The Little Grey Lamb And Other Christmas Poems BY HERBERT H. GOWEN MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. MILWAUKEE, WIS. A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LONDON COPYRIGHT BY MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 1928 Contents Foreword The Christmas Message I. The Little Grey Lamb II. Jerusalem, 1917 III. The Quest of the Christ IV. What the Wise Men Saw V. Under Which Sign? VI. Through the Windows VII. Over the House-Tops VIII. Shepherds of Men IX. No Room in the Inn X. Mother and Child XI. The Vision of the Kings XII. A Prayer for the New Year Foreword It has been a habit of mine, for some years, to send an annual Christmas greeting to my friends in the form of a little poem. Of the following selections most have been published in the annual Christmas number of the _Town-Crier_ of Seattle, whose editors kindly permit their reproduction. They are reprinted because some have liked one or other of the poems sufficiently well to request this; also because I feel that the treatment of the Christmas story may be fresh enough and varied enough to win the liking of some others. H.H.G. The Christmas Message The story is told that when King Edward I of England sought to reconcile the Welsh people to his rule he presented to the assembled chiefs his baby son, just born in Caernarvon Castle, as a native son of Wales to be their prince. The king manifested in the act a very sound appreciation of what is, according to the Christmas story, the heart of the divine method for reconciling a rebellious world to God. For the divine fact which makes the Christmas festival so dear to all alike, and draws together them that are afar off and them that are nigh is nothing less than that the Child who comes to reign in a world of human hearts is truly named the Son of Man. That the jarring interests of a warring world may be brought together in one common devotion to the best is always plain when we substitute the child attitude for the selfish and sophisticated ideas of men soiled by too long contact with material things. And when men return to the child mind, with its simplicity, its purity, and its ready response to love, the world will certainly be a little nearer to that emulous heaven which yearns downward to touch the earth as the earth at Christmas time seems to be doing its best to reach the skies. The celebration of such a truth is the best antidote for the horrible doctrine of an absentee God and of a humanity left to wander unaided in the dark.