A Christmas Hymn
Near where the shepherds watched by nightAnd heard the angels o’er them,The wise men saw the starry lightStand still at last before them.No armored castle there to wardHis precious life from danger,But, wrapped in common cloth, our LordLay in a lowly manger.No booming bells proclaimed his birth,No armies marshalled by,No iron thunders shook the earth,No rockets clomb the sky;The temples builded in his nameWere shapeless granite then,And all the choirs that sang his fameWere later breeds of men.But, while the world about him slept,Nor cared that he was born,One gentle face above him keptIts mother watch till morn;And, if his baby eyes could tellWhat grace and glory were,No roar of gun, no boom of bellWere worth the look of her.Now praise to God that ere his graceWas scorned and he reviledHe looked into his mother’s face,A little helpless child;And praise to God that ere men stroveAbout his tomb in warOne loved him with a mother’s love,Nor knew a creed therefor.