Cards in each mailbox, angel, manger, star and lamb, as the rural carrier, driving the snowy roads, hears from her bundles the plaintive bleating of sheep, the shuffle of sandals, the clopping of camels. At stop after stop, she opens the little tin door and places deep in the shadows the shepherds and wise men, the donkeys lank and weary, the cow who chews and muses. And from her Styrofoam cup, white as a star and perched on the dashboard, leading her ever into the distance, there is a hint of hazelnut, and then a touch of myrrh.
Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I. All of the night was quite barred out except An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill, No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose, Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice Speaking for all who lay under the stars, Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.
Malcolm Guite included this passage from “The Ballad of the White Horse” in his anthology of Advent and Christmas poems, Waiting on the Word. King Alfred the Great narrates:
And well may God with the serving-folk Cast in His dreadful lot; Is not He too a servant, And is not He forgot? For was not God my gardener And silent like a slave; That opened oaks on the uplands Or thicket in graveyard gave? And was not God my armourer, All patient and unpaid, That sealed my skull as a helmet, And ribs for hauberk made? Did not a great grey servant Of all my sires and me, Build this pavilion of the pines, And herd the fowls and fill the vines, And labour and pass and leave no signs Save mercy and mystery? For God is a great servant, And rose before the day, From some primordial slumber torn; But all we living later born Sleep on, and rise after the morn, And the Lord has gone away. On things half sprung from sleeping, All sleeping suns have shone, They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees, The beasts blink upon hands and knees, Man is awake and does and sees- But Heaven has done and gone. For who shall guess the good riddle Or speak of the Holiest, Save in faint figures and failing words, Who loves, yet laughs among the swords, Labours, and is at rest? But some see God like Guthrum, Crowned, with a great beard curled, But I see God like a good giant, That, laboring, lifts the world.
-G.K. Chesterton, excerpt from “The Ballad of the White Horse.”
I like to listen to Fr. Guite read poems on his site. You can read and listen here, too: “The Good Riddle.”
One without looks in to-night …Through the curtain-chink From the sheet of glistening white, One without looks in to-night …As we sit and think …By the fender-brink.
We do not discern those eyes …Watching in the snow, Lit by lamps of rosy dyes We do not discern those eyes …Wondering, aglow, …Fourfooted, tiptoe.
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
Gladsome Lights 