A new-to-me Christmas poem

 

I first met G.K. Chesterton 20 years go, when my husband purchased several volumes of his essays. I read a few and found them entertaining, but it wasn't util about 5 years ago that the fullness of his wit and wisdom began to reveal itself to me. His essays and detective stories were a pleasure to read, but I thought the scope of his writing prowess was contained in those two genres. Imagine me delight when my friend Kelly introduced many of us to Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse," an epic poem about Alfred the Great and the battle with the Danes in the White Horse Vale. (You can watch her readings on YouTube. The first is here.) I had no idea that he had written poetry (outside of a poem about the donkey who had carried our Lord on his Triumphal Entry) and such beautiful, detailed poetry to boot. Then last week, as I was searching for Christmas poems to share with my co-op literature class, I found Chesterton's "The House of Christmas" in the Christmas poetry section of this lovely little anthology:

This Singing World

Here is the poem:

The House of Christmas

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honor and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam,
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.