Ririro.com - Poetry

"Under the Holly Bough" by Charles Mackay is a Christmas poem that calls together the estranged, the grieving, and the loving alike. Across three stanzas, Mackay addresses those who have wronged or hurt one another, those who cherish family and friendship, and those weighed down by sorrow — urging each to gather and find reconciliation, renewed affection, and hope beneath the holly bough. The poem...

"Christmas Evergreens" is a Victorian poem that captures the warmth of Christmas gatherings as winter nights grow long and cold winds blow outside. Around a blazing fire, men bring in boughs of laurel, bright holly, and — most mischievously — mistletoe, each plant carrying its own festive spirit. The poem builds with playful energy from dignified tradition to giddy merriment, hinting with a wink a...

"A Christmas Antiphone" by Algernon Charles Swinburne unfolds as a solemn, hymn-like address directly to Christ, moving through the mystery of the Nativity toward the weight of the Crucifixion. Each stanza calls upon God as light, shepherd, and shelter — wounded yet sovereign — to turn the world's darkness into dawn. The poem builds its emotional power through vivid contrasts: pale suffering and r...

"Bryngynge in the Bore's Head" is one of the oldest known English Christmas carols, capturing the ceremonial procession of a boar's head into a great hall during a medieval Christmas feast. Sung with garlands, rosemary, and mustard, the verses blend Latin refrains with Middle English to summon lords to merry celebration. The steward's proud offering sets the tone for communal festivity, drawing ev...

"Peace on Earth" opens with the speaker hearing Christmas bells ring out their ancient carol across Christendom — until cannon fire from the Civil War drowns the hopeful song in violence and grief. Longfellow captures the anguish of a world torn apart, where hate seems to silence every promise of goodwill. Yet the bells ring back louder, insisting that God is not absent and that right will ultimat...

"A Meditation for Christmas Day" is a devotional poem that calls the soul to pause and reflect on the full weight of Christmas morning. Through four resonant stanzas, Selwyn Image moves from wonder at the Incarnation to a stark reckoning with what humanity would have faced without it — and then upward to joy, urging the reader to contemplate the infant Christ lying in a manger, whose innocent eyes...

"The Christmas Box" is a short comic poem following a boy who eagerly winds through town on Christmas, rattling a collection box as he solicits coins from his master's customers. The few copper coins inside jingle with a sweetness that fills him with outsized joy — a delight the poet wryly compares to the relief of a debtor freed from a bailiff's grip by generous friends who settle all his debts....

"Two Christmas Saints" is a short Christmas poem in which the speaker recalls the breathless childhood vigil of waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve — straining to hear sleigh bells in the dark and watching the chimney for a glimpse of the old Saint's face. As the speaker grows up, Santa fades from his imagination, replaced by an entirely different kind of saint: a beloved young woman whose cr...

"Wassail! Wassail!" is a lively celebratory poem evoking the rowdy, ale-filled revelry of medieval England, where knights, monks, and yeomen alike cast off their cares in communal festivity. From candlelit priestly houses to the warm hearth of a yeoman's cottage, the poem paints a vivid portrait of free-spirited merriment and open-door hospitality. The final image — a simple home glowing with hone...

Wassailer's Song is a boisterous Christmas wassailing poem that captures the spirit of the old English tradition of going door to door singing for drink and good cheer. Revellers toast the household's horse, mare, and cow, wishing the master and mistress a happy new year and a fine Christmas pie. They call to the maids to open the door and demand the butler bring his very best bowl — or face a com...

"At the Sign of the Jolly Jack" is a Christmas poem that brings to life a rowdy inn on a winter's night, where landlord, guests, and a young man dancing with his partner all celebrate with fiddle, drum, and good cheer — unaware that Christ lies sleeping in the stable nearby. The poem holds the merry revellers and the holy mystery in tender, ironic balance, suggesting that honest hearts and warm ho...

"Within and Without" by James Russell Lowell sets a blazing Christmas hall against the frozen night outside. While firelight, ivy, and laughter fill the great hall, the aged Sir Launfal is driven from the castle porch by the seneschal's harsh command and left to sit in the gateway all night, watching the warm light flicker through stone window-slits. The poem's fierce contrasts — roaring Yule-log...

"The True Christmas" is a short poem by Henry Vaughan that challenges readers to look past holiday feasting, decoration, and spectacle to find the deeper meaning of Christmas. Vaughan contrasts the noise and vanity of lavish celebrations — ivy, roses, music, and "gallant furniture" — with the humble manger where Christ was born. He urges his readers to share their abundance with those in want, ech...

