Santa Claus: His Tree

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!