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.