December 23, 2008

• Robert W. Service Christmas Verse

  The Trapper’s Christmas Eve

  It’s mighty lonesome-like and drear.
  Above the Wild the moon rides high,
  And shows up sharp and needle-clear
  The emptiness of earth and sky;
  No happy homes with love a-glow;
  No Santa Claus to make believe:
  Just snow and snow, and then more snow;
  It’s Christmas Eve, it’s Christmas Eve.

  And here am I where all things end,
  And Undesirables are hurled;
  A poor old man without a friend,
  Forgot and dead to all the world;
  Clean out of sight and out of mind . . .
  Well, maybe it is better so;
  We all in life our level find,
  And mine, I guess, is pretty low.

  Yet as I sit with pipe alight
  Beside the cabin-fir
  take to-night
  The backward trail of fifty year.
  The school-house and the Christmas tree;
  The children with their cheeks a-glow;
  Two bright blue eyes that smile on me . . .
  Just half a century ago.

  Again (it’s maybe forty years),
  With faith and trust almost divine,
  These same blue eyes, abrim with tears,
  Through depths of love look into mine.
  A parting, tender, soft and low,
  With arms that cling and lips that cleave . . .
  Ah me! it’s all so long ago,
  Yet seems so sweet this Christmas Eve.

  Just thirty years ago, again . . .
  We say a bitter, last good-bye;
  Our lips are white with wrath and pain;
  Our little children cling and cry.
  Whose was the fault? it matters not,
  For man and woman both deceive;
  It’s buried now and all forgot,
  Forgiven, too, this Christmas Eve.

  And she (God pity me) is dead;
  Our children men and women grown.
  I like to think that they are wed,
  With little children of their own,
  That crowd around their Christmas tree . . .
  I would not ever have them grieve,
  Or shed a single tear for me,
  To mar their joy this Christmas Eve.

  Stripped to the buff and gaunt and still
  Lies all the land in grim distress.
  Like lost soul wailing, long and shrill,
  A wolf-howl cleaves the emptiness.
  Then hushed as Death is everything.
  The moon rides haggard and forlorn . . .
  “O hark the herald angels sing!”
  God bless all men—it’s Christmas morn.

  From Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
  by Robert W. Service

  

  The Christmas Tree

  In the dark and damp of the alley cold,
  Lay the Christmas tree that hadn’t been sold;
  By a shopman dourly thrown outside;
  With the ruck and rubble of Christmas-tide;
  Trodden deep in the muck and mire,
  Unworthy even to feed a fire…
  So I stopped and salvaged that tarnished tree,
  And thus is the story it told to me:

  “My Mother was Queen of the forest glade,
  And proudly I prospered in her shade;
  For she said to me: ‘When I am dead,
  You will be monarch in my stead,
  And reign, as I, for a hundred years,
  A tower of triumph amid your peers,
  When I crash in storm I will yield you space;
  Son, you will worthily take my place.’

  “So I grew in grace like a happy child,
  In the heart of the forest free and wild;
  And the moss and the ferns were all about,
  And the craintive mice crept in and out;
  And a wood-dove swung on my highest twig,
  And a chipmunk chattered: ‘So big! So big!’
  And a shy fawn nibbled a tender shoot,
  And a rabbit nibbled under my root…
  Oh, I was happy in rain and shine
  As I thought of the destiny that was mine!
  Then a man with an axe came cruising by
  And I knew that my fate was to fall and die.

  “With a hundred others he packed me tight,
  And we drove to a magic city of light,
  To an avenue lined with Christmas trees,
  And I thought: may be I’ll be one of these,
  Tinselled  with silver and tricked with gold,
  A lovely sight for a child to behold;
  A-glitter with lights of every hue,
  Ruby and emerald, orange and blue,
  And kiddies dancing, with shrieks of glee –
  One might fare worse than a Christmas tree.

  “So they stood me up with a hundred more
  In the blaze of a big department store;
  But I thought of the forest dark and still,
  And the dew and the snow and the heat and the chill,
  And the soft chinook and the summer breeze,
  And the dappled deer and the birds and the bees…
  I was so homesick I wanted to cry,
  But patient I waited for someone to buy.
  And some said ‘Too big,’ and some ‘Too small,’
  And some passed on saying nothing at all.
  Then a little boy cried: Ma, buy that one,’
  But she shook her head: ‘Too dear, my son.”
  So the evening came, when they closed the store,
  And I was left on the littered floor,
  A tree unwanted, despised, unsold,
  Thrown out at last in the alley cold.”

  Then I said: “Don’t sorrow; at least you’ll be
  A bright and beautiful New Year’s tree,
  All shimmer and glimmer and glow and gleam,
  A radiant sight like a fairy dream.
  For there is a little child I know,
  Who lives in poverty, want  and woe;
  Who lies abed from morn to night,
  And never has known an hour’s delight…”

  So I stood the tree at the foot of her bed:
  “Santa’s a little late,” I said.
  “Poor old chap! Snowbound on the way,
  But he’s here at last, so let’s be gay.”
  Then she woke from sleep and she saw you there,
  And her eyes were love and her lips were prayer.
  And her thin little arms were stretched to you
  With a yearning joy that they never knew.
  She woke from the darkest dark to see
  Like a heavenly vision, that Christmas Tree.

  Her mother despaired and feared the end,
  But from that day she began to mend,
  To play, to sing, to laugh with glee…
  Bless you, O little Christmas Tree!
  You died, but your life was not in vain:
  You helped a child to forget her pain,
  And let hope live in our hearts again.
  
  Robert Service

  Neither of these is my favorite Robert Service Christmas verse.  That one is still to come.

  • 6:58 pm
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