Christmas Tree Poem by Charles Burleigh Galbreath

Fair dreamer with the brand of fire,
A little respite grant, I pray,
Before you toss me on the pyre
To burn my wasted form away;
Though I have felt the spoiler's knife
And to this rubbish heap have gone,
I was a thing of sentient life
And beautiful to look upon.

I breathed the baimy air of dawn;
I drank the sunshine rich and warm;
When clouds across the sky were drawn,
With joy I buffeted the storm.
Beside the somber, ancient wood,
I grew in grace and symmetry
Until a lad beside me stood
And marked me for a Christmas tree.

The autumn days grew short and cold;
The fields took on a russet hue;
The trees were tipped with red and gold;
The birds of passage southward flew;
Their chanting broke the solitude
As high they passed in pointed files;
The gusty north wind shook the wood
And scattered leaves along its aisles.

The clouds took on a darker gray,
But lighter grew the waste below,
For over hill and valley lay
A spotless coverlet of snow;
And as the flakes in silence fell
And gathered round me white and deep,
I yielded to their soothing spell
And sank into my winter sleep.

The joyful awakening of the Christmas Tree.

Awake! Awake! called the violin,
The pianoforte and the saxophone;
Through my fibres there crept a tremulous thrill--
A thrill I never before had known.
Music and warmth and a wonderful light
That flashed from the tips of my bending boughs,
A rustle of garments, a colorful swirl
And the ecstasy of a blissful rouse.

In gorgeous spangles I stood arrayed,
On a flake-flecked carpet as white as the snow;
My arms were laden with precious gifts
While others were heaped on the carpet below;
Bright, happy faces around me beamed,
As a beautiful child tripped softly nigh,
In a gauzy garment of pink and white,
With the golden wings of a butterfly.

The Christmas presents all neatly bound
With cord and ribbon of red and green,
In the midst of laughter and shouts of joy
Were soon dispensed by the butterfly queen.
And music again with rapturous spell
Enchanted the vibrant and redolent air;
And strong were the notes from the manly lips
And soft from the lips of the ladies fair!

'Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas Tide,
That brightens the years as they come and go,
For its portals of mirth that are opened wide,
For its holly wreath and its mistletoe.
Forgotten tonight are the cares of the past
And the shadow of cares that may never be;
For joy in its fullness is here at last;
Hurrah, hurrah for the Christmas Tree.'

Then around they swung in a merry dance,
With gliding advance and furtive retreat,
While fair lithe figures kept rhythmical time--
To the throbbing of music, the thrumping of feet.
Down, down to the depths of my dizzy soul
An exhilarant spell began to creep;
From the plaited folds of their winter caps,
Lo, my baby buds began to peep!

The music ceased and reluctantly
The dancers parted and glided away;
The lights went out, but soon in the East,
Through the windows I saw the dawning of day.
And faces new to the mansion came
With greetings and gifts and rejoiced to see,
In its crown of glory and spangles bright,
The 'wonderful,' 'beautiful' Christmas Tree.

The decline begins.

The New Year's dawning had scarce passed by
When the ladies fair had ceased to call;
The spangles were stripped from my stiffening limbs
And the spines from my plumes began to fall.
A thirst was gnawing my tortured soul;
The cells of my fibers were hard and dry;
But severed from earth, I could drink no more,
And my baby buds began to die.

The final phase.

But why delay the bitter truth--
The story of my pride and fall--
The transit from my vernal youth
To wreckage sad and skeletal,
Spurned by the feet of passers-by,
An outcast in the mire and rain,
Unworthy of a passing sigh
And dead alike to joy or pain?

Fair maiden, speed--I ask no more--
My flight aloft on fiery wings
To Nature's mighty reservoir--
The goal of all material things,
Your hope serene I may not claim
Of joys supernal yet to be,
Mine be the pride, refined by flame,
That I was once a Christmas Tree.