A Christmas Hymn

Near where the shepherds watched by night

And heard the angels o'er them,

The wise men saw the starry light

Stand still at last before them.

No armored castle there to ward

His precious life from danger,

But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord

Lay 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 name

Were shapeless granite then,

And all the choirs that sang his fame

Were later breeds of men.

But, while the world about him slept,

Nor cared that he was born,

One gentle face above him kept

Its mother watch till morn;

And, if his baby eyes could tell

What grace and glory were,

No roar of gun, no boom of bell

Were worth the look of her.

Now praise to God that ere his grace

Was scorned and he reviled

He looked into his mother's face,

A little helpless child;

And praise to God that ere men strove

About his tomb in war

One loved him with a mother's love,

Nor knew a creed therefor.