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Poem by Hartley Coleridge


Christmas Day


WAS it a fancy, bred of vagrant guess,
Or well-remember'd fact, that He was born
When half the world was wintry and forlorn,
In Nature's utmost season of distress?
And did the simple earth indeed confess
Its destitution and its craving need,
Wearing the white and penitential weed,
Meet symbol of judicial barrenness?
So be it; for in truth 'tis ever so,
That when the winter of the soul is bare,
The seed of heaven at first begins to grow,
Peeping abroad in desert of despair.
Full many a floweret, good, and sweet, and fair,
Is kindly wrapp'd in coverlet of snow. ,
Or well-remember'd fact, that He was born
When half the world was wintry and forlorn,
In Nature's utmost season of distress?
And did the simple earth indeed confess
Its destitution and its craving need,
Wearing the white and penitential weed,
Meet symbol of judicial barrenness?
So be it; for in truth 'tis ever so,
That when the winter of the soul is bare,
The seed of heaven at first begins to grow,
Peeping abroad in desert of despair.
Full many a floweret, good, and sweet, and fair,
Is kindly wrapp'd in coverlet of snow. 



Hartley Coleridge


Hartley Coleridge's other poems:
  1. Lines——
  2. To a Deaf and Dumb Little Girl
  3. How Long I Sailed
  4. Address To Certain Golfishes
  5. Written on the Anniversary of Our Father's Death


Poems of the other poets with the same name:

  • Christina Rossetti Christmas Day ("A baby is a harmless thing")
  • John Keble Christmas Day ("What sudden blaze of song")
  • Charles Kingsley Christmas Day ("How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?") Eversley, 1868
  • Henry White Christmas Day ("Yet once more, and once more, awake, my Harp")

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