Christmas Fancies

Even the most verbose of us have these days when the words just won't flow, and today is my day. Actually I did have a post all prepared, but, laid awake last night thinking about it and decided it just wouldn't do. Too cold and forced. Talk about addiction. Imagine blogging keeping you awake at night.  So, instead, I will leave you with the following lovely poem by one of my favorites. *(Actually, the blogging 'really' didn't keep me awake, but it did give me something to think about.)

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,

We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago
And etched on vacant places,
Are half forgotten faces

    Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know -

    When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.

    Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,

    We see, with strange emotion that is not free from fear,

        That continent Elysian

            Long vanished from our vision,

    Youth's lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,

    Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.

    When gloomy gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,

    The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,

            And draws from youth's recesses

            Some memory it possesses,

    And, gazing through the lens of time, exaggerates its worth,

    When gloomy gray December is roused to Christmas mirth.

    When hanging up the holly or mistletoe, I wis

    Each heart recalls some folly that lit the world with bliss.

            Not all the seers and sages

            With wisdom of the ages

    Can give the mind such pleasure as memories of that kiss

    When hanging up the holly or mistletoe, I wis.

    For life was made for loving, and love alone repays,

    As passing years are proving for all of Time's sad ways.

            There lies a sting in pleasure,

            And fame gives shallow measure,

    And wealth is but a phantom that mocks the restless days,

    For life was made for loving, and only loving pays.

    When Christmas bells are pelting the air with silver chimes,

    And silences are melting to soft, melodious rhymes,

            Let Love, the world's beginning,

            End fear and hate and sinning;

    Let Love, the God Eternal, be worshiped in all climes

    When Christmas bells are pelting the air with silver chimes.

Esther Wheeler Wilcox