A Christmas Eve

Good fellows are laughing and drinking     (To-night no heart should grieve),     But I am of old days thinking,     Alone, on Christmas Eve.     Old memories fast are springing     To life again; old rhymes     Once more in my brain are ringing,     Ah, God be with old times!     There never was man so lonely     But ghosts walked him beside,     For Death our spirits can only     By veils of sense divide.     Numberless as the blades of     Grass in the fields that grow,     Around us hover the shades of     The dead of long ago.     Friends living a word estranges;     We smile, and we say Adieu!     But, whatsoever else changes,     Dead friends are faithful and true.     An old-time tune, or a flower,     The simplest thing held dear     In bygone days has the power     Once more to bring them near.     And whether it be through thinking     Of memories sad and sweet,     Or hearing the cheery clinking     Of glasses across the street,     I know not; but this is certain     That, here in the dusk, I view     Like shadows seen through a curtain,     The shades of the friends I knew.     Methinks that I hear their laughter,     An echo of ghostly mirth,     As if in the dim Hereafter     They jest as they did on earth.     The fancy possibly droll is,     And yet it relieves my mind     To think the enfranchised soul is     So humorously inclined.     But hark! whose steps in the glancing     Moonbeams are these I hear,     That sound as if timed to dancing     Music of gallant cheer!     Half Galahad, half Don Juan,     His head full of wild romance;     Twas thus that of old would Spruhan     Come lilting, We met by chance.     Sure never a spirit lighter     At heart quaffed mountain dew;     Never was goblin brighter     That Oberons kingdom knew.     And though at this season yearly     I miss the grasp of his hand,     I know that Spruhan has merely     Gone back to Fairyland.     .         .         .         .         .     The shades grow dimmer and dimmer,     And now they fade from view,     I see in the East the glimmer     Of dawn. Old friends, adieu!     Sitting here, lonely hearted,     Writing these random rhymes.     I drink to the days departed,     Ah, God be with old times!