10

One word, ere yet the evening ends:
Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
And pledge a hand to all young friends,
As fits the merry Christmas time;
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
That fate ere long shall bid you play;
Good-night! - with honest gentle hearts 15
A kindly greeting go alway!

Good-night! I'd say the griefs, the joys,
Just hinted in this mimic page,

The triumphs and defeats of boys,

Are but repeated in our age;

I'd say your woes were not less keen,

20

5

10

With grizzled beards at forty-five,

As erst at twelve in corduroys,

And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray, 35 Pray heaven that early love and truth May never wholly pass away.

And in the world, as in the school,

15

I'd say how fate may change and shift, The prize be sometimes with the fool, The race not always to the swift; The strong may yield, the good may fall, The great man be a vulgar clown, The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

Kneel undisturbed, fair saint!

20

Who knows the inscrutable design?

Pour out your praise or plaint

Meekly and duly;

I will not enter there,

To sully your pure prayer

With thoughts unruly.

35

40

Blessed be he who took and gave! Why should your mother, Charles, not mine, Be weeping at her darling's grave?

60

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,
Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed,
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,
And longing passion unfulfilled.
Amen! - whatever fate be sent,
Pray God the heart may kindly glow,
Although the head with cares be bent,
And whitened with the winter snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill, 65
Let young and old accept their part,
And bow before the awful will,

And bear it with an honest heart.
Who misses or who wins the prize-

Go, lose or conquer as you can;

But if you fail, or if you rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

70

75

WHITHER DEPART THE BRAVE

80

As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth,

85

Be this, good friends, our carol still: Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.

(1848)

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
(1819-1861)

QUA CURSUM VENTUS

As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried;

To say we truly feel the pain,
And quite are sinking with the strain;
Entirely, simply, undeceived,

Believe, and say we ne'er believed
The object, e'en were it achieved,
A thing we e'er had cared to keep;
With heart and soul to hold it cheap,
And then to go and try it again;
O false, unwise, absurd, and vain!
O, 't is not joy, and 't is not bliss,
Only it is precisely this

That keeps us still alive.

5

ΙΟ

15

20

Her rounded form was lean,

And her silk was bombazine;

(1869)