Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern. Today is

December 24th, 2019. It's Christmas Eve. So last year on Christmas Eve, I read a visit from St. Nicholas,

the original poem by Clement Moore. And you know what? I thought, I'll make that a tradition.

So on Christmas Eve once again, I want to read a visit from St. Nicholas. It's a very familiar poem.

Perhaps many of you will be reading it tonight anyway. But for those of you who may not, I thought,

you know, perhaps you're running errands, last minute errands, you're doing some cooking.

Maybe you can't squeeze in the time.

This is definitely a poem.

It's worth attending to, worth reading.

So here it is, a visit from St. Nicholas.

T'was the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugar plums danced through their heads, and Mama and her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap. When out on the lawn there

arose such a clatter, I sprained from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew

like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the newfallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below,

when what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a miniature sleigh and ate tiny reindeer?

With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles,

his choristers, they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name. Now dasher, now dancer, now prancer and vixen, on, comets, on Cupid, on Donder and Blitzen, to the top of the

porch, to the top of the wall. Now dash away, dash away, dash away, dash away, hall. As leaves that before the wild

hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky, so up to the housetop the

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