Classic Poem

I .

Our sweet boy-baby had a gift,
A home-made rabbit, soft and white;
By day, by night, awake, asleep,
It evermore was his delight.

Beauty and use could not agree,
It lost its whiteness more and more;
It lost its tail, it lost its ears:
He loved it better than before.

And still the grimy little heap
He tucked beneath his dainty chin;
And still to bed without his pet
Was sure to brew a dreadful din.

Nightly we found his rosy cheek
Against his battered darling pressed.
A vote was passed: when Christmas came,
He should of it be dispossessed,

And in its place, at dead of night,
Another should be slyly placed,
With coat of down as snowy white
As a wee rabbit ever graced.

The deed was done. Not without tears
We took the dear old pet away,
And wrapped it up and marked it plain,
To keep against some distant day,

When, haply, to some boy of his
He might the frowzy relic show,
For proof that he was true in love
Some five-and-twenty years ago.

Where lay the old we laid the new,
And waited for the Christmas morn,
As wait a hundred million hearts
For the dear time when Christ was born.

It came at length, and baby woke,
To clutch his precious liebling fast; —
It was the same, yet not the same!
Its squalor with the night had passed!

He looked at first with dubious face,
But soon resolved that all was right;
So cuddled it the livelong day,
And pressed it to his cheek at night.

And then I thought, 'Tis writ " He gives
To His beloved while they sleep; "
And deeper meanings found me out,
While lay my boy in slumbers deep.

II .

Children of larger growth, God gives
To us His gifts from day to day, —
His gifts of thought, His gifts of will, —
And how we fritter them away!

We soil them like the baby's pet;
We grovel with them in the mire;
And then we sleep; and while we sleep,
Sing heavenly voices, " Come up higher. "

New every morn, fresh every eve,
The promise runs, and faileth not;
When we awake, we are with Him
Whose promises are ne'er forgot.

From weary mind and conscience dim,
Sleep clears the blurring films away;
We may have erred, we may have sinned,
But life is new with every day.

He giveth His beloved sleep:
Oh, joy to troubled hearts and sore!
And, while they sleep, — oh, deeper joy! —
He gives them strength to reach that shore
Whence they may never wander more.