Page 57 - Poetry-Country

An’ there’s feastin’. Think o’ feedin’ with these stuck-up city folk!
Why, ye have to speak in whispers, an’ ye dar’sn’t crack a joke.
Then remember how the tables looked all crowded with your kin,
When you couldn’t hear a whistle blow across the merry din!

You see I’m so old-fashioned-like I don’t care much for style,
An’ to eat your Chris’mas banquets here I wouldn’t go a mile;
I’d rather have, like Solomon, a good yarb-dinner set
With real old friends than turkle soup with all the nobs you’d get.

There’s my next-door neighbor Gurley—fancy how his brows ‘u’d lift
If I’d holler, “Merry Chris’mas! Caught, old fellow, Chris’mas gift!”
Lordy-Lord, I’d like to try it! Guess he’d nearly have a fit.
Hang this city stiffness, anyways, I can’t get used to it.

Then your heart it kept a-swellin’ till it nearly bu’st your side,
An’ by night your jaws were achin’ with your smile four inches wide,
An’ your enemy, the wo’st one, you’d just grab his hand, an’ say:
“Mebbe both of us was wrong, John. Come, let’s shake. It’s
Chris’mas Day!”

Mighty little Chris’mas spirit seems to dwell ‘tween city walls,
Where each snowflake brings a soot-flake for a brother as it falls;
Mighty little Chris’mas spirit! An’ I’m pinin’, don’t you know,
For a good old-fashioned Chris’mas like we had so long ago.

— Alice Williams Brotherton (Century Magazine, 1892)

A Vision of Santa Claus

Through the keen air crystal snowflakes are flying,
Drifting in heaps in the garden and glen,
Cyril and Mark in their cosy beds lying
Plan they will make some tremendous snow-men!
Loud wails the wind, rising higher and higher,
Drowsily crackles the nursery fire.

~ 55 ~