Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, December 20th, 2004.

And today we have two poems by a man who was so exuberant and enthusiastic for Christmas

and wrote so much about Christmas that he's really come to be associated with the holiday in, if not a

singular, at least a very unique and special way. That man is G.K. Chesterton. These two poems are

both similar in their theme, and it is a particular theme that is a kind of inversion of many of our

Christmas carols and Christmas poems and Christmas

stories. Christmas is often spoken of as this heightened reality, this great comfort and joy that

returns year after year. It comes back to us. But Chesterton in these two poems presents it as a thing that we return to, a sacred place

to which we make pilgrimage, a kind of mountaintop experience that we have to climb up, we have

to ascend into, and then dwell there and bask in the Christmas warmth. And that what is repeated year after year is our return, our voyage,

into that homeliest of homes, the Christmas spirit.

The first poem is The Inn at the End of the World.

It goes like this.

There was heard a hymn when the pains are dim and never before or again, when the nights are strong with the darkness long, and the dark is

alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and in snow the place where the great fires are, that the midst of the earth is a raging mirth and the heart of the earth is a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn, where the child in the frost is furled.

We follow the feet where all souls meet at the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red, for the flame of the sun is flown.

The gods lie cold, where the leaves lie gold, and a child comes forth alone.

In the second poem reads like a more expansive version of that.

First, it's called The House of Christmas.

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