Christmas Every Day

There is wonderful poetry in Victorian hymns. This favourite was written by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847, as he lay dying of tuberculosis. Like all Anglican hymns it goes on two verses too long.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word,
But as Thou dwell’st with Thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free.
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile,
And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

William Booth was, with his wife Catherine, the founder of the Salvation Army. Vachel Lindsay imagines the moment Booth and a train of those poor and deformed whom he tended in his lifetime enter into Heaven where they are transformed and healed. The poem was meant to be chanted and sung aloud.

Vachel Lindsay here honours the deeds of American eccentric John Chapman (1774-1845), aka Johnny Appleseed, who roamed the countryside establishing nurseries. He was a disciple of the religious visionary Emmanuel Swedenborg.

On the mountain peak, called ‘Going-To-The-Sun,’

I saw gray Johnny Appleseed at prayer

Just as the sunset made the old earth fair,

Then darkness came; in an instant, like great smoke,

The sun fell down as though its great hoops broke

And dark rich apples, poured from the dim flame

Where the sun set, came rolling toward the peak,

A storm of fruit, a mighty cider-reek,

The perfume of the orchards of the world,

From apple-shadows: red and russet domes

That turned to clouds of glory and strange homes

Above the mountain tops for cloud-born souls: –

Reproofs for men who build the world like moles,

Models for men, if they would build the world

As Johnny Appleseed would have it done –

Praying, and reading the books of Swedenborg

On the mountain top called ‘Going-To-The-Sun.’

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Victorian Jesuit and poet, writer of highly innovative verse.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.
  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:  the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.


And for all this, nature is never spent;
  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Written for the 60th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne, Kipling muses on the responsibilities of empire.

God of our fathers, known of old,
   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
   Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
   The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
   An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
   On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
   Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
   In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

You can't get more Victorian and didactic than this poem by Rudyard Kipling.

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
But make allowance for their doubting too: 
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, 
Or being hated don't give way to hating, 
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; 

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim, 
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
 
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools; 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 
And lose, and start again at your beginnings, 
And never breathe a word about your loss: 
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
To serve your turn long after they are gone, 
And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 
If all men count with you, but none too much: 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Francis Thompson was a late Victorian poet who led a life of opium addiction and illness, dying young of tuberculosis.

The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose’s scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose.

Ogden Nash is not at his most brilliant here, but this little poem shows his sentimental side.

Now another day is breaking,
Sleep was sweet and so is waking.
Dear Lord, I promised you last night
Never again to sulk or fight.
Such vows are easier to keep
When a child is sound asleep.
Today, O Lord, for your dear sake,
I’ll try to keep them when awake.

Dylan Thomas was a mean, unhappy man, but God bless him, he wrote wonderful poetry.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.