If Galileo Had Said In

I Wish I Had Never Been Born--there Or Anywhere Else.

Let Me Enjoy The Earth No Less Because The All-enacting Light That Fashioned Forth Its Loveliness Had Other Aims Than My Delight.

Christmas Eve, And Twelve Of The Clock. "now They Are All On Their Knees," An Elder Said As We Sat In A Flock By The Embers In Hearth-side Ease. We Pictured The Meek Mild Creatures Where They Dwelt In Their Strawy Pen, Nor Did It Occur To One Of Us There To Doubt They Were Kneeling Then. So Fair A Fancy Few Would Weave In These Years! Yet, I Feel If Someone Said On Christmas Eve, "come; See The Oxen Kneel, In The Lonely Barton By Yonder Coomb Our Childhood Used To Know," I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So.

There Was Now A Distinct Manifestation Of Morning In The Air, And Presently The Bleared White Visage Of A Sunless Winter Day Emerged Like A Dead-born Child.

It Was That Period In The Vernal Quarter When We May Suppose The Dryads To Be Waking For The Season. The Vegetable World Begins To Move And Swell And The Saps To Rise, Till In The Completest Silence Of Lone Gardens And Trackless Plantations, Where Everything Seems Helpless And Still After The Bond And Slavery Of Frost, There Are Bustlings, Strainings, United Thrusts, And Pulls-all-together, In Comparison With Which The Powerful Tugs Of Cranes And Pulleys In A Noisy City Are But Pigmy Efforts.