From “Those Last, Late Hours of Christmas Eve” by Lou Ann Welte in Poems of Christmas, edited by Myra Cohn Livingston:
All has stilled, Magician Sleep having cast his spell
Upon the house, and silence lends an unreal
beauty —
A holiness that hovers over all. And as a bell
That has been long and loudly ringing, stopping
short
Brings surprise (you lift your head to listen,
knowing well
The sound has ceased, and yet you listen still) so now
A slow suspense, a mild excitement loosely coiled
Holds you, keeps you listening: unwinding, drops
away.
And now, like children on tip-toe — lovely and
unspoiled —
Come those last, late, lingering hours before
Christmas Day.
From “Before the Christmas Dawn” by Hilda Lachney Sanderson in Christmas Blessings: Prayers and Poems to Celebrate the Season, edited by June Cotner:
Just before the Christmas dawn,
When time belongs to me alone,
And all the household’s still asleep,
All creatures still in dreamland deep,
I feel within the darkness dense
A special Christmas reverence,
As in the hush that stillness brings,
I almost hear the angels sing,
while in my mind I clearly see
The Christ child stirring peacefully.
