The First Christmas Tree by Henry Van Dyke

The day before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722.

Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river / Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the / glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of / clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the center of the / aerial landscape of the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, / gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all, -- a / gentle, eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like / perfume, as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the / voice of the river faintly murmuring down the valley.