Christmas Eve. Robert Browning

Pharaoh received no demonstration,

      By his Baker's dream of Basket Three,

      Of the doctrine of the Trinity,—

      Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,

      Apparently his hearers relished it

      With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if

      They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?

      But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!

           These people have really felt, no doubt,

      A something, the motion they style the Call of them;

           And this is their method of bringing about,

      By a mechanism of words and tones,

      (So many texts in so many groans)

      A sort of reviving and reproducing,

           More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)

      The mood itself, which strengthens by using;

           And how that happens, I understand well.

      A tune was born in my head last week,

      Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek

           Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;

      And when, next week, I take it back again,

      My head will sing to the engine's clack again,

           While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir,

      —Finding no dormant musical sprout

      In him, as in me, to be jolted out.

      'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;

      He gets no more from the railway's preaching

           Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:

      Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.

      Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"

      To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

      V

      But wherefore be harsh on a single case?

           After how many modes, this Christmas Eve,

      Does the self-same weary thing take place?

           The same endeavour to make you believe,

      And with much the same effect, no more:

           Each method abundantly convincing,

      As I say, to those convinced before,

           But scarce to be swallowed without wincing

      By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,

      I have my own church equally:

      And in this church my faith sprang first!

           (I said, as I reached the rising ground,

      And the wind began again, with a burst

           Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound

      From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

      I entered his church-door, nature leading me)

      —In youth I look to these very skies,

      And probing their immensities,

      I found God there, his visible power;

           Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

           Of the power, an equal evidence

      That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.

      For the loving worm within its clod,

      Were diviner than a loveless god

      Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

           You know what I mean: God's all, man's nought:

           But also, God, whose pleasure brought

      Man into being, stands away

           As it were a handbreadth off, to give

      Room for the newly-made to live,

      And look at him from a place apart,

      And use his gifts of brain and heart,

      Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.

      Who speaks of man, then, must not sever

      Man's very elements from man,

      Saying, "But all is God's"—whose plan

      Was to create man and then leave him

      Able, his own word saith, to grieve him

      But able to glorify him too,

      As a mere machine could never do,

      That prayed or praised, all unaware

      Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,

      Made perfect as a thing of course.

      Man, therefore, stands on his own stock

      Of love and power as a pin-point rock:

      And, looking to God who ordained divorce

      Of the rock from his boundless continent,

      Sees, in his power made evident,

      Only excess by a million-fold

      O'er the power God gave man in the mould.

      For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry

      A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry

      Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,

           —Advancing in power by one degree;

           And why count steps through eternity?

      But love is the ever-springing fountain:

      Man may enlarge or narrow his bed

      For the water's play, but the water-head—

      How can he multiply or reduce it?

           As easy create it, as cause it to cease;