Christmas poems
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The Ballad Of The Harp-Weaver
© Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Son," said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
"you've need of clothes to cover you,
and not a rag have I.
The Christmas Night
© Lucy Maud Montgomery
Wrapped was the world in slumber deep,
By seaward valley and cedarn steep,
And bright and blest were the dreams of its sleep;
All the hours of that wonderful night-tide through
Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve
© Robert Herrick
Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
A Christmas Carol, Sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall
© Robert Herrick
Voice 1:
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this Day,
That sees December turn'd to May.
The Country Life:
© Robert Herrick
TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF
THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTYSweet country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
A New Year's Gift,sent To Sir Simeon Steward
© Robert Herrick
No news of navies burnt at seas;
No noise of late spawn'd tittyries;
No closet plot or open vent,
That frights men with a Parliament:
The Ceremonies For Candlemas Day
© Robert Herrick
Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn;
Which quench'd, then lay it up again,
Till Christmas next return.
The Four Brothers
© Carl Sandburg
MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
To Elizabeth Ward Perkins
© Amy Lowell
Dear Bessie, would my tired rhyme
Had force to rise from apathy,
And shaking off its lethargy
Ring word-tones like a Christmas chime.
The Cremona Violin
© Amy Lowell
Part First
Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before
Behold, As Goblins Dark Of Mien
© Robert Louis Stevenson
BEHOLD, as goblins dark of mien
And portly tyrants dyed with crime
Change, in the transformation scene,
At Christmas, in the pantomime,
Christmas Fancies
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago.
And etched on vacant places,
Are half forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.
Old Times
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Friend of my youth, let us talk of old times;
Of the long lost golden hours.
When "Winter" meant only Christmas chimes,
And "Summer" wreaths of flowers.
Christmas
© John Betjeman
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
Diary of a Church Mouse
© John Betjeman
Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Account Of A Visit From St. Nicholas
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
1Later revised to "Donder and Blitzen" by Clement Clarke
Moore when he took credit for the poem in Poems (New York: Bartlett
and Welford, 1844).
Saltbush Bill, J.P.
© Andrew Barton Paterson
That Edward Rex, confiding in
His known integrity,
By hand and seal on parchment skin
Had made hiim a J.P.
Saltbush Bill on the Patriarchs
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Those Patriarchs of olden time, when all is said and done,
They lived the same as far-out men on many a Queensland run
A lot of roving, droving men who drifted to and fro,
The same we did out Queensland way a score of years ago.
Pioneers
© Andrew Barton Paterson
They came of bold and roving stock that would not fixed abide;
There were the sons of field and flock since eer they learned to ride;
We may not hope to see such men in these degenerate years
As those explorers of the bush the brave old pioneers.
Santa Claus in the Bush
© Andrew Barton Paterson
"Nay noo, nay noo," said the dour guidwife,
"But ye should let him be;
He's maybe only a drover chap
Frae the land o' the Darling Pea.