"Get Ivy and Holly" by Thomas Tusser is a brisk, cheerful Tudor poem urging readers to deck their homes with greenery, prepare a festive feast, and honour the customs of Christmas. The speaker calls not just for merry celebration but for genuine generosity — inviting neighbours rich and poor alike to share in the bounty, and extending that spirit of giving throughout the whole year, with the promi...

"The Farmer's Invitation" is a spirited Christmas poem written in the Dorset dialect, where a farmer urges a friend to bring his fiddle and come celebrate the holiday. Neighbors from nearby villages will gather around a roaring fire built from three great logs, sharing songs, tales, and cups of ale through the night. There is even the promise of a rosy-faced, dark-eyed guest whose identity the far...

"Alone — With One Fair Star" is a poem by Mathilde Blind that opens on a solitary figure pacing a darkening winter shore, accompanied only by a single brilliant star. While others gather around Yule-logs and Christmas trees in warmth and family joy, the speaker feels herself adrift — a self-described waif, uprooted from the one person who was her emotional home. The contrast between festive bright...

"Come Home, My Sailor" is a short poem in which a speaker implores the winter wind to carry a message across the seas to a beloved sailor. Through howling gusts, hail, sleet, and snow, the speaker urges the wind to sing urgently in the sailor's ear, drawing him home before Christmas arrives. The poem captures the ache of waiting and the fragile hope that even a winter storm might become a messenge...

"Winter" by Robert Southey challenges the familiar image of Old Winter as a hunched, frost-bitten figure trudging alone through sleet and snow. Instead, Southey pictures him settled in a great armchair by a roaring hearth, surrounded by children at Christmas mirth — telling merry jokes, dark tales of murder, or ghost stories that unsettle the night, pausing only to stoke the fire or taste a cup of...

"The Coming of Christmas" by Lady Lindsay sets the warmth of the Christmas season — wassail, music, feasting, and the greeting of old friends — against a quiet, urgent refrain: "Thou that slumberest, wake and pray." Each stanza layers on more of the holiday's outward splendour, from jewelled tokens to the harp and viol, only to pivot inward with that same solemn whisper. The poem asks whether the...

"King Arthur's Waes-Hael" weaves the ancient Anglo-Saxon wassail toast into a devotional Christmas ceremony, where the drinking bowl — shaped like a woman's breast — becomes a sacred vessel linking knightly revelry to the mystery of the nursing Christ child. Each stanza calls "Waes-hael" (be whole) and "Drink-hael" while urging reverence rather than abandon, drawing celebrants into a hushed, almos...

"A Christmas Letter from Australia" is a poem that captures the bittersweet ache of spending Christmas under a blazing Southern sun while loved ones gather around English fires in the snow. The speaker contrasts sweltering heat and blooming roses with imagined scenes of ice-skating, frosted windowpanes, and warm parlour laughter — yet insists that kind hearts, not climate, make Christmas real. The...

"Christmas" by Rose Terry Cooke unfolds in four lyrical stanzas, each honouring a different face of the season. Father Christmas arrives amid fife and drums to warm the hearts of the old; a gentle angel brings hope and delight to the young; the Christ-child sings sweetly to the children. The final, most moving stanza turns to the exhausted fathers and mothers who fight for home and bread — and ask...

"Old Christmas Returned" is a jubilant old English poem celebrating the triumphant comeback of the Christmas spirit after years of joyless, miserly neglect. Each rollicking stanza builds toward the same mouth-watering refrain — plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef — as travellers, tradesmen, the poor, and even hoarding misers are swept up in a season of open-hearted hospitality....

"Christmas Day" by Hartley Coleridge opens with a searching question: was Christ truly born in the depths of winter, when the natural world lay bare and desolate? Coleridge draws a quiet but powerful parallel between the frozen earth and the human soul at its lowest ebb — both waiting, unknowing, for renewal. The poem turns on the image of a seed stirring beneath snow, suggesting that beauty, good...

"The First Christmas in New England" by Hezekiah Butterworth captures the Pilgrims' first Christmas on American shores — a gray, cold December day stripped of church bells, priests, and familiar ritual. When the men debate whether to rest their axes on such a sacred day, their leader urges them onward, invoking a covenant made at Malabarre Bay. With ringing axes replacing cathedral chimes, the Pil...