As gay for you to take your father's ax As take his gun-rod-to go hunting-fishing. You nick my spruce until its fiber cracks, It gives up standing straight and goes down swishing. You link an arm in its arm and you lean Across the light snow homeward smelling green. I could have bought you just as good a tree To frizzle resin in a candle flame. And what a saving 'twould have meant to me. But tree by charity is not the same As tree by enterprise and expedition. I must not spoil your Christmas with contrition. It is your Christmases against my woods. But even where thus opposing interests kill, They are to be thought of as opposing goods Oftener than as conflicting good and ill; Which makes the war god seem no special dunce For always fighting on both sides at once. And though in tinsel chain and popcorn rope. My tree a captive in your window bay Has lost its footing on my mountain slope And lost the stars of heaven, may, oh, may The symbol star it lifts against your ceiling Help me accept its fate with Christmas feeling. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH: A DREAM OF PONCE DE LEON by HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH TO THE WATER NYMPHS DRINKING AT THE FOUNTAIN by ROBERT HERRICK CHAUCER; SONNET by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE RUSTIC LAD'S LAMENT IN THE TOWN by DAVID MACBETH MOIR RESERVE by LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE NATALIA'S RESURRECTION: 26 by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT BENEDICTION by VALERY YAKOVLEVICH BRYUSOV THE POTTERY MAKER by CAREY YATES BUSBY AN EPISTLE TO J. BL-K-N, ESQ.: ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST by JOHN BYROM |