyrant's captives? How to those--
New patriarchs of the new-found under world--
Who stand like Jacob, on the virgin lawns,
And count their flocks' increase? To them that day
Shall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze
Of full midsummer sun: to them that morn
Gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft
Shall tell of naught but summer; but to them,
Ere yet, unwarned by carol or by chime,
They spring into the saddle, thrills may come
From that great heart of Christendom which beats
Round all the worlds; and gracious thoughts of youth;
Of steadfast folk, who worship God at home,
Of wise words, learnt beside their mother's knee;
Of innocent faces, upturned once again
In awe and joy to listen to the tale
Of God made man, and in a manger laid:
May soften, purify, and raise the soul