Patrick Kavanagh - A Childhood Christmas lyrics

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost-- How wonderful that was, how wonderful! And when we put our ears to the paling-post The music that came out was magical. The light between the ricks of hay and straw Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree With its December‑glinting fruit we saw — O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me To eat the knowledge that grew in clay And d**h the germ within it! Now and then I can remember something of the gay Garden that was childhood's. Again The tracks of cattle to a drinking‑place, A green stone lying sideways in a ditch Or any common sight the transfigured face Of a beauty that the world did not touch. My father played the melodeon Outside at our gate; There were stars in the morning east And they danced to his music. Across the wild bogs his melodeon called To Lennons and Callans. As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry I knew some strange thing had happened. Outside the cow‑house my mother Made the music of milking; The light of her stable‑lamp was a star And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle. A water‑hen screeched in the bog, Ma**‑going feet Crunched the wafer‑ice on the pot‑holes, Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel. My child poet picked out the letters On the grey stone, In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland, The winking glitter of a frosty dawn. Ca**iopeia was over Ca**idy's hanging hill, I looked and three whin bushes rode across The horizon — The Three Wise Kings. An old man pa**ing said: “Can't he make it talk” — The melodeon. I hid in the doorway And tightened the belt of my box‑pleated coat. I nicked six nicks on the door'post With my penknife's big blade— There was a little one for cutting tobacco, And I was six Christmases of age. My father played the melodeon, My mother milked the cows, And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned On the Virgin Mary's blouse.