Nor pantomimes, whose dreariness
  Might turn macassar gray;

Nor boisterous children, home in heaps,
  And ravenous of play;
Nor yet—in fact, the host of ills
  Which Christmases array.
God rest you, merry gentlemen,
  May none of these dismay!

’Tis Christmas, and the North wind blows; ’twas two years yesterday
Since from the Lusitania’s bows I looked o’er Table Bay,
A tripper round the narrow world, a pilgrim of the main,
Expecting when her sails unfurled to start for home again.

’Tis Christmas, and the North wind blows; today our hearts are one,
Though you are ’mid the English snows and I in Austral sun;
You, when you hear the Northern blast, pile high a mightier fire,