Christmas poems
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A Sequence of Sonnets on the Death of Robert Browning
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought,
And moulded of unconquerable thought,
And quickened with imperishable flame,
Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought
May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame,
Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name.
Yom Kippur 1984
© Adrienne Rich
I drew solitude over me, on the long shore.
—Robinson Jeffers, “Prelude”
For whoever does not afflict his soul through this day, shall be
cut off from his people.
The Sorcerer: Act I
© William Schwenck Gilbert
For to-day young Alexis-young Alexis Pointdextre
Is betrothed to Aline-to Aline Sangazure,
And that pride of his sex is-of his sex is to be next her
At the feast on the green-on the green, oh, be sure!
Reading the Bible Backwards
© Hugo Williams
All around the altar, huge lianas
curled, unfurled the dark green
Speakin' O' Christmas
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
BREEZES blowin' middlin' brisk,
Snow-flakes thro' the air a-whisk,
Unmediated experience
© Richard Jones
She does this thing. Our seventeen-
year-old dog. Our mostly deaf dog.
For Christmas Day, Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
© Martin Madan
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald Angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King.
Spring's Messengers
© John Clare
Where slanting banks are always with the sun
The daisy is in blossom even now;
The Crystal Lithium
© James Schuyler
The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from a beach
Eve-shuttering, mixed with sand, or when snow lies under the street lamps and on all
October's Little Miseries
© Jules Laforgue
Every October I start to get upset.
The factories' hundred throats blow smoke to the sky.
The pullets are getting fat
for Christmas Day.
A Christmas Carol. From The Noei Bourguignon De Gui Barozai
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I hear along our street
Pass the minstrel throngs;
Seele im Raum
© Randall Jarrell
It is over.
It is over so long that I begin to think
That it did not exist, that I have never—
And my son says, one morning, from the paper:
“An eland. Look, an eland!”
—It was so.
Messiah (Christmas Portions)
© Mark Doty
A little heat caught
in gleaming rags,
in shrouds of veil,
torn and sun-shot swaddlings:
Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing
© Toi Derricotte
My mother was not impressed with her beauty;
once a year she put it on like a costume,
Christmas Night Of '62
© William Gordon McCabe
The wintry blast goes wailing by,
The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry's tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.
Master and Boy
© George MacDonald
"WHO is this little one lying,"
Said Time, "at my garden-gate,
Moaning and sobbing and crying,
Out in the cold so late?"
Fifth Grade Autobiography
© Rita Dove
I was four in this photograph fishing
with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan.
My brother squats in poison ivy.
His Davy Crockett cap
sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail
flounces down the back of his sailor suit.
