Online NewsHour: Holiday Poetry -- December 25, 2000



	A CHRISTMAS CAROL
December 25, 2000

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky shares a holiday poem.

Dec. 21, 1999:
Robert Pinsky reflects on Christmas past.

Dec. 25, 1998:
Robert Pinsky shares his poem "Icicles"

Browse the NewsHour's archive of Robert Pinsky's poetry segments

Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project

The works of Robert Herrick

ROBERT PINSKY: The jovial, playful seventeenth century poet Robert Herrick, who wrote many poems about the pleasures of drink, sex and the playful, sensuous life, was also a clergyman.
Herrick wrote a Christmas carol, to be sung to the King in Whitehall. Herrick's poem presents the holy baby born in December as a darling prince of flowers, a far from somber figure. Herrick lets religious feeling emerge from his joy in the world of song, sunshine and flowers:

A Song of Christmas

"A Christmas Carol, Sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall"

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this Day,
That sees December turned to May.

If we may ask the reason, say
The why and wherefore all things here
Seem like the Spring-time of the year?

Why does chilling Winters morn
Smile like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like to a Mead new-shorn,

Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To Heaven and the under-Earth.

We see him come and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

The darling of the world is come
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart.

Which we will give him, and bequeath
The Holly, and this Ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

ROBERT PINSKY: I wish you a happy, blooming holiday season.


Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station.

PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved.