`"I'll play, while you're gone, my pretty
`He watched his mother pass down the street;
`Then he tenderly took up his empty sock,
`"I am tired of waiting," he said at last;
`"And I'll carry with me, to keep it safe,
`And down the street 'mid the chattering crowd,
`"And where are you going, you dear little
`Then he looked at them with his honest eyes,
`"My stocking is full to the top, kind sirs,
`They would stare and laugh, but he trudged
`"And I wonder why 'tis that the people all
`"Oh, my heart's little flower!" she cried to
`"And why are you out on the street alone?
`Like the Maid at her Son, in the Altar-piece,
`"Because, dear heart, of all that you met,
`O thou who art grieving at Christmas-tide,
`That thou mayst get Christ's loveliest gifts
Her best blue ribbons fluttered gay, and she
She goes for to make a wedding-call, to-day,
|THERE is ice on the hill, hurrah, hurrah!
Would stand a-waiting and lowing together.
They had never a sled, but dragged in its room,
Just as gayly, behind them, the worn kitchen-
John, Sammy, and Tom, and their sweet lit-
With her cheeks cherry-red, where the wind
"Oh! where in the world is there aught so nice
As to slide down the pasture-hill on the ice?
Quite down to the bar, sis, see, we are going,
Where the cows each night in summer stood lowing.
`With a roof of dark-brown, velvety thatch,
There lived an old woodman and his spouse.
`One morning his bill-hook the old man took:
"To the mountain, to cut me a fagot, I'll
In the river which rushes and gurgles by."
`Oh! the merry old man to the mountain hied,
Past young rice-fields in the morning sun,
`Toward the dark fir-trees on the mountain side,
Standing forth in its silence, every one.
`From wild camellias and white plum-trees,
In his twinkling old eyes the spider-webs
`And he merrily brushed by the green bam-
With his bill-hook over his shoulder hung.
As the smiling old wife to the river-side
`"Oh, red is the sun!" she cheerily sang,
`"Oh, red is the sun! and the rice-fields green--
`It's the rosiest peach in the whole of Japan;
And it's coming a-floating, a-floating to me.
`"Now, here is a feast for my darling old man,
Oh, the great Shogun not a finer can get!
`Some stewed lily-bulbs, and this beautiful peach,
And fast on his back his fagot was bound.