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Christmas Decorations.

FOUNDED ON FACT.

LOW merry Christmas-tide has come,

And girls, with faces gay,

To their beloved minister

An early visit pay.

"To deck the church with holly-leaves,

We ask permission, sir,

With wreaths of ivy intertwined,

Or texts, if you prefer."

"Pray go, and do whate'er you like;

I only beg to say,

Please keep all texts from off the walls,

And let the whitewash stay!"

120

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

On Sunday, what a wondrous change!
No pulpit to be seen,

And though you look around for it,
The whole is changed to green.

The reading-desk no longer seems
The parson's corner now;
Like groves of Baal 'tis become,
With wreath and green and bough.

But neither wreaths nor Baal's groves,
Can with this thing compare;
Two crosses hang above your head,
Suspended in mid-air.

The people come: some turn their eyes
Towards those popish things,

And wonder, "Who has put them there?"
And, "Who has made the rings?"

Some smile, and say, "How Christmas-like!"

While others turn away;

They never thought to see the like,

Such crosses, such array.

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

One whispers to her dearest friend,
"I'll never come here more,
Till all these popish things are laid
Quite even with the floor."

Another thinks (she does not say)
"My bonnet's quite outshone;
I'll go to some unhollied church
Till all these things are gone.”

Ye ghosts, and goblins, tell me, pray,
The secret-who are these
Old-fashioned dames of sixty years,
We find so hard to please?

No! that remains a mystery:

Now friends and foes, "Good-bye;"

Take my advice, where nothing is,

O'er nothing raise a cry.

WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD.

121

ION.

VOL. VI.

K

Aranslation from a horus in the

Agamemnon.

(v. 1000.)

HO was it named her all so true?
Was it the awful one, who knew

Of Helen's future fate?

Who prescient saw her through her life
Bride of the battle, wed to strife,

Her name well matched her state.

Of man and ships destroyer she,
Destroyer of a state to be,

Forth from the costly veils,

The veils her bridal chamber wore,

She went and soft from Helen's shore

Great Zephyr wafts her sails.

TRANSLATION FROM AGAMEMNON.

But many a warrior-huntsman bore
His arms for battle meant;

And followed, where her trackless oar
Had sped toward Simoi's leafy shore,
On gory strife intent.

It was the wrath of gods on high,

At Iliam's door that laid

For injured hospitality

That marriage marred, not made.'

*

And while the bridal chant they sing,
Great Zeus, the hearth-avenging king,
Their boisterous triumph stayed.
Old Iliam's sons with different strain
In melancholy now complain
Of Paris, and his wedlock-stain;

And sad full well she might complain,
When round her lay her burghers slain.

B. N. C., OXFORD.

123

A. J.

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