Which
brings no more a welcome guest
To enrich the threshold of the night
With shower’d largess of delight
In
dance and song and game and jest?
Yet
go, and while the holly boughs
Entwine the cold baptismal font,
Make one wreath more for Use and Wont,
That
guard the portals of the house;
Old
sisters of a day gone by,
Gray nurses, loving nothing new;
Why should they miss their yearly due
Before
their time? They too will die.