A Christmas Prayer
Loving looks the large-eyed cow,Loving stares the long-eared assAt Heaven's glory in the grass!Child, with added human birthCome to bring the child of earthGlad repentance, tearful mirth,And a seat beside the hearthAt the Father's knee--Make us peaceful as thy cow;Make us patient as thine ass;Make us quiet as thou art now;Make us strong as thou wilt be.Make us always know and seeWe are his as well as thou.
Words in this poem
- tearful a.
- Abounding with tears; weeping; shedding tears; as, tearful eyes.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Christmas Prayer is in the public domain. This text is taken from The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #9984; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George MacDonald, A Christmas Prayer, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/a-christmas-prayer.html, id L22359.
Form and metre
A Christmas Prayer is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBCCC-DABADDA cowA · assB · grassB · birthC · earthC · mirthC · hearth · kneeD · cowA · assB · nowA · beD · seeD · thouA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Loving looks the large-eyed cow, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Loving stares the long-eared ass | 7 | /˘····· |
| At Heaven's glory in the grass! | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Child, with added human birth | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Come to bring the child of earth | 7 | ······· |
| Glad repentance, tearful mirth, | 7 | ·˘/˘/˘· |
| And a seat beside the hearth | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| At the Father's knee-- | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Make us peaceful as thy cow; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Make us patient as thine ass; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Make us quiet as thou art now; | 7 | ··/···· |
| Make us strong as thou wilt be. | 7 | ······· |
| Make us always know and see | 7 | ··/···· |
| We are his as well as thou. | 7 | ······· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.