The Mahogany Tree

    by William Makepeace Thackeray

 

 Christmas is here;  
Winds whistle shrill,  
Icy and chill,  
Little care we;  
Little we fear 
Weather without,  
Shelter’d 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,  
Perch’d round the stem    
Of the jolly old tree.  . . .

Find the rest of the poem here.

Things Are Hard EVERYWHERE!

At the Zoo
    by William Makepeace Thackeray

First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black;
Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back;
Then I saw the grey wolf, with mutton in his maw;
Then I saw the wombat waddle in the straw;
Then I saw the elephant a-waving of his trunk;
Then I saw the monkeys—mercy, how unpleasantly they smelt!

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