Ririro.com - Poetry

"Christmas Eve" is a short poem in which a speaker sits alone by a glowing fire on a stormy winter's night, his cat dozing on the hearth and an armchair beckoning. As drowsiness takes hold, he slips into a vision of the shepherds on the plain, the sudden blaze of angelic light, and the first glorious chorus of "Glory to God." The moment he longs to follow the shepherds down the shining path, the d...

"The Christmas Stocking" is a reflective poem tracing the arc of one man's life through the symbol of a hung stocking. From the breathless excitement of childhood Christmas mornings to the quiet joy of watching a baby's first stocking, the poem shifts into something far more tender and aching — a silent house, a small grave, and pines swaying in the wind. The speaker raises a final toast to childr...

"Christmas" by William Henry Davies bursts open with a call to abandon study, care, and social division in favour of food, drink, and shared humanity. The poet-speaker throws his doors wide to beggars and strangers alike, insisting that fine cloth and golden coins mean nothing when every soul swims freely together in the Christmas bowl. Across ten stanzas the poem builds from festive invitation to...

"A Little Christmas Basket" is a Christmas poem that cuts through holiday piety with sharp warmth: when winter has arrived uninvited and the hearth is cold, no sermon can warm a starving man's soul. Dunbar's speaker urges readers to trade scripture and lectures for something real — a basket of food at the door. The poem builds its case stanza by stanza, arguing that true religion is never sweeter...

"Christmas" by John Masefield captures the moment a crew of long-wandering sailors sights the English coast at dawn after months at sea with the Spaniards. The fading stars, the rime-white rooftops, and the rocking church bells of Salcombe greet their arrival on Christmas morning — a scene charged with relief, longing, and the particular joy of homecoming. The poem moves from the open ocean's rest...

"Christmas" is a poem in which a child speaks to their mother, refusing to accept Christmas sweets knowing they are produced through the suffering of enslaved people. Chandler draws a sharp contrast between the joyful nativity story — angels singing of peace and goodwill — and the brutal reality of slavery: forced labour under the lash, families torn apart, and bodies broken in the heat. The poem...

"A Christmas Prayer" is a World War I poem that speaks from the trenches, where Christmas carols are replaced by gunfire and gifts are bullets. The unnamed soldier-speaker longs for the peaceful joy of Christmas — bells, revelry, and angelic hymns — but finds them unreachable amid pain and ruin. With raw spiritual yearning, he calls on a suffering Christ, wounded like the men around him, to draw n...

"Osman Pasha at Bucharest" is a short narrative poem set in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, as the defeated Ottoman commander is led through Bucharest in captivity. Amid the snow and the shadow of Plevna's fallen battlefield, a Romanian girl notices the prisoner's expression of stern despair and, with innocent generosity, places a flower in his hand. In that fleeting moment between oppress...

"The Wandering Minstrel" is a poem that conjures a roving ballad-singer arriving at an inn, calling out for entry and promising songs of knights, fairies, turbaned warriors, and wizard-forged blades. He earns his coin but sings with genuine joy in his heart. As Christmas draws near, his art deepens — he lifts his voice in ancient carols of the three wise kings and the guiding star, sending white a...

"The Elfin Bough" is a narrative poem set in a snow-dusted English wood on Christmas Eve, during the Puritan era when festive celebrations were forbidden. A solemn, hungry boy named Year-of-Jubilee encounters a mysterious and luminous young woman who asks him to pluck a bough of mistletoe from a tall tree. After he obliges, she reveals herself to be no witch — but a spirit of Christmas past, mourn...

"The Fool's Christmas" is a Christmas poem in which a king, wearied by royal ceremony, trades places with his court jester for one holiday. Disguised in the fool's jingling hood and scarlet doublet, the king slips through his town on Christmas night and discovers what his crown never could: warmth, open doors, and genuine affection from the poor. Children who would cower before the king rush eager...

"The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver" is a narrative poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay in which a desperately poor boy and his mother face a bitter winter with nothing but a magical harp. On Christmas Eve, the boy wakes in the night to find his mother weaving radiant clothes from golden harp-strings, singing softly as she works through the freezing dark. By morning, a king's worth of garments is piled bes...

"A Song of the Christmas Wind" personifies the winter wind as a mischievous, tender spirit roaming a snow-lit night. The wind steals a kiss from a dreaming moonbeam, pelts a rich man with gusts while gently kissing the curls of beggar girls in the dark, then grows wistful recalling a summer past — a meadow, a lovers' stroll, and songs now silenced. The poem balances playful energy with quiet melan...

