Child's Calendar Beautiful, December

New readers curious about what this Child's Calendar Beautiful thing is all about can scroll down for the longer version. Short version: It's an old book I'm putting on line month by month.

Fourth Year, December- there were two poems. We've already had the first. Here is the second:

The Christmas Tree

You come from a land where the snow lies deep
In forest glad, on mountain steep,
Where the days are short and the nights are long
And never a skylark sings his song.
Have you seen the wild deer in his mountain home,
And watched the fall of the brown pine cone?
Do you miss your mates in the land of snow,
Where none but the everygreen branches grow?
Dear tree, we will dress you in robes so bright
That ne'er could be seen a prettier sight;
In glittering balls and tinkling bells,
And the star whilch the story of Christmas tells;
On every branch we will place a light
That shall send its gleam through the starry night;
And the little children will gather there,
And carol their songs in voices fair;
And we hope you will never homesick be,
You beautiful, beautiful Christmas tree.

~Mary. A. McHugh

Fifth Year, December~ There are two poems for December. We've had one, here is the second:

Home, Sweet Home

MID PLEASURES and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble there 's no place like home!

A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there,

Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.

Home! home! sweet, sweet home!

There 's no place like home!


An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain:

O, give me my lowly thatched cottage again!

The birds singing gayly that came at my call;—

Give me them,—and the peace of mind dearer than all!

Home! home! sweet, sweet home!

There 's no place like home!

~John Howard Payne

(there are at least two other verses to this, but the book only includes these two)