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...COMPLAINT by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS THE CONFLICT by CECIL DAY LEWIS SEVEN TIMES FOUR [ - MATERNITY] by JEAN INGELOW SING-SONG; A NURSERY RHYME BOOK: 92 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 46. AL-WASI'H by EDWIN ARNOLD TO SLEEP, WHEN SICK OF A FEVER by PHILIP AYRES AND LOCUSTS BLOOM TOMORROW by MILDRED TELFORD BARNWELL |