"The Peace of Christmas-Time" is a short Christmas poem that holds grief and comfort side by side. A speaker addresses their beloved as children dance joyfully around the Christmas tree, yet one small face is missing — a child now gone. Through the gentle image of the Christ-child bringing peace, the poem moves from loss toward a tender, aching consolation, as memory returns the absent little one,...

"The Christmas Trail" is a cowboy poem by Badger Clark in which a weathered ranch hand rides home through bitter winter wind, retracing a year spent chasing the freedoms of spring, summer heat, and fall roundups. With each stanza, he weighs the pull of the open range against the steady glow of the home fire — and finds the campfire's charm fades where a family hearth burns constant. Cold mountains...

"The Fire at Ross's Farm" brings Henry Lawson's Australian bush to vivid life as a bitter land feud between squatter Black and selector Ross erupts against the backdrop of a raging Christmas bushfire. Young Robert Black secretly loves Jenny Ross, and when drought-driven flames race toward Ross's ripened wheat — his only hope of survival — Robert defies his father's cold refusal to help. What follo...

"Carol: Christmas Cheer" is a Christmas poem that captures the spirit of the season through the image of roaring fires, laden tables, and flowing drink shared with those in need. The poem urges readers to mark Christ's birth not with selfish excess, but with open-hearted generosity — filling their boards with mutton, plum-pudding, and furmity for hungry neighbours. The central tension sits between...

"A Christmas Carol, Sung to the King in the Presence at White-Hall" opens with an exuberant call to awaken music, voice, and heart in honour of Christ's birth. Herrick transforms the cold December night into a vision of May-like warmth and fragrance, asking why winter suddenly blooms with the promise of spring. The answer arrives with quiet triumph: it is the birth of the "Darling of the World," w...

"Adonis and Adona — A Tale for Christmas" weaves a myth-steeped romance between Adonis, a glorious island monarch, and Adona, a shipwrecked maiden he rescues from the shore. Set against festival celebrations and golden thrones, their love deepens until a shattered ritual wine-cup triggers an ancient curse. A priest's grim pronouncement reveals that Adonis must die for Adona's unwitting transgressi...

"Bethlehem-Town" traces a narrator's pilgrimage to the birthplace of Christ, encountering along the way a prophetic tree, a shepherd dazzled by angels, and wise men bearing a crown. Each encounter weaves the joy of the nativity with the shadow of Calvary, binding the infant's birth to the sacrifice it foreshadows. Through the serene image of a mother cradling her child — unknowing of the tree that...

"Chrystmasse Of Olde" is a short Christmas poem by Eugene Field written in archaic medieval English, invoking the spirit of ancient carol traditions. Addressed to "Chrysten gentil men" wherever they may roam — at sea, in court, or in foreign lands — it recounts the shepherds witnessing a blazing sky and singing stars at the birth of Jesus. The poem's central plea is urgent and tender: set aside to...

"The Star Song" by Robert Herrick opens with an earnest question directed at a radiant star: where does the newborn Christ child lie? Across three searching stanzas, the speaker wonders if the infant rests among lily banks, within a flower-strewn ark glittering with dew, or hidden among beds of spices. The star answers with quiet certainty, redirecting all anxious searching toward a single, tender...

"Christmas on the Off-Trail" is a poem about vagabonds far from home at Christmas, haunted by memories of mothers, hearths, and the lives they left behind. The speaker and his fellow wanderers raise a hollow toast while a child's cry of "Mother—mother" cuts through the revelry, exposing how much they have lost. The poem moves between defiant rootlessness and raw longing, capturing the ache of men...

"Christmas Day — 1868" by Charles Kingsley opens by asking how the coming Christmas will dawn across the globe — for sailors at sea, explorers in the desert, settlers in the southern hemisphere. From there, the poem deepens into a fierce moral reckoning: Kingsley measures humanity against the animal kingdom's cycle of greed and predation, asking whether human beings are truly anything more than ti...

"The Antipodes: Christmas at the Cape" by John Runcie paints a sun-drenched South African Christmas set against the familiar holly-and-snow backdrop of the Northern Hemisphere. Vineyards ripen at Stellenbosch, crickets chirp at the gate instead of carollers in the cold, and moths drift where snowflakes would fall. Through three stanzas and a repeated carol refrain, Runcie celebrates the warmth, ha...