Page:Our American Holidays - Christmas.djvu/260

232   Nor pantomimes, whose dreariness Might turn macassar gray;

Nor boisterous children, home in heaps, And ravenous of play; Nor yet—in fact, the host of ills Which Christmases array. God rest you, merry gentlemen, May none of these dismay! 



’Tis Christmas, and the North wind blows; ’twas two years yesterday Since from the Lusitania’s bows I looked o’er Table Bay, A tripper round the narrow world, a pilgrim of the main, Expecting when her sails unfurled to start for home again.

’Tis Christmas, and the North wind blows; today our hearts are one, Though you are ’mid the English snows and I in Austral sun; You, when you hear the Northern blast, pile high a mightier fire, 