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Before Dawn

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"Fifty Christmas Poems for Children", by Florence B. Hyett, [1923],

Before Dawn

Dim-berried
is the mistletoe

With globes of sheenless grey,

The holly mid ten thousand thorns

Smolders its fires away;

And in the manger Jesu sleeps

This Christmas Day.

Bull unto bull with hollow throat

Makes echo every hill,

Cold sheep in pastures thick with snow

The air with bleatings fill;

While of His Mother's heart this Babe

Takes His sweet will.

All flowers and butterflies lie hid,

The blackbird and the thrush

Pipe but a little as they flit

Restless from bush to bush;

Even to the robin Gabriel hath

Cried softly, "Hush!"

Now night is astir with burning stars

In darkness of the snow;

Burdened with frankincense and myrrh

And gold the Strangers go

Into a dusk where one dim lamp

Burns faintly, Lo!

No snowdrop yet its small head nods,

In winds of winter drear;

No lark at casement in the sky

Sings matins shrill and clear;

Yet in this frozen mirk the Dawn

Breathes, Spring is here!

--walter De La
MARE

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