VERSES.

Most holy Night, that still dost keep The keys of all the doors of sleep, To me when my tired eyelids close Give thou repose. And let the far lament of them That chaunt the dead day’s requiem Make in my ears, who wakeful lie, Soft lullaby. Bid them that guard the sacred moon By my bedside their memories croon; So shall I have strange dreams and blest In my brief rest. Fold thy great wings about my face, Hide day-dawn from my resting-place, And cheat me with thy false delight, Most holy Night.

I. There is a light around your head Which only Saints of God may wear, And all the flowers on which you tread In pleasaunce more than ours have fed, And supped the essential air Whose summer is a-pulse with music everywhere. II. For you are younger than the mornings are That in the mountains break; When upland shepherds see their only star Pale on the dawn, and make In his surcease the hours, The early hours of all their happy circuit take.

In woods so long time bare. Cuckoo! (Up in Mortain woods, I know not where) Two notes fall. Yet I do not envy him at all His phantasy. Cuckoo! I too, Somewhere, I have sang as merrily as he Who can dare, Small and careless lover, so to laugh at care, And who Can call Cuckoo! In woods of winter weary, In scented woods, of winter weary, call Cuckoo! In woods so long time bare.