Christmas Eve

Robert Browning

Christmas Eve

I

Out of the little chapel I burst

     Into the fresh night-air again.

Five minutes full, I waited first

     In the doorway, to escape the rain

That drove in gusts down the common's centre

     At the edge of which the chapel stands,

Before I plucked up heart to enter.

     Heaven knows how many sorts of hands

Reached past me, groping for the latch

Of the inner door that hung on catch

More obstinate the more they fumbled,

     Till, giving way at last with a scold

Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled

     One sheep more to the rest in fold,

And left me irresolute, standing sentry

In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry,

Six feet long by three feet wide,

Partitioned off from the vast inside—

     I blocked up half of it at least.

No remedy; the rain kept driving.

     They eyed me much as some wild beast,

That congregation, still arriving,

Some of them by the main road, white

A long way past me into the night,

Skirting the common, then diverging;

Not a few suddenly emerging

From the common's self thro' the paling-gaps

—They house in the gravel-pits perhaps,

Where the road stops short with its safeguard border

Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;—

But the most turned in yet more abruptly

     From a certain squalid knot of alleys,

Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly,

     Which now the little chapel rallies

And leads into day again,—its priestliness

Lending itself to hide their beastliness

So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason),

And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on

Those neophytes too much in lack of it,

     That, where you cross the common as I did,

     And meet the party thus presided,

"Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it,

They front you as little disconcerted

As, bound for the hills, her fate averted,

And her wicked people made to mind him,

Lot might have marched with Gomorrah

behind him.

II

Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,

In came the flock: the fat weary woman,

Panting and bewildered, down-clapping

     Her umbrella with a mighty report,

Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,

     A wreck of whalebones; then, with snort,

Like a startled horse, at the interloper

(Who humbly knew himself improper,

But could not shrink up small enough)

—Round to the door, and in,—the gruff

Hinge's invariable scold

Making my very blood run cold.

Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered

On broken clogs, the many-tattered

Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother

Of the sickly babe she tried to smother

Somehow up, with its spotted face,

From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place;

She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry

Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby

Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping

Already from my own clothes' dropping,

Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on:

     Then, stooping down to take off her pattens,

     She bore them defiantly, in each hand one,

Planted together before her breast

And its babe, as good as a lance in rest.

     Close on her heels, the dingy satins

Of a female something, past me flitted,

     With lips as much too white, as a streak

     Lay far too red on each hollow cheek;

And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied

All that was left of a woman once,

Holding at least its tongue for the nonce.

Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief,

With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief,

And eyelids screwed together tight,

Led himself in by some inner light.

And, except from him, from each that entered,

     I got the same interrogation—

"What, you the alien, you have ventured

     "To take with us, the elect, your station?

"A carer for none of it, a Gallio!"—

     Thus, plain as print, I read the glance

At a common prey, in each countenance

     As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho.

And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder,

     The draught, it always sent in shutting,

Made the flame of the single tallow candle

In the cracked square lantern I stood under,

     Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting

As it were, the luckless cause of scandal:

I verily fancied the zealous light

(In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite

Would shudder itself clean off the wick,

With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick.

1

1

  See Rev. i. 20.

There was no standing it much longer.

"Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger,

"This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor

"When the weather sends you a chance visitor?

"You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you,

"And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you!

"But still, despite the pretty perfection

     "To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness,

"And, taking God's word under wise protection,

     "Correct its tendency to diffusiveness,

"And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,—

     "Still, as I say, though you've found salvation,

"If I should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'—

     "See if the best of you bars me my ration!

"I prefer, if you please, for my expounder

"Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder;

"Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest

     "Supposing I don the marriage vestiment:

     "So shut your mouth and open your Testament,

"And carve me my portion at your quickliest!"

Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad

     With wizened face in want of soap,

     And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope,

(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad,

To get the fit over, poor gentle creature,

And so avoid disturbing the preacher)

—Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise

At the shutting door, and entered likewise,

Received the hinge's accustomed greeting,

     And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle,

     And found myself in full conventicle,

—To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting,

On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine,

     Which, calling its flock to their special clover,

     Found all assembled and one sheep over,

Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.

III

I very soon had enough of it.

     The hot smell and the human noises,

And my neighbour's coat, the greasy cuff of it,

     Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,

Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure

     Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,

As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,

     To meet his audience's avidity.

You needed not the wit of the Sibyl

     To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:

     No sooner our friend had got an inkling

Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,

(Whene'er 't