Poetry For Christmas Eve

English Nursery Rhyme

Christmas is a-coming.
The goose is getting fat,
Please to put a penny
In an old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny,
A ha’penny will do.
If you haven’t got a ha’penny,
God bless you!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s:

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Longfellow wrote this poem on Christmas day in 1864 during the American Civil War. It inspired the carol sung today.

Speaking of bells - - -
Stanza 1 of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells”

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the Heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

“A Christmas Carol”
by Christina Rossetti

In The bleak
mid-winter
Frosty winds made
moan,
Earth stood hard as
iron.
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak
mid-winter,
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven
cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth
shall flee away
When he comes to
reign:
In the bleak
mid-winter
A stable place
sufficed
The Lord God
Almighty
Jesus Christ.

In my book . . . Christmas is a time for the heavens to twinkle with a crystalline delight and bells to carol wild and sweet words of peace.

For to us a child is born,
To us a son is given,
And the government will be on
His shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government
And peace
There will no end.

Isaiah 9: 6-7