Christmas is the friendly human announcement of this ghostly truth; its
holly and boar's-head are but a rough-and-tumble emblazonment of that
mystic gospel of--The Three Words; the Gospel of the Unseen Love.

And how well has the church chosen this particular season of the year
for this most subtly spiritual of all its festivals, so subtle because
its ghostly message is so ruddily disguised in human mirth, and thus the
more unconsciously operative in human hearts!

Winter, itself so ghostly a thing, so spiritual in its beauty, was
indeed the season to catch our ears with this ghost-story of the
Invisible and Invincible Love. The other seasons are full of sensuous
charm and seductiveness. With endless variety of form and colour and
fragrance, they weave "a flowery band to bind us to the earth." They are
running over with the pride of sap, the luxury of green leaves, and the
intoxicating fulness of life. The summer earth is like some voluptuous
enchantress, all ardour and perfume, and soft dazzle of moted sunshine.
But the beauty of winter seems a spiritual, almost a supernatural,
thing, austere and forbidding at first, but on a nearer approach found
to be rich in exquisite exhilaration, in rare and lofty discoveries and
satisfactions of the soul. Winter naturally has found less favour with
the poets than the other seasons. Praise of it has usually a strained
air, as though the poet were making the best of a barren theme, like a
portrait-painter reluctantly flattering some unattractive sitter. But
one poet has seen and seized the mysterious beauty of winter with
unforced sympathy--Coventry Patmore, whose "Odes," in particular,
containing as they do some of the most rarely spiritual meditation in
English poetry, are all too little known. In one of these he has these
beautiful lines, which I quote, I hope correctly, from memory: