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THE EVENING LESSON.
Nay, my darling knows them already :
She wishes for something true ;
So I'll tell her a sweet, strange story,
Old, yet forever new.
Once, in the past's dim ages,
In a country far away,
On just such a starlit night as this,
An Infant in slumber lay.
But not in a costly cradle
Was the Baby hushed to rest ;
Not on a downy pillow
Was his pure white forehead pressed.
It was a dismal stable ;
Nestled upon the hay,
In a dark and narrow manger,
The new-born Infant lay ;
