THE END.
GIFTS FOR ST. NICHOLAS [A]
BY EMMA E. BREWSTER.
Grieve not, O Santa Claus, who fills
Each stocking, box and tree;
Nor think, most desolate of saints,
None bring good gifts to thee.
We place no candles in thy crypt,
No gold upon thy shrine,--
Thou bringest us the frankincense,
The tapers and the wine.
But rarer gifts, good Nicholas,
Than these, thy children bring,
When up and down an echoing world
The Christmas bells all ring.
We bring our brightest, truest love
To crown thy happy brows;
No monarch wears a coronet
So light as holly-boughs.
We bring our gayest, fairest hopes,
With smiling memories spun;
So rich a robe has never shone
Earth's proudest king upon.
We bring our trust, our childhood faith,
And place it in thy hand;
No jeweled scepter has such power
To rule on sea or land.
Then stay, O dear St. Nicholas!
Look on thy heaped-up shrine;
Our hearts, our hopes, our memories,
Our trusts, our faith are thine!
There's not in all the calendar
One saint whose altars shine
With such gay throngs of worshipers,
Such precious gifts, as thine!
[Footnote A: An answer to "Left Out," published in the December number.
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