Christmas in Cadence .2
Hello friends. I hope your Christmas days are gliding by like Tolkien's elves in a throng of laughter, song, and merry feasting (and not, conversely, in an orc-like stomp of noise, which holidays are all-too prone to do). The poem below is by the modern poet, Richard Wilbur, a writer I have only recently discovered. His words are nourishing. They still me when I read them and work upon me like quiet hands that grip mine until I am calm. The work below is titled simply, A Christmas Hymn:
- A stable-lamp is lighted
- Whose glow shall wake the sky;
- The stars shall bend their voices,
- And every stone shall cry.
- And every stone shall cry,
- And straw like gold shall shine;
- A barn shall harbor heaven,
- A stall become a shrine.
- This child through David’s city
- Shall ride in triumph by;
- The palm shall strew its branches,
- And every stone shall cry.
- And every stone shall cry,
- Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
- And lie within the roadway
- To pave His kingdom come.
- Yet He shall be forsaken,
- And yielded up to die;
- The sky shall groan and darken,
- And every stone shall cry.
- And every stone shall cry
- For stony hearts of men:
- God’s blood upon the spearhead,
- God’s love refused again.