Christmas poems
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A Christmas Hymn
© Alfred Domett
IT was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
The Ring And The Book - Chapter I - The Ring And The Book
© Robert Browning
DO you see this Ring?
Tis Rome-work, made to match
King Cole
© George MacDonald
King Cole he reigned in Aureoland,
But the sceptre was seldom in his hand
The Loving Shepherdess
© Robinson Jeffers
She dreamed that a two-legged whiff of flame
Rose up from the house gable-peak crying, "Oh! Oh!"
And doubled in the middle and fled away on the wind
Like music above the bee-hives.
Christmas
© Henry Timrod
How grace this hallowed day?
Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire,
Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire
Round which the children play?
The Christmas Beetle
© Leon Gellert
When Christmas comes the Christmas heat'll
bring once more the Christmas Beetle
Christmas Night by Conrad Hilberry: American Life in Poetry #195 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004
© Ted Kooser
Here is a poem, much like a prayer, in which the Michigan poet Conrad Hilberry asks for no more than a little flare of light, an affirmation, at the end of a long, cold Christmas day.
Christmas Night
Let midnight gather up the wind
and the cry of tires on bitter snow.
Let midnight call the cold dogs home,
sleet in their furâlast one can blow
The Singing Of The Magnificat
© Edith Nesbit
IN midst of wide green pasture-lands, cut through
By lines of alders bordering deep-banked streams,
Where bulrushes and yellow iris grew,
And rest and peace, and all the flowers of dreams,
The Abbey stood--so still, it seemed a part
Of the marsh-country's almost pulseless heart.
A Fairy Hunt
© Francis Ledwidge
Who would hear the fairy horn
Calling all the hounds of Finn
Must be in a lark's nest born
When the moon is very thin.
The Lay Of The Lady Lorraine
© Carolyn Wells
In vain they entreated, they begged and they plead,
They coaxed and besought, and they sullenly said
That she was hard-hearted, unfeeling, and cruel.
They challenged each other to many a duel;
They scowled and they scolded, they sulked and they sighed,
But they could not win Lady Lorraine for a bride.
Noel
© Katharine Tynan
I sang a song upon Christmas day
And the feet of many going one way,
The word the golden voice did say:
Gloria in Excelsis!
Bums On Waking
© James Dickey
Bums, on waking,
Do not always find themselves
In gutters with water running over their legs
And the pillow of the curbstone
Turning hard as sleep drains from it.
Mostly, they do not know
The Harpers Story
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
My pretty ladies, mid this Christmas cheer,
Loth though I am to wake a single tear
Christmas Day
© Charles Kingsley
How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?
A northern Christmas, such as painters love,
Sonnet For Christmas
© Judith Wright
I saw our golden years on a black gale,
our time of love spilt in the furious dust.
"O we are winter-caught, and we must fail,"
said the dark dream, "and time is overcast."
Chanukah Lights Tonight by Steven Schneider: American Life in Poetry #140 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laur
© Ted Kooser
The candles flicker in the window.
Outside, ponderosa pines are tied in red bows.
If you squint,
the neighbors' Christmas lights
look like the Omaha skyline.
On Going Home For Christmas
© Edgar Albert Guest
He little knew the sorrow that was in his vacant chair;
He never guessed they'd miss him, or he'd surely have been there;
He couldn't see his mother or the lump that filled her throat,
Or the tears that started falling as she read his hasty note;
And he couldn't see his father, sitting sorrowful and dumb,
Or he never would have written that he thought he couldn't come.
Our Master
© John Greenleaf Whittier
Immortal Love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never-ebbing sea!
