Category Archives: Nativity

Traveling lightly and untrammeled.

Christmas, Nativity, poetry, , ,

THE MAGI

Christmas Eve, the Word made Flesh,
We put the baby in the manger,
But could not add them to the crèche—
They still had miles of doubt and danger.
They set out from the staircase landing,
Traveling lightly and untrammeled:
One was kneeling, one was standing,
And our favorite was cameled.
Past falling cards and other perils
They crossed the piano’s dark plateau
Where someone fumbled Christmas carols
And sang of silence, stars and snow.
They camped wherever they were able,
A potted fern for an oasis.
From shelf to windowsill to table,
Night by night, we’d change their places.
The thrill of our own gifts forgot,
No longer new, the batteries
Gone dead, at last they’d reach the spot,
One king already on his knees,
One kneeling, while the camel grunted—
Twelve whole days of Christmas hence—
To give what no child ever wanted:
Gold and myrrh and frankincense.

-A.E. Stallings

Bassano the Younger, Adoration of the Magi

The Mother of God

Nativity, poetry, , ,

THE MOTHER OF GOD

The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.
Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?
What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart’s blood stop
Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

-W.B. Yeats

 

Dawn breathes, Spring is here!

Christmas, Nativity, poetry

“And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” -Luke 1:76-79

BEFORE DAWN

DIM-BERRIED is the mistletoe
With globes of sheenless grey,
The holly mid ten thousand thorns
Smolders its fires away;
And in the manger Jesu sleeps
This Christmas Day.
Bull unto bull with hollow throat
Makes echo every hill,
Cold sheep in pastures thick with snow
The air with bleatings fill;
While of His Mother’s heart this Babe
Takes His sweet will.
All flowers and butterflies lie hid,
The blackbird and the thrush
Pipe but a little as they flit
Restless from bush to bush;
Even to the robin Gabriel hath
Cried softly, “Hush!”
Now night is astir with burning stars
In darkness of the snow;
Burdened with frankincense and myrrh
And gold the Strangers go
Into a dusk where one dim lamp
Burns faintly, Lo!
No snowdrop yet its small head nods,
In winds of winter drear;
No lark at casement in the sky
Sings matins shrill and clear;
Yet in this frozen mirk the Dawn
Breathes, Spring is here!

-Walter de la Mare

 

In the solemn midnight.

Christmas, Nativity, poetry

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

It was the calm and silent night!
Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was Queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars;
Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove and Mars
Held undisturbed their ancient reign,
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.

‘Twas in the calm and silent night!
The Senator of haughty Rome,
Impatient urged his chariot’s flight,
In lordly revel, rolling home:
Triumphal arches gleaming swell
His breast with thoughts of boundless sway;
What recked the Roman what befell
A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago!

Within that province far away
Went plodding home a weary boor:
A streak of light before him lay,
Fall’n through a half-shut stable door
Across his path. He passed — for naught
Told what was going on within;
How keen the stars ! his only thought;
The air how calm and cold and thin, In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago!

O strange indifference! — low and high
Drowsed over common joys and cares:
The earth was still — but knew not why;
The world was listening — unawares.
How calm a moment may precede
One that shall thrill the world forever!
To that still moment none would heed,
Man’s doom was linked, no more to sever.
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.

It is the calm and solemn night!
A thousand bells ring out and throw
Their joyous peal abroad, and smite
The darkness, charmed and holy now.
The night, that erst no name had worn.
To it a happy name is given:
For in that stable lay new-born.
The peaceful Prince of Earth and Heaven,
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.

-Alfred Domett