Is it the wizard wind
That has shriveled the quince’s rind?
Sooth, we know it was he
Who shook the leaves from the tree
And danced them out of breath
Till they wizened away in death!
Strange and subtile powers
Have rule of these ashen hours,
Binding the stricken sphere
In this, the age of the year.

Through the crispèd grass and the husk
Rustle the feet of the Dusk;
And the only song we know
Is the back-log’s murmur low.
Then come, and sit with me
By the side of Memory
And Love, with the bluet skies
In her spring-reverting eyes,
And there shall be vernal cheer
In this, the age of the year!

The kindly hills of Kirkland,
They saw, when broad noon shone
Above the fair Oriska vale,
This pilgrim toiling on.

The hemlocks preened their night-dark plumes
As up and up he clomb;
The same old rook-calls welcomed him
Back to the hills of home.

High on the hills of Kirkland
Where hale the north-wind roared,
O gay were they that grouped about
The heapèd Christmas board!

And yet the brooding mother,
With smiles she hid the tear
For one whose lips she had not kissed
This many a lonely year;

For one whose wander-lust had led
His roving spirit far,
Until she dreamed he slept beneath
The clear Alaskan star.

Hark, at the door a summons!
A step upon the sill!
O mother-eyes abrim with joy,
And mother-heart athrill!

And O ye hills of Kirkland,
In wintry white and gray,
A gladder sight ye never saw
On any Christmas day!

When the woodland gleamed like a prismy ray,
And the distance drowsed in a golden dye,
When vineyard and orchard aisles were gay
(Ah, but the depths of an autumn sky!)
With stains like a web of Tyrian ply,
’Twas the flame o’ the maple beckoned us; now
When we meet, my sweet, for the trysting, why,
’Tis under the green of the holly bough!

Spring, summer and autumn have all sped by,
(Ah, but the chill of a winter sky!)
Yet love still calls to the tryst, and now
’Tis under the green of the holly bough!

Backward and forward oft she went and came
From the grim spot, that was but home in name,
On casual errandry. It chanced one day,
As she passed swiftly on her timid way,
(’Twas near the season of the Christ-child’s birth,
The happy tide of peace and love on earth)
A heedless hand struck from her feeble grasp
The glass she strove so carefully to clasp,
And she beheld it, with a plaintive cry,
Shattered before her on the pavement lie.
The throng swept by, and caught her in its swirl;
There was no lip to soothe the sobbing girl,
No kindliness to aid her. A great fear
Clutched at her breast; she knew the stabbing jeer,
The pitiless blows that waited her when she
Told the ill outcome of her errandry.
Then through her brain there flashed a sudden word
That in the hive-like purlieus she had heard,
And filled her mind with sunshine. No affright
Touched her with chill at thought of death’s dim night,
For she recalled how once the preacher said
That in white lily-gardens walk the dead.
So in she stole at the accustomed door,
Sought out a room upon the lower floor
Wherein the porter, sullen-visaged, slept;
Toward a remembered drawer on tiptoe crept,
Plucked, undetected, thence a shining thing,
And gained again the street in triumphing.
A ringing shot, a little piteous moan,
And a child’s blood encrimsoning the stone!
When Cosette oped her heavy-lidded eyes,
Wonder assailed her, and a great surmise.
Was this the lily-land of her delight?
It shone so bare, and yet so very white!
Long stainless walls and little cots in rows,
And one whose smile invited to repose;
She drowsed, her mind still dwelling on that face,
And dreamed she’d found the angels’ sleeping-place.
And when, next day, they told her where she lay,
A tiny tear-drop found its mournful way
Adown the death-like pallor of her cheek;
She closed her eyes and sighed, but did not speak.

Dawn followed dawn, and still the little one
Went not to that dim bourn beyond the sun,
But ever seemed about to pass thereto;
Nearer and nearer now the Yule-tide drew,
And to the hospital one morn there strayed
A kindly man who made the news his trade,
And learned the piteous story of the maid.
“Cosette,” he said, with a strange catch of tone,
His sight grown dim, remembering his own,
“Have you no wish?” and she, with him at ease,
Cried,—“Two red roses and an orange, please!”

Just two red roses and an orange! So
He wrote next day that all the town might know;
Then Christmas morning broke above the snow.
The morn of Christmas broke; bell spoke to bell
The loving message of “good-will” to tell;
The postmen bustled on their burdened round;
And happy greetings rang with cordial sound.
Then, at the hospital, a summons came,
Another and another, and the name
The answering nurse with every message met
Was still “Cosette,” and evermore “Cosette,”
For all had read the story of the child.
Roses upon her bed were strewn and piled,
And breathed their June about her everywhere,
Gleamed on the table, glistened on the chair,
From the soft loveliness of the pale tea-rose
To the deep splendor of the Jacqueminots.
And oranges! forsooth, it was as though
The palm-set lands where the long trade-winds blow,
Fair Florida and the Lucayan shores,
Had here unbosomed their most precious stores!
Both rich and poor had sought to ease the smart
Of her whose tale had touched the city’s heart.
And she—Cosette—through kindness’ golden dower,
Smiled upon life, and mended from that hour.