Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
Music I love – but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine –
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes borne.
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an angel's voice,
To wake, and worship, and rejoice;
To greet with joy the glorious morn,
Which angels welcomed long ago,
When our redeeming Lord was born,
To bring the light of Heaven below;
The Powers of Darkness to dispel,
And rescue Earth from Death and Hell.
While listening to that sacred strain,
My raptured spirit soars on high;
I seem to hear those songs again
Resounding through the open sky,
That kindled such divine delight,
In those who watched their flocks by night.
With them, I celebrate His birth–
Glory to God, in highest Heaven,
Good-will to men, and peace on Earth,
To us a Saviour-king is given;
Our God is come to claim His own,
And Satan's power is overthrown!
A sinless God, for sinful men,
Descends to suffer and to bleed;
Hell must renounce its empire then;
The price is paid, the world is freed,
And Satan's self must now confess,
That Christ has earned a Right to bless:
Now holy Peace may smile from heaven,
And heavenly Truth from earth shall spring:
The captive's galling bonds are riven,
For our Redeemer is our king;
And He that gave his blood for men
Will lead us home to God again.
~~ Anne Brontë (1820-1849) from Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, 1846
Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster For their far off flying From summer dying.
Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples’ dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing For sweet things dying.
~~ Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) from Poems, 1890
List! List! the sleigh bells peal across the snow;
The frost's sharp arrows touch the earth and lo!
How diamond-bright the stars to scintillate
When Night hath lit hr lamps to Heaven's gate.
To the dim forest's cloistered arches go,
And seek the holly and the mistletoe;
For soon the bells of Christmas-tide will ring
To hail the Heavenly King!
We have tested and tasted too much, lover –
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.
And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.
O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning –
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour –
And Christ comes with a January flower.
~~ Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) from A Soul for Sale, 1947
Yes, the Year is growing old, And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold, Plucks the old man by the beard, Sorely,— sorely!
The leaves are falling, falling, Solemnly and slow;
Caw! caw! the rooks are calling, It is a sound of woe, A sound of woe!
Through woods and mountain-passes The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses, Singing: Pray for this poor soul, Pray,— pray!
And the hooded clouds, like friars, Tell their beads in drops of rain,
And patter their doleful prayers;— But their prayers are all in vain, All in vain!
There he stands in the foul weather, The foolish, fond Old Year,
Crowned with wild flowers and with heather, Like weak, despised Lear, A king,— a king!
Then comes the summer-like day, Bids the old man rejoice!
His joy! his last! O, the old man gray Loveth that ever-soft voice, Gentle and low.
To the crimson woods he saith, And the voice gentle and low
Of the soft air, like a daughter's breath, Pray do not mock me so! Do not laugh at me!
And now the sweet day is dead; Cold in his arms it lies;
No stain from its breath is spread Over the glassy skies, No mist or stain!
Then, too, the Old Year dieth, And the forests utter a moan,
Like the voice of one who crieth In the wilderness alone, Vex not his ghost!
Then comes, with an awful roar, Gathering and sounding on,
The storm-wind from Labrador, The wind Euroclydon, The storm-wind!
Howl! howl! and from the forest Sweep the red leaves away!
Would, the sins that thou abhorrest, O Soul! could thus decay, And be swept away!
For there shall come a mightier blast, There shall be a darker day;
And the stars, from heaven down-cast Like red leaves be swept away! Kyrie, Eleyson! Christe, Eleyson!
~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) from Voices of the Night, 1839
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
~~
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
from Michael Robartes and the Dancer, 1914
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
Winter cold is coming on;
No more calls the cuckoo:
No more doth the music gush
From the silver-throated thrush:
No more now at "evening pale,"
Singeth sad the nightingale;
Nor the blackbird on the lawn;
Nor the lark at dewy dawn:
Time hath wove' his songs anew.
No more young and dancing measures;
No more budding flowery pleasures:
All is over, — all forgot;
Save by me, who loved them not.
Winter white is coming on;
And I love his coming:
What, though winds the fields have shorn, —
What, though earth is half forlorn, —
Not a berry on the thorn, —
Not an insect humming;
Pleasure never can be dead;
Beauty cannot hide her head!
Look! in what fantastic showers,
The snow flings down her feathered flowers,
Or whirls about, in drunken glee,
Kissing its love, the holly tree.
Behold! the Sun himself comes forth,
And sends his beams from south to north, —
To diamonds turns the winter rime,
And lends a glory to the time!
Such days, — when old friends meet together,
Are worth a score of mere spring weather;
And hark ! the merry bells awake;
They clamor blithely for our sake!
The clock is sounding from the tower,
"Four" "five" - 'tis now - - 's dinner hour!
Come on, I see his table spread,
The sherry, the claret rosy red,
The champagne sparkling in the light,
By Bacchus! we'll be wise to-night.
