Poem: Song for Christmas

 

 Time for a Christmas poem.  I've shared so many of these, over the years, that I always have to do a search of my own blogs just to be sure I'm not inadvertently repeating one.  This is a poem I found in an Ideals Christmas magazine from 2010.  It's by Sudie Stuart Hager.

Song for Christmas

I love the Yuletide's radiant things --
The treetop angel's spun-glass wings,
Each scarlet ball and tinseled limb,
The tapers sputtering, soft and dim,
The light in happy children's eyes,
A bright-faced doll that talks and cries,
The log that sparkles on the grate,
The glow that follows through the gate,
A neighboring window's candle-wreath,
The snow, like burnished gold, beneath,
And the sky, bright jeweled o'erhead,
As on that night above His bed.

-- Sudie Stuart Hager

These poets always say it so much better than I could.  So many of them say just what I would like to say if I had only been able to put my thoughts together in verse.  When I read this poem I can vividly picture so much of what she has shared.  We have a glass angel -- not a treetop one, but a small glass angel playing a glass flute.  So pretty and a lovely reminder of our youngest daughter who plays the flute.

The phrase "each scarlet ball and tinseled limb" brings such clear memories of my grandmother's Christmas trees, with glowing glass balls and limbs liberally tinseled and icicled.  Oh, I could go through every phrase of this poem and conjure up a picture or a memory.  Think of that next-to-last phrase about the sky being "bright jeweled" overhead.  How many times have I seen the night sky simply sparkling with stars against a black velvet background?  My heart aches for people who have never seen this.

The other day when our grandchildren were with us, a John McDermott CD was playing and my 13-year-old grandson and I were talking of the song "Christmas Memories".  He commented that it almost made him sad for people who have never had such Christmas memories as his family has had.  And I am feeling the same way as I read and discuss this poem with you all.  How very blessed we have been!