The Christmas Child

"I know what beauty is, for thou             Hast set the world within my heart;             Of me thou madest it a part;         I never lo"

"Ance was a woman wha's hert was gret;         Her love was sae dumb it was 'maist a grief;     She brak the box--it's tellt o' her yet--"

"Within each living man there doth reside,     In some unrifled chamber of the heart,     A hidden treasure: wayward as thou art     I love thee"

"And is not Earth thy living picture, where     Thou utterest beauty, simple and profound,     In the same form by wondrous union bound;     Whe"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"