We all remember Clement-Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” and most of us can probably recall some Christmas hymns at least in part. But Christmastime’s a perfect time of year to rediscover something many of us have forgotten: The greatest poets in the English language left a legacy of devotional poetry – much of it perfect material to aid our meditations on the incarnation of Our Lord.
Here are five Christmas poems by famous English poets. You might know these poets’ names – but you still might be surprised at just how Christian and how reverent their work could sometimes be.
“A Hymn on the Nativity of My Saviour” by Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson is remembered mostly as a great playwright and a friend of William Shakespeare’s. But in between the raucous comedies he put on stage, Jonson wrote this tender and insightful poem about his Lord, the “Martyr born in our defense.”
I sing the birth was born tonight,
The Author both of life and light;
The angels so did sound it,
And like the ravished shepherds said,
Who saw the light, and were afraid,
Yet searched, and true they found it.
The Son of God, the eternal King,
That did us all salvation bring,
And freed the soul from danger;
He whom the whole world could not take,
The Word, which heaven and earth did make,
Was now laid in a manger.
The Father’s wisdom willed it so,
The Son’s obedience knew no “No,”
Both wills were in one stature;
And as that wisdom had decreed,
The Word was now made Flesh indeed,
And took on Him our nature.
What comfort by Him do we win?
Who made Himself the Prince of sin,
To make us heirs of glory?
To see this Babe, all innocence,
A Martyr born in our defense,
Can man forget this story?
“The Cultivation of Christmas Trees” by TS Eliot
TS Eliot, a giant who shaped every poet who came after him, is known primarily for his “The Wasteland,” a long, meandering, lamentory reflection on the state of what many would come to call a “post-Christian” West.
But Eliot wasn’t all despair. In this short poem, he “mixes memory and desire” again, this time with a straightforward faith – as if he’s aware that children are present, waiting innocently and expectantly for the pure joy and excitement of one of their “first-remembered Christmases.” That which is “displeasing to God,” after all, is also “disrespectful to children.”
The text:
There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish – which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.
The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,
So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St.Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):
So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By “eightieth” meaning whichever is last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.
“The Oxen,” by Thomas Hardy
In writing a list of Christmas poems, I should introduce Thomas Hardy by writing “even Thomas Hardy.” An infamous skeptic and agnostic, Hardy was far from what could be called a “devotional poet.” Nonetheless, one could say that even Hardy expressed a longing to be one, in his way.
The world-weary modern might even be said to have expressed a kind of envy for the Christmas spirit in this poem:
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
“Christmas Bells,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow wrote this poem as an act of defiant hope. As he wrote it on Christmas Day, 1864, the American Civil War was ongoing. We live still in a time of “wars and rumors of wars,” and Longfellow’s personal struggle with the grief and anxiety that causes – and ultimate act of adoring trust in Our Lord – is a needful reminder:
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!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
“The Holy Night,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry is a disarming mixture of simplicity and straightforwardness on the one hand, and deeply stirring sensation on the other.
On a first gloss, one can miss the delightful complexity of this poem simply by not seeking for it – by seeking instead, perhaps, for some high, articulate thought or repeatable insight.
But if you take your time with it and let your analytical faculties rest and retreat for a moment, you could almost swear her writing tastes good in the mouth when read aloud – like a good tobacco, an excellent coffee, or a homemade Christmas dessert:
We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem;
The dumb kine from their fodder turning them,
Softened their horned faces
To almost human gazes
Toward the newly Born:
The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks
Brought visionary looks,
As yet in their astonied hearing rung
The strange sweet angel-tongue:
The magi of the East, in sandals worn,
Knelt reverent, sweeping round,
With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground,
The incense, myrrh, and gold
These baby hands were impotent to hold:
So let all earthlies and celestials wait
Upon thy royal state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!
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