The Almond Branch
(Cache-Fiò)
I
“Come answer me this, petite, petite—
A riddle for you to guess, my sweet:
What is the tree that in winter’s gloom
Breaks in an hour into bloom, into bloom?
Here’s silver for her who tells”
(Hark to the nougat bells!)[2]
II
“Mon vieux, mon vieux, that’s no riddle for me
’Tis a branch of the little almond tree
The poor man brings from the orchard-plot;
A branch for a yule-log—is all he has got,
While his children sing noëls”
(Hark to the nougat bells!)
III
“But it snaps in the fire and the whole branch glows—
Breaks into blossoms of white and rose!
His wife and his children laugh to see
Those blossoms of fire from the almond tree—
And the smoke how sweet it smells!”
(Hark to the nougat bells!)
Edith M. Thomas
[2] The Christmas chimes, so called from the confection of that season.
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