The moon is in a tranquil mood;
The silent skies are bland:
Only the spirits of the good
Go musing up the land:
The sea is wrapped in mist and rest;
It is the night that God hath blest.
Danske Dandridge
December Twenty-Fifth
To the cradle-bough of a naked tree,
Benumbed with ice and snow,
A Christmas dream brought suddenly
A birth of mistletoe.
The shepherd stars from their fleecy cloud
Strode out on the night to see;
The Herod north-wind blustered loud
To rend it from the tree.
But the old year took it for a sign,
And blessed it in his heart:
“With prophecy of peace divine,
Let now my soul depart.”
John B. Tabb
(Mistletoe)
December Twenty-Sixth
Now praise to God that ere his grace
Was scorned and he reviled
He looked into his mother’s face,
A little helpless child.
And praise to God that ere men strove
Above his tomb in war
One loved him with a mother’s love,
Nor knew a creed therefor.
John Charles McNeill
(A Christmas Hymn)
December Twenty-Seventh
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 tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Edgar Allan Poe