Good Santa Claus comes once a year,
But once, & more’s the pity,
With all his merry Christmas gear
For country side & city;
But when he comes with snowy wig,
And icicles for whiskers,
The little hearts dance rig-a-jig
In flocks of merry friskers!
Of old he filled the stocking they
Hung round the chimney corner,
But stove & furnace drove away
Both him & Jackie Horner.
Now planted in the very house
How greenly grows his jolly tree,
Such loves of babies on the boughs
You’d say it was a-dolly-tree!
And when he fancies by the looks
A child is past the doll age,
His tree puts out a bloom of books,
And is a tree of Knowledge.
You’ll find it grafted with a pair —
Of stockings or of mittens,
And now its furry catkins bear
A brace of squeaking kittens!
Cars, carts, & soldiers, steeds & guns,
And blue & yellow trumpets,
Make tin-y leaves; & frosted buns
And little twisted crumpets,
Are breadfruit that its branches bear,
The little hearts to gladden,
White jewels give a sparkle, rare
As gem-trees of Aladdin.
Its music comes, like figs, in drums;
Its low boughs introduce to us;
The plums it bears are sugar plums,
Its birds are sugar roosters.
A perfect banian in itself,
It bears the Tree Yggdrasil,
For Santa Claus, the cunning elf,
Ne’er plants a tree that pays ill.
A slip of every tree that grew,
Except the tree of Evil,
He took, when Paradise fell through,
To soften man’s hereaval;
And by the cunning of his head
He mixed them all together,
And this delightful arbor made
To hear in iciest weather.
And so ‘twix’t Eden & the main
It runs, a kind of isthmus,
Across which we get back again
A little while at Christmas.
And “More’s the pity,” children say,
“This tree is not perennial;”
But older folks, who have to pay,
Bear this as well as any ill!
Santa Claus: His Tree