Pedantic Night Before Christmas

One crepuscular Christmas, when all through the house

Every creature quiescent, and even the mouse.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there

The children immured all snug in their beds,

Soporific encomiums danced in their heads.

And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such plangency,

I sprang up in all etiological urgency.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave effulgence of midday to objects below

When, to my meiosis of mind should irrupt,

And eight reindeer, diminutive sleigh, interrupt.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now Myrmidons! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the roof recrudescent they flew,
Gallimaufry of rapine, St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.
In a cuirass of fur, from his head to his foot,
He’s a tatterdemalion of culm and of soot,
A surfeit of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how coruscate! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard was as hoary and white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it was gyred round his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a tumescent belly,
When he laughed it would welter, like a bowlful of jelly!

Inspissate and plump, a fey, jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
With his finger alongside his aquiline nose

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

On his Gadarene trip like the down of a thistle.

But I heard his chiasma, his hegira in sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”