The Christmas Minstrels

Now that the joy-day of the year is nearing, In that fair sun-land set ’twixt sea and sea, From hill and mountain dale behold appearing With jocund strains a minstrel company. The reeds that shepherds played in eras olden, These are the tuneful pipes whereon they blow; The sky that over-arches is the golden, The bright Calabrian sky of long ago. And since the decades of the saints and sages, When here to Christ was first raised prayerful praise, These minstrel men through all the echoing ages Have heralded the hallowed Christmas days. From lonely shrines on steep and stony byways Their clear wild music up the pathway soars; It gushes like a fount on traveled highways, And through the populous piazza pours. They cling to their old ways, these simple-hearted And humble dwellers on the uplands high; Their notes, an echo of the days departed, Span gulfs of time, and bring the dead years nigh. Long may the cool Calabrian laurel alleys Hearken the strains, in rarer ether born, Of minstrels wending down the mountain valleys To greet the coming of the Christmas morn!