When Christmas Comes

Summer, long since flitted
From this still, cold earth
Snow and sadness now dwell here
Loneliness, and still with fear,
Presumptuous beauty lurking near,
Not for some the best suited,
  But even solemn, long-dead hearth

Presides; no candle to the sun
Would dare be bright for shame
In which it could not have been lit,
Except remember...remember bits
Of logs which fell, but know not it,
Of how they suffered, to be done,
Yet all they knew was just the same:

Long, bleak nothingness outside,
Eternal nights of deep unrest--
In space the circles turn and turn
And yet that sadness still returns.
Oh why can't just all be learned,
Where others chat round firesides
And some are still without unrest

When Christmas comes at end of year,
All happy families coalesce:-
Such are those who work and earn;
Their handshakes free, and easy firm
Rich happiness there takes its turn

But if that time should disappear
To some will come such strange distress:
Those who tried and failed to keep
What they thought was theirs once safe,
Those who feel it like old age
Those who have none to engage:-
Life's long run has robbed their courage
The ledge is short, though cliffs are steep;
The book is long at its last page.

How could such unfortunates,
Whose dreams with daylight disappear
Whose scenty mouths enumerate
A figure, but forget man's tear?

Of single parents, and the lonely;
Christ's birth to them is death;
They must begin to come to terms
With happy families but mostly blessed
And those who find themselves too stretched
And those, the pressed, and depressed
Because those humans only
Are to themselves, so much bereft.

Whilst warm and pleasant trees
Illuminate their own child's face
There's someone sits so dark and cold,
The sick, and single, lonely old.
All is thought, though nothing told.
Their drooping hands their knees enfold,
The thin cold air feels their pleas,
Sits, as a dead child's embrace.

They rock with silent dignity,
Not pander to their foreign classes,
Of which they ceased: not to have been;
Know how and when did their esteem
Leave like a spring's old drying stream
And still it fails their memory.
So winter's sharp guest passes

But summer will again appear
Through this thin earth, so still and cold
No snow, though sadness sleeps well there,
Thoughtless leaves are thick and fair
And in the park, in pair by pair
Will walk the lovers, always near
The vernal arm with grass enfold.

That makes such mellow difference
To those that life and year renew,
Who ramble those eternal plains.
They do not speak, nor feel their pain:
In their own sunshine, others' rain,
The sullen, bleak appearance.
Where the sun, once cold winds blew.

To life is love befitted
Whose cliffs are steep and sheer.
Each sunny hour once flitted
Brings winter ever near.