Excerpt
O the angels know the blessed day,
And strike their harps anew?
Then may the echo of their lay
Float sweetly down to you,
And fill your soul with Christmas song
That your heart shall echo your whole life long.
A bright and happy Christmas to you! Lift up yourselves to the great meaning of the day, and dare to think of your humanity as something so sublimely precious that it is worthy of being made an offering to God, and then go out to the pleasures and duties of your life, having been truly born anew into His Divinity, as He was born into our humanity on Christmas Day.
Most tangible of all the gods that be,
O Santa Claus—our own since infancy!—
As first we scampered to thee—now, as then,
Take us as children to thy heart again.
HEN welcome
snow of
Christmas,
We read thy
prophecy,
We know what
wish lies hidden,
What germs of
life may be
Concealed beneath
thy mantle,
All folded close
away,
Awaiting their fruition,
In heaven's eternal day.
One wish ere yet the long year ends;
Let's close it with a parting rhyme,
A pledge, a hand, to all our friends
As fits the merry Christmas time:
On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,
That Fate ere long shall bid you play;
Good-night: with honest, gentle hearts,
A kindly greeting go alway.
T was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies:
Nature, in awe to him
Had doff'd her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She wooes the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow:
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-ey'd Peace;
She, crowned with olives green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere
His ready harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war or battle's sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high up hung,
The hooked chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of light
His reign of Peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
OME say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time....