Once, long ago in summer's glow,
We threaded, you and I,
A garden's maze of pleasant ways,
Whose beauty charmed the eye, —
Where violets bent in sweet content,
And pinks stood proud and high.

And from their screen of tender green
Broad pansies, peeping through,
Wore gorgeous dyes like butterflies;
Cool lilies kept the dew,
And fair and tall along the wall
The climbing roses grew.

The velvet bees in fragrant ease,
Lay drunken with perfume,
Song-sparrows made the garden's shade
Their fitting concert-room,
And all the air was music there,
And all the earth was bloom.

There grew one plant in utter want
Of bud or blossom-dower; —
I broke a spray of leaves away,
And said, " The winter hour
Will crown these stems with diadems, —
This bears the Christ's sweet flower.

" It cheers with bloom the stormy gloom
By chill December nursed;
And it is told in stories old
That this fair blossom first,
On that blest morn when Christ was born,
Into white beauty burst.

" Perhaps — ah well, we cannot tell
If truly it be so;
I but repeat the legend sweet,
And only this I know, —
That in the prime of Christmas time
The Christ's sweet flowers blow.

" More pure and clear than any here,
Their snowy discs unfold,
White as a star that melts afar
Into the morning's gold,
And odor rare above compare,
Their fragrant fringes hold.

" This branch I break for memory's sake,
And ere descends the snow,
The slender bough I sever now
Within our home shall grow;
How brightly there, all white and fair,
The Christ's sweet flowers shall blow! "


The curtains fold away the cold, —
The bleak and drifting snow;
Red fire-gleams fall where on the wall
The pleasant pictures glow;
And fair and white beneath the light
The Christ's sweet flowers blow.

But cold and deep the snow-drifts heap
Above thy silent form;
I cannot hold my garment's fold
Between thee and the storm, —
I cannot dare the bitter air,
And clasp thee near and warm.

And what to me are light and glee
When all the while I know
That cold and deep the snow-drifts heap
Above thy slumber low,
What do I care that white and fair
The Christ's sweet flowers blow?