Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy,
to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not
outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however
fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around
us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the
earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven! Do we build no
Christmas castles in the clouds now? Let our thoughts, fluttering
like butterflies among these flowers of children, bear witness!
Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever
looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with
truth. Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie heaped,
the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was no
scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our
first-love. Upon another girl's face near it--placider but smiling
bright--a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly
written. Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see
how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other
hearts than ours are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other
happiness blooms, ripens, and decays--no, not decays, for other
homes and other bands of children, not yet in being nor for ages yet
to be, arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!
Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never
was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly,
to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-
hearted! In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the
blaze, an enemy's face? By Christmas Day we do forgive him! If the
injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come
here and take his place.
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