The beasts can talk in barn and byre On Christmas Eve, old legends know, As year by year the years retire, We men fall silent then I trow, Such sights hath Memory to show, Such voices from the silence thrill, Such shapes return with Christmas snow,— The ghosts we all can raise at will.
Oh, children of the village choir, Your carols on the midnight throw, Oh bright across the mist and mire Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas glow! Beat back the dread, beat down the woe, Let’s cheerily descend the hill; Be welcome all, to come or go, The ghosts we all can raise at will!
Friend, _sursum corda_, soon or slow We part, like guests who’ve joyed their fill; Forget them not, nor mourn them so, The ghosts we all can raise at will!
LOVE died here Long ago;— O’er his bier, Lying low, Poppies throw; Shed no tear; Year by year, Roses blow!
Year by year, Adon—dear To Love’s Queen— Does not die! Wakes when green May is nigh!
SHE has just “put her gown on” at Girton, She is learned in Latin and Greek, But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on That the prudish remark with a shriek. In her accents, perhaps, she is weak (Ladies _are_, one observes with a sigh), But in Algebra—_there_ she’s unique, But her forte’s to evaluate π.
She can talk about putting a “spirt on” (I admit, an unmaidenly freak), And she dearly delighteth to flirt on A punt in some shadowy creek; Should her bark, by mischance, spring a leak, She can swim as a swallow can fly; She can fence, she can put with a cleek, But her forte’s to evaluate π.
She has lectured on Scopas and Myrton, Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique, Old tiles with the secular dirt on, Old marbles with noses to seek. And her Cobet she quotes by the week, And she’s written on κεν and on καὶ, And her service is swift and oblique, But her forte’s to evaluate π.
Princess, like a rose is her cheek, And her eyes are as blue as the sky, And I’d speak, had I courage to speak, But—her forte’s to evaluate pi.
YE wells, ye founts that fall From the steep mountain wall, That fall, and flash, and fleet With silver feet,
Ye woods, ye streams that lave The meadows with your wave, Ye hills, and valley fair, Attend my prayer!
When Heaven and Fate decree My latest hour for me, When I must pass away From pleasant day,