All Quiet along the Potomac and other poems/Grandma's Christmas
GRANDMA'S CHRISTMAS.
CHRISTMAS gifts for darling grandma—
Loving counsel we must take,
What to buy to grace her Christmas,
What to seek, or choose, or make.
She cares not for gold and silver,
Nor the treasures they will buy;
Silken robe and shining trinket
Folded in their wrappings lie.
Fred shall give her fragrant flowers,
Sprays of roses, spikes of bloom;
Lilie paint a text beloved
To adorn her sunny room.
Hal shall pile in purple clusters,
Grapes, the drops of summer's blood
Caught by autumn when the sunshine
Lanced the glowing summer wood.
I must find some dainty slippers,
Lined with fur from toe to heel,
Or a coif of something misty
That her white hair won't conceal.
****
Christmas gifts for grandma sleeping
Not poor gifts of human love;
Something sent by thoughtful angels
From the Glory up above;
Not the roses freshly gathered
That she loved on earth so well;
But the fadeless bloom of Eden,
Amaranth and asphodel.
Not the shoes of mortal fashion
Wait the weary, wayworn feet;
Shod with peace, they step securely
On that shining upper street.
Not the fabric frail and misty
Resting on the silvered hair,
But the crown He gives his children,
Invisible, yet hovering there.
So comes grandma's Christmas morning,
Dawning soft and silently,
Bringing God's best gifts together,
Christ and Immortality.