“Their kindred slept a mile or two away,

The snow lay deep in drifts upon the ground,

The roads unbroken no one could discern,

Twas hill and vale of deep untrodden snow.

'Where should the little boy be laid to rest?'

Was asked by anxious hearts. 'He must lie there,

Where generations gone beneath the sod

Repose in peace, beneath the hallowed ground,'

Was answered by the father.

"Across the fields

And pastures, down through the vale they started

The saddest Christmas morn they yet had known.

They soon stopped, the horses wallowing deep

Were fastened in the snow. Now on again

They move, but in a moment more they stop,

They start and stop, and start and stop again,

And fail to gain upon their funeral way.

Discouraged in his vain attempts to reach

The sacred burial-place so far away,

The father said, 'We cannot further go;

Let us bury our dead here where we are.'

And there beneath the deep snow they laid him

Alone upon the valley's broad expanse,

Then turned their faces back to their lone home,

From which the light had gone, no more to shine

At least on earth.

"Around the little grave

Others laid their dead, till in that lowland

Scores lay buried. To-day it is a place

Where antiquarians love to wander;

And hunting round for the oldest gravestone

They find this one of Micah Dole's, whose date

Is seventeen hundred forty-seven,

And looking farther down they read that he

Was first of all to lie upon that lea.”