Remorseless time! Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe! What power Can stay him in his silent course, or melt His iron heart to pity! On, still on, He presses and forever. The proud bird, The Condor of the Andes, that can soar Through heaven's unfathomable depths, or brave The fury of the northing hurricane, And bath its plumage in the thunder's home Furls his broad wing at nightfall, and sinks down To rest upon his mountain crag; but Time Knows not the weight of sleep or weariness, And Night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinion. Revolutions sweep O'er earth, like troubled visions o'er the breast Of dreaming sorrow; cities rise and sink Like bubbles on the water; fiery isles Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns; mountains rear To heaven their bold and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain; and empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down, like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations; and the very stars, Yon bright and glorious blazonry of God, Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, And like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time, Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Dark, stern, all pitiless, and pauses not Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path, To sit and muse, like other conquerors, Upon the fearful ruin he hath wrought. CHRISTMAS. [1864.] HENRY TIMROD. How grace this hallowed day? Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire, Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire Round which the children play? .... How shall we grace the day? Ah! Let the thought that on this holy morn The Prince of Peace-the Prince of Peace was born, Employ us, while we pray! Pray for the peace which long Hath left this tortured land, and haply now Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow, There hardly safe from wrong! Let every sacred fane Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God, And, with the cloister and the tented sod, Join in one solemn strain! He, who, till time shall cease, Will watch that earth, where once, not all in vain, He died to give us peace, may not disdain A prayer whose theme is--peace. Perhaps ere yet the Spring Hath died into the Summer, over all The land, the Peace of His vast love shall fall, Like some protecting wing. Oh, ponder what it means! Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way! Oh, give the vision and the fancy play, And shape the coming scenes! Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men, Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen, Peace in the peopled vales! Peace in the crowded town, Peace in the thousand fields of waving grain, Peace in the highway and the flowery lane, Peace on the wind-swept down!