Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CHRISTMAS DINNER AT CHILDS', by WILSON PUGSLEY MACDONALD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CHRISTMAS DINNER AT CHILDS', by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Yesterday the merchant-men
Last Line: To my land a hundred songs.
Subject(s): Christmas; Food & Eating; Restaurants; Nativity, The; Cafes; Diners


YESTERDAY the merchant-men
Slew an army of young trees,
All for the benedicts
With children at their knees;
But none for the bachelors:
I am one of these.

Patter, patter 'round the world,
From the early dawn
Children's feet will tramp my heart
Till this day is gone --
All last night their diamond eyes
Through my dreaming shone.

Every whiff of evergreen
On the scented air
Tells my heart what might have been
Had a word been fair:
Twenty winters old to-night
Is my soul's despair.

Turkey has a lonely taste,
On the Christmas Day,
Without loving hands to baste
All the loneliness away.
Was he jesting -- he who placed
On this card a holly spray?

To the waitress: "Bring me, Miss,
Christmas dinner, table d'hote."
But I'd rather order this:
Two young arms about my throat,
Little rosebuds in a kiss,
Fingers tugging at my coat.

Few are here to-night to dine:
Thank for that the god of Fate!
"Merry Christmas" on a sign
Does not ease this crash of plate
Or the winter winds that whine
At the slowly-swinging gate.

Comes a ghostly merchant-man:
"Here, my lad, 's your evergreen;
Weight it with the gay things
From the Might Have Been.
Even in this hueless place
It will have a lovely sheen."

I hung it with the broken words
Of a thoughtless maid,
I lit a censer of her smiles
And saw the slim smoke fade
In fear of that cold crash of glass
And metal serenade.

I took a rose, that once she wore,
And a gown of lovely gray,
And hung them high and for a while
My heart was very gay;
And all our unborn children laughed
About me in their play.

Crash of silver, smash of plate,
And the vision is no more:
Long, white tables, cold, sedate,
And the slowly-swinging door --
Mock accoutrements of state
Of a lonely bachelor.

Yet to-night had held for me
All for which my spirit longs:
Little children at my knee
Chanting me their joys and wrongs --
All were mine had I not given
To my land a hundred songs.





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