A Hymn For Christmas Morning

IT is the Christmas time:
And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb.

And unto everything
That lives and moves, for heaven, on earth,
With equal share of grief and mirth,
The shining angels sing:--

'Babes new-born, undefiled,
In lowly hut, or mansion wide--
Sleep safely through this Christmas-tide
When Jesus was a child.

'O young men, bold and free,
In peopled town, or desert grim,
When ye are tempted like to Him,
'The man Christ Jesus' see.

'Poor mothers, with your hoard
Of endless love and countless pain--
Remember all her grief, her gain,
The Mother of the Lord.

'Mourners, half blind with woe,
Look up! One standeth in this place,
And by the pity of His face
The Man of Sorrows know.

'Wanderers in far countrie,
O think of Him, who came, forgot,
To His own, and they received Him not--
Jesus of Galilee.

'O all ye who have trod
The wine-press of affliction, lay
Your hearts before His heart this day--
Behold the Christ of God!'