The Idol Of Today Pushes The Hero

Her Mighty Lakes, Like Oceans Of Liquid Silver; Her Mountains With Their Right Aerial Tints; Her Valleys, Teeming With Wild Fertility; Her Tremendous Cataracts, Thundering In Their Solitudes; Her Boundless Plains, Waving With Spontaneous Verdure; Her Brought Deep Rivers, Rolling In Solemn Silence To The Ocean; Her Trackless Forests, Where Vegetation Puts Forth All Its Magnificence; Her Skies, Kindling Waves In The Magic Of The Summer Clouds And Glorious Sunshine;-no, Never Need An American Look Beyond His Own Country For The Sublime And Beautiful Of Natural Scenery.

How We Delight To Build Our Recollections Upon Some Basis Of Reality,--a Place, A Country, A Local Habitation! How The Events Of Life, As We Look Back Upon Them, Have Grown Into The Well-remembered Background Of The Places Where They Fell Upon Us! Here Is Some Sunny Garden Or Summer Lane, Beautified And Canonized Forever, With The Flood Of A Great Joy; And Here Are Dim And Silent Places,--rooms Always Shadowed And Dark To Us, Whatever They May Be To Others,--where Distress Or Death Came Once, And Since Then Dwells Forevermore.

Some Minds Corrode And Grow Inactive Under The Loss Of Personal Liberty; Others Grow Morbid And Irritable; But It Is The Nature Of The Poet To Become Tender And Imaginitive In The Loneliness Of Confinement. He Banquets Upon The Honey Of His Own Thoughts, And, Like The Captive Bird, Pours Forth His Soul In Melody.

Christmas Is A Season For Kindling The Fire For Hospitality In The Hall, The Genial Flame Of Charity In The Heart.

Christmas Is Here, Merry Old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day Of Grand Memories, King Of The Year!