O little town of Bethlehem!
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

These lines are the opening stanza of the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” written by the American Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks after a visit to the Holy Land. Brooks traveled in 1865 and was deeply moved by seeing Bethlehem and attending a Christmas Eve service there. Back in Philadelphia, where he served as rector of Holy Trinity Church, he wrote the text for use in the parish’s Christmas celebration (commonly dated to 1868). The carol was later set to music for Brooks’s church by his organist, Lewis H. Redner, helping it become a staple of English-language Christmas worship.

The stanza juxtaposes Bethlehem’s outward quiet—“deep and dreamless sleep,” “silent stars”—with an inward, world-altering event: the birth of Christ as “the everlasting Light.” Brooks frames the Nativity not merely as a local scene but as the convergence point of universal human longing: “the hopes and fears of all the years.” The imagery suggests that redemption arrives unobtrusively, in stillness rather than spectacle, yet carries cosmic significance. The verse also reflects a devotional geography: a specific place becomes a symbolic center where history, prophecy, and personal spiritual need meet “tonight,” collapsing distance and time for the singer.

O little town of Bethlehem!
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

1) “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie” (common punctuation/capitalization form without exclamation).
2) “Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light” is sometimes printed with “shines” in modernized hymnals.
3) “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” is occasionally printed with “this night” in place of “tonight.”