University of Virginia Library

CHRISTMAS MDCCCCXXVIII

You never know! as the gossips say,
You never know!
Thus it fell on a day
In summer last I chanced to be
On a tram-car of the L.C.C.—
Stifling it was, and the folk therein
Good honest folk enough no doubt,
Yet hardly such as from eyes might win
Attention—just the mid-day rout
Of office girls and housewives stout
A-marketing—with a man or two
Listless and tired, as I, to view.
Suddenly,
The car stops, up the gangway strides
A stalwart young Father with Son on arm
To keep him safe from the traffic's harm—
Well, at a guess say a child of three—
And down they sit, the luck of it!
Down together afront of me.
Then a fig for the heat, and hustle, and noise
Through the rest of the way, as I gazed on the Boy's
Perfection amazing of colour and limb
And movement, that wholly befitted him,
As he lolled on his Father's lap at play,
Shall we say—
For the hand of the faultless Urbinate
A new Madonna and Child to create?
Ah! Raphael, heavens! had you been there
To capture the Boy with your silver-point,
And anon to set the world a-stare
And your name re-bless
For so fair a fresh vision of graciousness!
You never know! as the gossips say,
You never know!
An inn-stable, was it not? long ago
Sheltered The Eternal newly-born—
Shepherd and sage they found it so—
On the first Christmas Morn.
Yes,
You never know what common-place,
Sheer common-place,
Of Life's strange chances shall hap to reveal
The unexpected face
Of a Truth or a Beauty its mists conceal—
Suddenly!
Ah! you never know!