Christmas Day

How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?     A northern Christmas, such as painters love,     And kinsfolk, shaking hands but once a year,     And dames who tell old legends by the fire?     Red sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearled ice,     Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,     And makes the old man merry with the young,     Through the short sunshine, through the longer night?          Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,     And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves,     And rosebuds mouldering on the dripping porch;     One twilight, without rise or set of sun,     Till beetles drone along the hollow lane,     And round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats     Hawk the pale moths of winter?    Welcome then     At best, the flying gleam, the flying shower,     The rain-pools glittering on the long white roads,     And shadows sweeping on from down to down     Before the salt Atlantic gale:    yet come     In whatsoever garb, or gay, or sad,     Come fair, come foul, 'twill still be Christmas Day.          How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?     To sailors lounging on the lonely deck     Beneath the rushing trade-wind?    Or to him,     Who by some noisome harbour of the East,     Watches swart arms roll down the precious bales,     Spoils of the tropic forests; year by year     Amid the din of heathen voices, groaning     Himself half heathen?    How to those - brave hearts!     Who toil with laden loins and sinking stride     Beside the bitter wells of treeless sands     Toward the peaks which flood the ancient Nile,     To free a tyrant's captives?    How to those -     New patriarchs of the new-found underworld -     Who stand, like Jacob, on the virgin lawns,     And count their flocks' increase?    To them that day     Shall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze     Of full midsummer sun:    to them that morn,     Gay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft,     Shall tell of nought but summer:    but to them,     Ere yet, unwarned by carol or by chime,     They spring into the saddle, thrills may come     From that great heart of Christendom which beats     Round all the worlds; and gracious thoughts of youth;     Of steadfast folk, who worship God at home;     Of wise words, learnt beside their mothers' knee;     Of innocent faces upturned once again     In awe and joy to listen to the tale     Of God made man, and in a manger laid -     May soften, purify, and raise the soul     From selfish cares, and growing lust of gain,     And phantoms of this dream which some call life,     Toward the eternal facts; for here or there,     Summer or winter, 'twill be Christmas Day.          Blest day, which aye reminds us, year by year,     What 'tis to be a man:    to curb and spurn     The tyrant in us; that ignobler self     Which boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute,     And owns no good save ease, no ill save pain,     No purpose, save its share in that wild war     In which, through countless ages, living things     Compete in internecine greed. - Ah God!     Are we as creeping things, which have no Lord?     That we are brutes, great God, we know too well;     Apes daintier-featured; silly birds who flaunt     Their plumes unheeding of the fowler's step;     Spiders, who catch with paper, not with webs;     Tigers, who slay with cannon and sharp steel,     Instead of teeth and claws; - all these we are.     Are we no more than these, save in degree?     No more than these; and born but to compete -     To envy and devour, like beast or herb;     Mere fools of nature; puppets of strong lusts,     Taking the sword, to perish with the sword     Upon the universal battle-field,     Even as the things upon the moor outside?          The heath eats up green grass and delicate flowers,     The pine eats up the heath, the grub the pine,     The finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch;     And man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey,     Eats what he lists; the strong eat up the weak,     The many eat the few; great nations, small;     And he who cometh in the name of all -     He, greediest, triumphs by the greed of all;     And, armed by his own victims, eats up all:     While ever out of the eternal heavens     Looks patient down the great magnanimous God,     Who, Maker of all worlds, did sacrifice     All to Himself?    Nay, but Himself to one;     Who taught mankind on that first Christmas Day,     What 'twas to be a man; to give, not take;     To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour;     To help, not crush; if need, to die, not live.          O blessed day, which givest the eternal lie     To self, and sense, and all the brute within;     Oh, come to us, amid this war of life;     To hall and hovel, come; to all who toil     In senate, shop, or study; and to those     Who, sundered by the wastes of half a world,     Ill-warned, and sorely tempted, ever face     Nature's brute powers, and men unmanned to brutes -     Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas Day.     Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem;     The kneeling shepherds, and the Babe Divine:     And keep them men indeed, fair Christmas Day.     Eversley, 1868.