With All Best Wishes for a Merry Christmas 1939
Back to the nursery. Back to the nursery.
Let us enjoy this sublime anniversary
Full nineteen hundred & thirty-nine years
Let us forget the despair & the tears
Let us ignore all the slaughter & danger
(Think of the Manger! Remember the Manger!)
Let us envisage the star in the East
(Man is a murderer! Man is a beast!)
Let us forget that the moment is sinister
Let us uphold our devout Foreign Minister
Let us not prattle of Simon or Hoare
Or Mr Chamberlain’s diffident war.
Let us not speak of Belisha or Burgin
(Think of the Virgin! Remember the Virgin!)
Let us from ridicule turn to divinity
(Think of the Trinity! Think of the Trinity!)
Now as our day of rejoicing begins
(Never mind Poland – Abandon the Finns)
Lift up your voices ‘Long Live Christianity!’
(Cruelty, sadism, blood & insanity)
So that the Word across carnage is hurled
God’s in his Heaven, all’s right with the world!
Noel Coward
