When the first Christmas presents came, the straw where Christ
was rolled
Smelt sweeter than their frankincense, burnt brighter than
their gold,
And a wise man said, “We will not give; the thanks would be
but cold.”
“Nay,” said the next, “To all new gifts, to this gift or
another,
Bends the high gratitude of God; even as He now, my brother,
Who had a Father for all time, yet thanks Him for a Mother.
“Yet scarce for Him this yellow stone or prickly-smells and
sparse.
Who holds the gold heart of the sun that fed these timber
bars,
Nor any scentless lily lives for One that smells the stars.”
Then spake the third of the Wise Men; the wisest of the three:
“We may not with the widest lives enlarge His liberty,
Whose wings are wider than the world. It is not He, but we.
“We say not He has more to gain, but we have more to lose.
Less gold shall go astray, we say, less gold, if thus we
choose,
Go to make harlots of the Greeks and hucksters of the Jews.
“Less clouds before colossal feet redden in the under-light,
To the blind gods from Babylon less incense burn to-night,
To the high beasts of Babylon, whose mouths make mock of
right.”
Babe of the thousand birthdays, we that are young yet grey,
White with the centuries, still can find no better thing to
say,
We that with sects and whims and wars have wasted Christmas
Day.
Light Thou Thy censer to Thyself, for all our fires are dim,
Stamp Thou Thine image on our coin, for Caesar's face grows
dim,
And a dumb devil of pride and greed has taken hold of him.
We bring Thee back great Christendom, churches and towns and
towers.
And if our hands are glad, O God, to cast them down like
flowers,
'Tis not that they enrich Thine hands, but they are saved from
ours.