Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead.

Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar
Make me a fire,

Close by whose living coal I sit,
And glow like it.

Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The pulse is thine,

And all those other bits that be
There placed by thee;

The worts, the purslane, and the mess
Of water-cress,

Which of thy kindness thou hast sent;
And my content

Makes these, and my beloved beet
To be more sweet.

'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,

And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.

Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand

That soils my land,

And giv'st me for my bushel sown
Twice ten for one;

Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay
Her egg each day;

Besides

my healthful ewes to bear The twins each year;

The while the conduits of my kine

Run cream for wine:

337

All these and better thou dost send
Me to this end,

That I should render, for my part,
A thankful heart;

Which, fired with incense, I resign
As wholly thine;

--But the acceptance, that must be,
My Christ, by thee.

THANKSGIVING DAY.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

OUR fathers rejected the holidays of the church. They did right; and we also do right in resuming them. In the momentous struggles for civil and religious liberty, the great festivals and pleasure-days were in the hands of the party that represented despotism. In the church and in the state rulers desired to withdraw public thought from the machinery of government. And so it has been the policy of the church to wreathe Maypoles, and to decorate wintry Christmas with scarlet berries and evergreen leaves. As oxen were led on festive occasions to slaughter in wreaths and ribbons, so were the people. Pleasure in exchange for liberty. Pleasure not Justice Pleasure, but no rights. This was that which led Pilgrim and Puritan to array themselves against pleasure. They did right. Innocent in itself, and indispensable as an element of public education and development, yet, as there are times

when we fast from necessary food for the sake of health, so there are times when men must fast from pleasure in order that it may be wrested from the hands of tyrants as an instrument of oppression. And this is what the Puritan did.

But after usages which once were fruitful of mischief have lain fallow for a long time, and manners and governments have changed, and new influences are dominant, then these old pleasures may be taken back again into cultivation, and bring forth large harvests of good.

Thanksgiving Day is the one national festival which turns on home life. It is not a day of ecclesiastical saints. It is not a national anniversary. It is not a day celebrating a religious event. It is a day of nature. It is a day of thanksgiving for the year's history. And it must pivot on the household. It is the one great festival of our American life that pivots on the household. Like a true Jewish festival it spreads a bounteous table; for the Jews knew how near to the stomach lay all the moral virtues.

A typical Thanksgiving dinner represents everything that has grown in all the summer fit to make glad the heart of man. It is not a riotous feast. It is a table piled high, among the group of rollicking young and the sober joy of the old, with the treasures of the growing year, accepted with rejoicings and interchange of many festivities as a token of gratitude to Almighty God.

Remember God's bounty in the year. String the

pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!

HYMN ON THE NATIVITY.

JOHN MILTON.

It was the winter wild,

While the heaven-born child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe of him,

Had doffed her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her

To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.

Only with speeches fair

She wooes the gentle air,

To hide her guilty front with innocent snow; And on her naked shame,

Pollute with sinful blame,

The saintly veil of maiden-white to throw; Confounded, that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

But he, her fears to cease,

Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:

She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding Down through the turning sphere,

His ready harbinger,

With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing; And, waving wide her myrtle wand,

She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

No war or battle's sound

Was heard the world around:

The idle spear and shield were high uphung; The hooked chariot stood

Unstained with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng; And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovereign lord was by.

But peaceful was the night,

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began:

The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kissed,

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave.

The stars, with deep amaze,

Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,

Bending one way their precious influence;

And will not take their flight,

For all the morning light,

Or Lucifer had often warned them thence:

But in their glimmering orbs did glow,

Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.