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”