Christmas Poems

With thanks, once again, to the members of the NewPoetry list who reminded us of some of the poems gathered here for your holiday reading and reflection:

• William Shakespeare,
  Lines spoken after the ghost’s exit from Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1 (1603)


• George Wither,
  “A Christmas Carol” (1622)


• Robert Herrick,
  “Ceremonies for Christmas” (1648)


• Henry Vaughan,
  “The True Christmas” (1678)


• Anonymous,
  “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (1780)


• Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
  “A Christmas Carol” (1799)


• Sir Walter Scott,
  “Christmas in the Olden Time” (from Marmion, 1808)


• Clement Clark Moore (attributed to him—but more probably written by Major Henry Livingston, Jr.),
  “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (first published in 1823, likely written in 1808)


• Emily Dickinson,
  “’Twas just this time last year I died” (#445)


• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
  “Christmas Bells” (1864)


• Christina Rossetti,
  “In the Bleak Midwinter” (1872)


• Robert Louis Stevenson,
  “Christmas at Sea” (1888)


• G.K. Chesterton,
  “A Christmas Carol” (1900)


• Sara Teasdale,
  “Christmas Carol” (1911)


• Walter de la Mare,
  “Mistletoe” (1913)


• Thomas Hardy,
  “The Oxen” (1915)


• William Butler Yeats,
  “The Magi” (1916)


• Robert Frost,
  “Christmas Trees” (1920)