What gifts to please a little Boy
Who has the whole world for His toy?
Through Him, with Him, and in Him, live
The lovely playthings I would give—
Black branches traced on afterglow,
Blue moonlight on the wind-glazed snow,
Music, and singing words—but these
Were always His. Upon my knees
I cannot ask a King to take
The stars He watched His Father make.
Here on the clean straw of His throne
I lay the only things I own—
A battered will, a raveled mind
A broken dream I cannot find.
If I had come to Him before,
And laid them on the stable floor,
Not scratched and finger-marked with sin,
How new and gay they would have been.
Yet strange things catch a Baby's eyes—
There in His hand my frayed heart lies.
—Mary H. Dewer