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| MY Christmas gifts were few: to one | |
| A fan, to keep love’s flame alive, | |
| Since even to the constant sun | |
| Twilight and setting must arrive; | |
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| And to another—she who sent | 5 |
| That splendid toy, an empty purse— | |
| I gave, though not for satire meant, | |
| An emptier thing—a scrap of verse; | |
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| For thee I chose Diana’s head, | |
| Graved by a cunning hand in Rome, | 10 |
| To whose dim shop my feet were led | |
| By sweet remembrances of home. | |
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| ’T was with a kind of pagan feeling | |
| That I my little treasure bought,— | |
| My mood I care not for concealing,— | 15 |
| “Great is Diana!” was my thought. | |
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| Methought, howe’er we change our creeds, | |
| Whether to Jove or God we bend, | |
| By various paths religion leads | |
| All spirits to a single end. | 20 |
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| The goddess of the woods and fields, | |
| The healthful huntress, undefiled, | |
| Now with her fabled brother yields | |
| To sinless Mary and her Child. | |
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| But chastity and truth remain | 25 |
| Still the same virtues as of yore, | |
| Whether we kneel in Christian fane | |
| Or old mythologies adore. | |
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| What though the symbol were a lie,— | |
| Since the ripe world hath wiser grown,— | 30 |
| If any goodness grew thereby, | |
| I will not scorn it for mine own. | |
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| So I selected Dian’s head | |
| From out the artist’s glittering show; | |
| And this shall be my gift, I said, | 35 |
| To one that bears the silver bow; | |
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| To her whose quiet life has been | |
| The mirror of as calm a heart, | |
| Above temptation from the din | |
| Of cities, and the pomp of art; | 40 |
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| Who still hath spent her active days | |
| Cloistered amid her happy hills, | |
| Not ignorant of worldly ways, | |
| But loving more the woods and rills. | |
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| And thou art she to whom I give | 45 |
| This image of the virgin queen, | |
| Praying that thou, like her, mayst live | |
| Thrice blest! in being seldom seen. | |
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