Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Christmas
Some say, that ever ’gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then, they say no spirit can walk abroad,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act I. Scene 1, near the end. (Marcellus to Horatio on the crowing of the cock.)
The time draws near the birth of Christ,
The moon is hid, the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Tennyson.—In Memoriam, 28, v. 1.