Christmas poems
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The Strangers
© Walter de la Mare
Dim-berried is the mistletoe
With globes of sheenless grey,
The holly mid ten thousand thorns
Smoulders its fires away;
And in the manger Jesus sleeps
This Christmas Day.
The Patient's Sweater
© Boris Pasternak
A life of its own and a long one is led
By this penguin, with nothing to do with the breast-
The wingless pullover, the patient's old vest;
Now pass it some warmth, move the lamp to the bed.
Past And Future
© John Kenyon
Might well have marvelled what such form should mean.
But of that gray-haired group, which clustered round,
Not one there was but knew the nameand sighed
Whenaskingit was answered them "Regret."
Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto II.
© Matthew Prior
Richard, quoth Matt, these words of thine
Speak something sly and something fine;
But I shall e'en resume my theme,
However thou may'st praise or blame.
Christmas Eve
© Mathilde Blind
But I-a waif on earth where'er I roam-
Uprooted with life's bleeding hopes and fears
From that one heart that was my heart's sole home,
Feel the old pang pierce through the severing years,
And as I think upon the years to come
That fair star trembles through my falling tears.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter III - The Other Half-Rome
© Robert Browning
ANOTHER DAY that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
Remembrance of Christmas Past
© Judith Viorst
We rose at dawn to three boys singing Rudolph.
We listened numbly to their shouts of glee.
The kitten threw up tinsel on the carpet.
The fire truck collided with the tree, requiring
The Parish Register - Part III: Burials
© George Crabbe
drown'd.
"Is this a landsman's love? Be certain then,
"We part for ever!"--and they cried, "Amen!"
His words were truth's:- Some forty summers
A Family Record
© Oliver Wendell Holmes
WOODSTOCK, CONN., JULY 4, 1877
NOT to myself this breath of vesper song,
The Farmer's Boy - Winter
© Robert Bloomfield
If now in beaded rows drops deck the spray,
While _Phoebus_ grants a momentary ray,
Let but a cloud's broad shadow intervene,
And stiffen'd into gems the drops are seen;
And down the furrow'd oak's broad southern side
Streams of dissolving rime no longer glide.
Written On The Day Of My Aunt's Funeral
© Charles Lamb
Thou too art dead, ---! very kind
Hast thou been to me in my childish days,
The White Snow
© Guillaume Apollinaire
The angels the angels in the sky
Ones dressed as an officer
Ones dressed as a chef today
And the others sing
First Sunday After Christmas
© John Keble
'Tis true, of old the unchanging sun
His daily course refused to run,
The pale moon hurrying to the west
Paused at a mortal's call, to aid
The avenging storm of war, that laid
Seven guilty realms at once on earth's defiled breast.
The patient watches
© Boris Pasternak
The patient watches. Six days long
In frenzy blizzards rave relentlessly,
Roll over rooftops, roar along,
Brace, rage, and fall, collapsing senselessly.
The Prioresss Tale [from Chaucer]
© William Wordsworth
"Call up him who left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold."
I
A Christmas Child
© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
SHE came to me at Christmas time and made me mother, and it seemed
There was a Christ indeed and He had given me the joy I'd dreamed.
A Friends Greeting
© Edgar Albert Guest
I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me;
I'd like to be the help that you've been always glad to be;
I'd like to mean as much to you each minute of the day
As you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the way.
The Pressed Gentian
© John Greenleaf Whittier
The time of gifts has come again,
And, on my northern window-pane,
Outlined against the day's brief light,
A Christmas token hangs in sight.
