I watch them drift—­the old familiar faces,
Who fished and rode with me, by stream and wold,
Till ghosts, not men, fill old beloved places,
And, ah! the land is rank with churchyard mold.

I watch them drift—­the youthful aspirations,
Shores, landmarks, beacons, drift alike.
. . . . . 
I watch them drift—­the poets and the statesmen;
The very streams run upward from the sea.
   . . . . . . 
   Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven
   Still fades to night, still blazes into day.
   . . . . . 
   Ah, God!  My God!  Thou wilt not drift away

November 1867.

CHRISTMAS DAY

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 rosebuds mouldering on the dripping porch;
One 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 harbour 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 underworld—­
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 nought 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 mothers’