Mild Christmas

On Christmas Day of eighty-nine,
The sun all day did pleasant shine;
The cows they would not eat their hay,
But o’er the pasture lands did stray.

Such winter day is seldom seen,
Instead of white the fields were green;
Colts and young cattle they did play,
Happy as in the month of May.

But Canadians do delight,
To see the landscape robed in white;
To them the sweetest music dwells
In merry tinkle of sleigh bells.

And land doth more abundant yield,
When the snow mantle covers field;
And farmer quick can load his sleigh,
And cheerful drive o’er icy way.

For true Canadians love the snow,
And like to hear old Boreas blow;
For with just pride they all do boast,
They love the winter’s cold and frost.

Where this text comes from

First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L20.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Mild Christmas.” First published in Poems of James McIntyre (1889). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/mild-christmas/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by James McIntyre