Christmas Carols and Midsummer Songs

Christmas Carols and Midsummer Songs
Various

Christmas Carols and Midsummer Songs

CHRISTMAS CAROLS

Wake from your sleep, sweet Christians, now, and listen.
A little song
We have, so sweet it like a star doth glisten,
And dance along.
Now wake and hark: all brightly it is glowing
With yule flames merry,
And o'er it many a holly sprig is growing;
And scarlet berry.
A bough of evergreen, with wax-lights gleaming,
It bravely graces;
And o'er its lines the star that's eastward beaming
Leaves golden traces.
Also, our little song; it sweetly praiseth,
Like birds in flocks
When morning from her bed of roses raiseth
Her golden locks.
But this it is that makes most sweet our story,
When all is said:
It holds a little Child with rays of glory
Around His head.

    – M. E. W.

CHRISTMAS CAROLS AND MIDSUMMER SONGS

Out of the Northland bleak and bare,
O wind with a royal roar,
Fly, fly,
Through the broad arched sky,
Flutter the snow, and rattle and cry
At every silent door —
Loud, loud, till the children hear,
And meet the day with a ringing cheer:
"Hail to the Christmas-tide!"

INTO the silent waiting East
T here cometh a shining light —
Far, far,
Through a dull gray bar
Closing over a dying star
That watched away the night —
Rise, rise, shine and glow,
Over a wide white world of snow,
Sun of the Christmas-tide!

Out of the four great gates of day
A tremulous music swells;
Hear, hear,
Now sweet and clear,
Over and under and far and near,
A thousand happy bells:
Joy, joy, and jubilee!
Good-will to men from sea to sea,
This merry Christmas-tide!

Lo! in the homes of every land
The children reign to-day;
They alone,
With our hearts their throne,
And never a sceptre but their own
Small hands to rule and sway!
Peace, peace – the Christ-child's love —
Flies over the world, a white, white dove,
This happy Christmas-tide!

THE SILENT CHILDREN

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

THE light was low in the school-room;
The day before Christmas day
Had ended. It was darkening in the garden
Where the Silent Children play.

Throughout that House of Pity,
The soundless lessons said,
The noiseless sport suspended,
The voiceless tasks all read,

The little deaf-mute children,
As still as still could be,
Gathered about the master,
Sensitive, swift to see,

With their fine attentive fingers
And their wonderful, watchful eyes —
What dumb joy he would bring them
For the Christmas eve's surprise!

The lights blazed out in the school-room
The play-ground went dark as death;
The master moved in a halo;
The children held their breath: