Kitabı oxu: «The Mahogany Tree»

The Mahogany Tree

"Some years since" said Thackeray in a public speech, "when I was younger, and used to frequent jolly assemblies, I wrote a Bacchanalian song to be chanted after dinner;" and a contemporary record has preserved a note of "the radiant gratification of his face whilst Horace Mayhew sang The Mahogany Tree, perhaps the finest and most soul-stirring of Thackeray's social songs."

In seeking a Souvenir of this Christmas season the ballad of "The Mahogany Tree" lends itself most felicitously to the present purpose which is to

THE MAHOGANY TREE

 
Christmas is here:
Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill,
Little care we:
Little we fear
Weather without,
Sheltered about
The Mahogany Tree
 
 
Once on the boughs
Birds of rare plume
Sang, in its bloom;
Night-birds are we:
Here we carouse,
Singing like them,
Perched round the stem
Of the jolly old tree.
 
 
Here let us sport,
Boys, as we sit;
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.
Life is but short —
When we are gone,
Let them sing on
Round the old tree.
 
 
Evenings we knew,
Happy as this;
Faces we miss,
Pleasant to see.