Christmas Poems 2019

This is my fourth (kind of) annual Christmas Poem post. I never got around to writing one last year You can read the others here:

Christmas Poems 2015

Christmas Poems 2016

Christmas Poems 2017

And on a related note, last year’s Christmas Carol post.

Other posts on Christmas:

The Christmas Wars, Or, How To Use Christmas As An Excuse To Be A Jerk

Night Shift At The Hospital on Christmas Eve

The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens

Reading A Christmas Carol With My Kids

Gloria

Magnificat

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Let’s get things started with this jem from the incomparable Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets. Few poets can capture the details of nature in such brilliant fashion, and this poem exhibits her talent at its best. Most of my life, I have lived in places without show (well, except for that freak storm in 1999…), but I remember those few years living in the mountains with fondness. (And we still go places with snow, of course.) See if this poem doesn’t bring to life the amazing reality of a fresh snowfall. 

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -

It powders all the Wood.

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road -

It makes an even Face

Of Mountain, and of Plain -

Unbroken Forehead from the East

Unto the East again -

It reaches to the Fence -

It wraps it Rail by Rail

Till it is lost in Fleeces -

It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem -

A Summer’s empty Room -

Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,

Recordless, but for them -

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen -

Then stills it’s Artisans - like Ghosts -

Denying they have been -

A hike in the woods during a snowstorm.

 Sequoia National Park, May 2019

This next poem was one I discovered just a few months ago, while reading the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. That whole collection was a revelation, and rapidly became one of my favorite volumes. 

Millay wasn’t particularly religious, but wrote on religious themes. This one really hit home for me, where Christmas is everywhere and in one’s face, but little of Christ can be seen, particularly from those who speak his name the loudest. Christ has become a prop, an idol to be used to justify cruelty and hate. 

The sonnet form is used to perfect effect by Millay. The first quatrain encapsulates the commercialism contrasting with the reality of the first Christmas. The second is a snapshot of the fake religiosity that ignores the gospel. I can’t decide if the preacher is part of the problem or just ignored. “Honey and steel” certainly seems like the worst of professional preachers. The shift then occurs in line nine, as it should. The two tercets present the devastating reality. Nobody listens; the words mean less than the wind. Christ is in effect, dead, as he has had no effect. It’s not very optimistic, to say the least. But it sure fits our own times. 

To Jesus on His Birthday

For this your mother sweated in the cold,

For this you bled upon the bitter tree:

A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold;

A paper wreath; a day at home for me.

The merry bells ring out, the people kneel;

Up goes the man of God before the crowd;

With voice of honey and with eyes of steel

He drones your humble gospel to the proud.

Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows

Are all your words to us you died to save.

O Prince of Peace! O Sharon's dewy Rose!

How mute you lie within your vaulted grave.

The stone the angel rolled away with tears

Is back upon your mouth these thousand years.

This next poem is an excerpt from a longer poem. A MUCH longer poem. As in, about two thirds the size of Paradise Lost. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but now I really want to. This particular part really spoke to me. W. H. Auden paints such a realistic picture of the post-Christmas experience. I can’t even decide what I like best. Maybe the “we have seen the actual Vision and failed /  To do more than entertain it as an agreeable / Possibility” line? Or the part about going back to materialistic assumptions? Or perhaps the last few lines. Hot dang, those are good. This is just a great poem, any way you slice it.  

Excerpt from For the Time Being

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –

Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully –

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry

And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly

Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be

Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment

We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;

Remembering the stable where for once in our lives

Everything became a You and nothing was an It. 

I’m going to call my choice of four poems a tradition. Hey, four years is enough to make a tradition, right? I’ll end with Paul Laurence Dunbar. After the kind of bitter taste of the two preceding poems, Dunbar’s exuberance and joy is refreshing. This, despite living in less-than-ideal circumstances. (Despite his education and obvious talent, he had to work as an elevator operator most of his life - Jim Crow and racism in action.) This is the ultimate hope of Christmas - that one day, all will be restored, healed, and made new. Ring out, ye bells indeed!  

Christmas Carol

  Ring out, ye bells!

   All Nature swells

With gladness at the wondrous story,—

   The world was lorn,

   But Christ is born

To change our sadness into glory.

   Sing, earthlings, sing!

   To-night a King

Hath come from heaven's high throne to bless us.

   The outstretched hand

   O'er all the land

Is raised in pity to caress us.

   Come at his call;

   Be joyful all;

Away with mourning and with sadness!

   The heavenly choir

   With holy fire

Their voices raise in songs of gladness.

   The darkness breaks

   And Dawn awakes,

Her cheeks suffused with youthful blushes.

   The rocks and stones

   In holy tones

Are singing sweeter than the thrushes.

   Then why should we

   In silence be,

When Nature lends her voice to praises;

   When heaven and earth

   Proclaim the truth

Of Him for whom that lone star blazes?

   No, be not still,

   But with a will

Strike all your harps and set them ringing;

   On hill and heath

   Let every breath

Throw all its power into singing!

Two Autumn Poems

With such beautiful fall weather here in Bakersfield, I could not resist finding a pair of contrasting poems on the subject. First is an ode by Keats, with an unusual eleven line stanza rhymed ababcdedcce (first stanza) or  ababcdecdde (second and third stanzas). Keats' delicate, lyrical touch lightens the heavier effect of iambic pentameter and long stanzas.

Ode To Autumn by John Keats

           

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Dunbar uses the ballad stanza form (four lines with alternating lines of four, then three feet)  with two variations. First, he uses the rhyme scheme abab rather than abcb. Second, he uses the feminine ending on the even numbered lines. (That is, he ends the line on an unstressed syllable.) The bouncing rhythm, optimism, and the use of dialect add to the fast pace. Perhaps Dunbar felt like my kids around a leaf pile.

Merry Autumn by Paul Laurence Dunbar

It's all a farce,—these tales they tell

About the breezes sighing,

And moans astir o'er field and dell,

Because the year is dying.

           

Such principles are most absurd,—

I care not who first taught 'em;

There's nothing known to beast or bird

To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn times, when grief holds sway

With countenance distressing,

You'll note the more of black and gray

Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;

The sky is blue and mellow;

And e'en the grasses turn the ground

From modest green to yellow.

The seed burs all with laughter crack

On featherweed and jimson;

And leaves that should be dressed in black

Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;

A singing bird comes after;

And Nature, all from earth to sky,

Is bubbling o'er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,

Like sparkling little lasses;

The sunlight runs along the hills,

And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun

It really can't contain it;

And streams of mirth so freely run

The heavens seem to rain it.

Don't talk to me of solemn days

In autumn's time of splendor,

Because the sun shows fewer rays,

And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it's the climax of the year,—

The highest time of living!—

Till naturally its bursting cheer

Just melts into thanksgiving.

Does anyone else have a favorite Autumn poem to contribute?