25 Great Christmas Poems E-Book

Various Authors

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 79

Beschreibung

Christmas is the most famous holiday of the year, and the word itself evokes images of Santa Claus, reindeer, snow, Christmas trees, egg nog and more. At the same time, it represents Christianity's most important event, the birth of the baby Jesus. Instantly, well known Christmas carols ring in your ears, pictures of the Nativity Scene become ubiquitous, or maybe you even picture nutcrackers or Scrooge and Tiny Tim.

Leseprobe

25 Great Christmas Poems

THE BIRTH OF CHRIST

By ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

The time draws near the birth of Christ;The moon is hid—the night is still;The Christmas bells from hill to hillAnswer each other in the mist. Four voices of four hamlets round,From far and near, on mead and moor,Swell out and fail, as if a doorWere shut between me and the sound. Each voice four changes on the wind,That now dilate and now decrease,Peace and good-will, good-will and peace,Peace and good-will to all mankind. Rise, happy morn! rise, holy morn!Draw forth the cheerful day from night;O Father! touch the east, and lightThe light that shone when hope was born!

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL

By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The minstrels played their Christmas tuneTo-night beneath my cottage eaves;While, smitten by a lofty moon,The encircling laurels, thick with leaves,Gave back a rich and dazzling sheenThat overpowered their natural green. Through hill and valley every breezeHad sunk to rest, with folded wings:Keen was the air, but could not freezeNor check the music of the strings;So stout and hardy were the bandThat scraped the chords with strenuous hand! And who but listened—till was paidRespect to every inmate’s claim:The greeting given, the music played,In honor of each household name,Duly pronounced with lusty call,And “Merry Christmas” wished to all! How touching, when, at midnight, sweepSnow-muffled winds, and all is dark,To hear, and sink again to sleep!Or, at an earlier call, to markBy blazing fire, the still suspenseOf self-complacent innocence; The mutual nod,—the grave disguiseOf hearts with gladness brimming o’er;And some unbidden tears that riseFor names once heard, and heard no more;Tears brightened by the serenadeFor infant in the cradle laid. Hail ancient Manners! sure defence,Where they survive, of wholesome laws;Remnants of love whose modest senseThus into narrow room withdraws;Hail, Usages of pristine mould,And ye that guard them, Mountains old!

CHURCH DECKING AT CHRISTMAS

By WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Would that our scrupulous sires had dared to leaveLess scanty measure of those graceful ritesAnd usages, whose due return invitesA stir of mind too natural to deceive;Giving the memory help when she could weaveA crown for Hope!—I dread the boasted lightsThat all too often are but fiery blights,Killing the bud o’er which in vain we grieve.Go, seek, when Christmas snows discomfort bring,The counter Spirit found in some gay churchGreen with fresh holly, every pew a perchIn which the linnet or the thrush might sing,Merry and loud, and safe from prying search,Strains offered only to the genial spring.

CHRISTMAS IN THE OLDEN TIME

By SIR WALTER SCOTT

On Christmas-eve the bells were rung;The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;The hall was dressed with holly green;Forth to the wood did merry men go,To gather in the mistletoe.Thus opened wide the baron’s hallTo vassal, tenant, serf and all;Power laid his rod of rule asideAnd ceremony doffed his pride.The heir, with roses in his shoes,That night might village partner choose;The lord, underogating, shareThe vulgar game of “Post and Pair."All hailed, with uncontrolled delight,And general voice, the happy nightThat to the cottage, as the crown,Brought tidings of salvation down. The fire, with well-dried logs supplied,Went roaring up the chimney wide;The huge hall-table’s oaken face,Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace,Bore then upon its massive boardNo mark to part the squire and lord.Then was brought in the lusty brawnBy old blue-coated serving man;Then the grim boar’s head frowned on high,Crested with bays and rosemary.Well can the green-garbed ranger tellHow, when and where the monster fell;What dogs before his death he tore,And all the baitings of the boar.The wassal round, in good brown bowls,Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls.There the huge sirloin reeked: hard byPlum-porridge stood, and Christmas pye;Nor failed old Scotland to produce,At such high-tide, her savory goose. Then came the merry maskers in,And carols roared with blithesome din.If unmelodious was the song,It was a hearty note, and strong;Who lists may in their murmuring seeTraces of ancient mystery;White shirts supplied the masquerade,And smutted cheeks the visors made;But O, what maskers richly dight,Can boast of bosoms half so light!England was “merry England” whenOld Christmas brought his sports again;’Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale,’Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;A Christmas gambol oft would cheerThe poor man’s heart through half the year.

A HYMN ON THE NATIVITY OF MY SAVIOUR

By BEN JONSON

I sing the birth was born to-nightThe author both of life and light;The angels so did sound it.And like the ravished shepherds said,Who saw the light, and were afraid,Yet searched, and true they found it. The Son of God, th’ eternal king,That did us all salvation bring,And freed the soul from danger;He whom the whole world could not take,The Word, which heaven and earth did make,Was now laid in a manger. The Father’s wisdom willed it so,The Son’s obedience knew no No,Both wills were in one stature;And as that wisdom had decreed,The Word was now made flesh indeed,And took on him our nature. What comfort by him do we win,Who made himself the price of sin,To make us heirs of glory!To see this babe all innocence;A martyr born in our defence:Can man forget the story?

CHRISTMAS EVE

By ROBERT BROWNING

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Out of the little chapel I burst Into the fresh night-air again.Five minutes full, I waited first In the doorway, to escape the rainThat drove in gusts down the common’s centre At the edge of which the chapel stands,Before I plucked up heart to enter. Heaven knows how many sorts of handsReached past me, groping for the latchOf the inner door that hung on catchMore obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scoldOf the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold,And left me irresolute, standing sentryIn the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry,Six feet long by three feet wide,Partitioned off from the vast inside— I blocked up half of it at least.No remedy; the rain kept driving. They eyed me much as some wild beast,That congregation, still arriving,Some of them by the main road, whiteA long way past me into the night,Skirting the common, then diverging;Not a few suddenly emergingFrom the common’s self thro’ the paling-gaps—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,Where the road stops short with its safeguard borderOf lamps, as tired of such disorder;—But the most turned in yet more abruptly From a certain squalid knot of alleys,Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel ralliesAnd leads into day again,—its priestlinessLending itself to hide their beastlinessSo cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),And putting so cheery a whitewashed face onThose neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, And meet the party thus presided,"Mount Zion” with Love-lane at the back of it,They front you as little disconcertedAs, bound for the hills, her fate averted,And her wicked people made to mind him,Lot might have marched with Gomorrahbehind him.

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