So what is your favourite Christmas poem? Mine is probably Christopher Smart (see below). Despite my fondness for Dickens, catholic symbolism and opera, I’m not really romantic. I really appreciate the Augustan balance of the Eighteenth Century – Pope, Gibbon (the old atheist), Johnson and Austen. Christopher Smart was of the Age of Reason, but certified insane.
Samuel Johnson knew him personally and Boswell reports him saying: "My poor friend Smart shewed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it."
An ouzel is a blackbird.
Where is this stupendous stranger,
Swains of Solyma, advise?]
Lead me to my Master's manger,
Show me where my Saviour lies.
O Most Mighty! O Most Holy!
Far beyond the seraph's thought,
Art thou then so mean and lowly
As unheeded prophets taught?
O the magnitude of meekness!
Worth from worth immortal sprung;
O the strength of infant weakness,
If eternal is so young!
If so young and thus eternal,
Michael tune the shepherd's reed,
Where the scenes are ever vernal,
And the loves be Love indeed!
See the God blasphem'd and doubted
In the schools of Greece and Rome;
See the pow'rs of darkness routed,
Taken at their utmost gloom.
Nature's decorations glisten
Far above their usual trim;
Birds on box and laurels listen,
As so near the cherubs hymn.
Boreas now no longer winters ]
On the desolated coast;
Oaks no more are riv'n in splinters
By the whirlwind and his host.
Spinks and ouzels sing sublimely,]
"We too have a Saviour born";
Whiter blossoms burst untimely
On the blest Mosaic thorn.
God all-bounteous, all-creative,
Whom no ills from good dissuade,
Is incarnate, and a native
Of the very world He made.
From Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England