Oh, they wander wide who roam Depend upon it, where the birthdays are well kept, either by poor or rich, there are the happiest families. We should be inclined to take the observance as a touchstone of mutual domestic love. They who "wander wide from home," and seek their joys elsewhere, are not likely to care for the children's birthdays. And what of the wretched children of penury? Ah! who is there to care for them or their birthdays? Life is too hard a stepmother to them for any one to mock them with the "Many happy returns of the day." One's heart aches to think where and how their anniversaries are kept. But, God be thanked, to them, as to all, each year brings one glad birthday the promise and assurance of a better lot when the kingdom of Christ shall come. That blessed day is the anniversary of the birth of Him who had nowhere to lay His head. O Saviour! whom this early morn Incarnate Word, by every grief, If gaily clothed, and proudly fed, In dangerous wealth we dwell, And lowly cottage cell. If, pressed by poverty severe, Through fickle fortune's various scene Like us, Thou hast a mourner been, HEBER. On this day the cake and the orange are in the workhouses, and in the gaols, and in the hovels, where Christian benevolence at this holy time seeks to penetrate, shedding often tears of pity and of wonder at the depths of human misery, while seeking to win poor outcast souls to their only hope. The Christ-child's birthday was a famous theme of the old poets of our own and other lands. Quaintly fanciful is that vision of Southwell: THE BURNING BABE. As I in hoary winter's night Stood shivering in the snow, To view what fire was near, Who, scorched with excessive heat, Such floods of tears did shed, As though his floods should quench his flames, "Alas!" quoth he, "but newly born, Yet none approach to warm their hearts, Or feel my fire, but I. My faultless breast the furnace is, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke; The ashes, shames and scorns. And mercy blows the coals, Are men's defiled souls: To wash them in my blood." Of this singular poem Ben Jonson said that to have written it he would gladly have destroyed several of his ; whether he included the following we do not know : A HYMN ON THE NATIVITY OF MY SAVIOUR. I sing the birth was born' to-night, The Angels so did sound it, And like the ravish'd shepherds said, Yet search'd and true they found it, The Son of God, the Eternal King, And freed the soul from danger; He whom the whole world could not take, The world which heaven and earth did make, Was now laid in a manger. The Father's wisdom will'd it so, Both wills were in one stature; And as that wisdom had decreed, What comfort by Him do we win, To see this babe all innocence, Can man forget this story? A greater poet than “ rare Ben Jonson," gifted as he was, has attuned his wondrous lyre to celebrate the holiest birth the world ever knew, in that sublime composition, Milton's Ode: ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. This is the month, and this the happy morn Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, Of wedded maid, and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That He our deadly forfeit should release, And with His Father work us a perpetual peace. That glorious form, that light unsufferable, To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside; and here with us to be, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. Say, heavenly muse, shall not thy sacred vein Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, Now while the Heaven, by the sun's team untrod, Hath took no print of the approaching light, And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright? See how from far upon the eastern road Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet, THE HYMN. It was the winter wild, While the Heaven-born child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies: Had doffed her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize. |