File:Christmas day (1886) (14598140028).jpg

Identifier: christmasday00king (find matches)
Title: Christmas day
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Kingsley, Charles, 1819-1875
Subjects: Christmas
Publisher: Boston, d. Lothrop and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ice,Keen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,And makes the old man merry with the young,Through the short sunshine, through the longer night ? 6 CHRISTMAS DAY. i 4 What tis to be a man : to curb and spurn The tyrant in us : that ignobler self Which boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute, And owns no good save ease, no ill save pain, No purpose, save its share in that wild war In which, through countless ages, living things Compete in internecine greed. — Ah God ! Are we as creeping things which have no Lord ? That we are brutes, great God, we know too well: Apes daintier-featured ; silly birds, who flaunt Their plumes, unheeding of the fowlers step ; Spiders, who catch with paper, not with webs ; Tigers who slay with cannon and sharp steel, Instead of teeth and claws ; — all these we are. Are we no more than these, save in degree ? No more than these; and born but to compete, — To envy and devour, like beast or herb ; Mere fools of nature, puppets of strong lusts,
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CHRISTMAS DAY. 9 Taking the sword, to perish with the sword Upon the universal battlefield, Even as the things upon the moor outside ? The heath eats up green grass and delicate flowers, The pine eats up the heath, the grub the pine, The finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch; And man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey, Eats what he lists ; — the strong eat up the weak, The many eat the few; great nations, small; And he who cometh in the name of all Shall, greediest triumph by the greed of all; And, armed by his own victims, eat up all ; While ever out of the eternal Heavens Looks patient down the great magnanimous God, Who, Maker of all worlds, did sacrifice All to Himself. Nay, but Himself to one; Who taught mankind on that first Christmas day, What twas to be a man ; to give, not take; IO CHRISTMAS DAY. Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,And heavy with the scent of steaming leaves,And rosebuds moldering on the dripping porch ;One twilight, without rise or set of s

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