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Christmas Day — 1868 · Ririro.com - Poetry

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  Speaker 1: Christmas Day, eighteen sixty eight, How will it dawn the
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  Speaker 1: coming Christmas Day? A Northern Christmas, such as Painter's Love
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  Speaker 1: and kinsfolk shaking hands but once a year, and dames
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  Speaker 1: who tell old legends by the fire red sun, blue sky,
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  Speaker 1: white snow and pearled ice, keen ringing air, which sets
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  Speaker 1: the blood on fire and makes the old man merry
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  Speaker 1: with the young through the short sunshine, through the longer night,
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  Speaker 1: or Southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist, and heavy
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  Speaker 1: with the scent of steaming leaves and rose buds moldering
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  Speaker 1: on the dripping porch, one twilight without rise or set
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  Speaker 1: of sun, till beetles drone along the hollow lane and
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  Speaker 1: round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats, hawk, the pale moths
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  Speaker 1: of winter welcome, then at best the flying gleam, the
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  Speaker 1: flying shower, the rain pools glittering on the long white roads,
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  Speaker 1: and shadows sweeping on from down to down before the
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  Speaker 1: salt Atlantic gale. Yet come in whatsoever, garb or gay
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  Speaker 1: or sad, come fair, come foul, twill still be Christmas Day?
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  Speaker 1: How will it dawn the coming Christmas Day? To sailors
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  Speaker 1: lounging on the lonely deck beneath the rushing trade wind.
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  Speaker 1: Or to him who, by some noisome harbor of the
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  Speaker 1: east watches swart arms roll down the precious bales spoils
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  Speaker 1: of the tropic forests, year by year, amid the din
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  Speaker 1: of heathen voices, groaning himself half heathen. How to those
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  Speaker 1: brave hearts who toil with laden loins and sinking stride
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  Speaker 1: beside the bitter wells of treeless sands, toward the peaks
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  Speaker 1: which flood the ancient Nile, to free a tyrant's captives.
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  Speaker 1: How to those new patriarchs of the new found underworld,
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  Speaker 1: who stand like Jacob on the virgin lawns, and count
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  Speaker 1: their flocks increase. To them that day shall dawn in
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  Speaker 1: glory and solsticial blaze of full midsummer sun. To them
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  Speaker 1: that morn, gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft,
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  Speaker 1: shall tell of naught but summer. But to them, ere yet,
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  Speaker 1: unwarned by carol or by chime, they spring into the saddle.
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  Speaker 1: Thrills may come from that great heart of Christendom which
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  Speaker 1: beats round all the worlds, And gracious thoughts of youth
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  Speaker 1: of steadfast folk, who worship God at home of wise
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  Speaker 1: words learnt beside their mother's knee, of innocent faces upturned
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  Speaker 1: once again in awe and joy to listen to the
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  Speaker 1: tale of God made man, and in a manger laid
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  Speaker 1: may soften, purify and raise the soul from selfish cares
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  Speaker 1: and growing lust of gain and phantoms of this dream
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  Speaker 1: which some call life toward the eternal facts. For here
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  Speaker 1: or there, summer or winter, twill be Christmas Day, blessed day,
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  Speaker 1: which Aye reminds us year by year what tis to
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  Speaker 1: be a man? To curb and spurn the tyrant in us,
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  Speaker 1: that ignobler self, which boasts not loathes its likeness to
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  Speaker 1: the brute, and owns no good save ease, no ill,
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  Speaker 1: save pain, no purpose save its share in that wild
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  Speaker 1: war in which, through countless ages, living things compete in
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  Speaker 1: internescine greed. Ah, God, are we as creeping things which
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  Speaker 1: have no lord? That we are brutes? Great God, we
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  Speaker 1: know too well. Apes, daintier featured, silly birds who flaunt
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  Speaker 1: their plukes unheeding of the fowler's step, Spiders who catch
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  Speaker 1: with paper, not with webs, Tigers who slay with cannon
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  Speaker 1: and sharp steel instead of teeth and claws. All these
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  Speaker 1: we are. Are we no more than these, and born
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  Speaker 1: but to compete, to envy and devour, like beast or herb,
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  Speaker 1: mere fools of nature, puppets of strong lusts, taking the
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  Speaker 1: sword to perish with the sword upon the universal battlefield.
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  Speaker 1: Even as the things upon the moor outside the heath
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  Speaker 1: eats up green grass and delicate flowers. The pine eats
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  Speaker 1: up the heath, the grub the pine, the finch, the grub,
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  Speaker 1: the hawk, the silly finch. And man, the mightiest of
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  Speaker 1: all beasts of prey, eats what he lists. The strong
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  Speaker 1: eat up the weak, the many eat the few, great
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  Speaker 1: nations small. And he who cometh in the name of all,
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  Speaker 1: he greediest, triumphs by the greed of all, and armed
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  Speaker 1: by his own victims, eats up all, while ever out
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  Speaker 1: of the eternal heavens, looks patient down the great magnanimous God,
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  Speaker 1: who maker of all worlds, did sacrifice all to himself, nay,
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  Speaker 1: but himself to one who taught mankind on that first
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  Speaker 1: to Christmas day, what twa was to be a man,
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  Speaker 1: To give, not take, to serve, not rule, to nourish,
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  Speaker 1: not devour, to help, not crush, if need to die
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  Speaker 1: not live, Oh, blessed day, which gives the eternal lie
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  Speaker 1: to self and sense and all the brute within. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: come to us amid this war of life, to haul
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  Speaker 1: and hovel. Come to all who toil in senate shop
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  Speaker 1: or study. And to those who sundered by the wastes
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  Speaker 1: of half a world, ill warned and sorely tempted, ever
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  Speaker 1: face nature's brute powers, and men unmanned to brutes. Come
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  Speaker 1: to them, blessed and blessing Christmas Day. Tell them once
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  Speaker 1: more the tale of Bethlehem, the kneeling shepherds and the
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  Speaker 1: Babe Divine. And keep them men indeed fair Christmas Day,