‘What will you buy when Christmas comes
To show me your love, dear heart?
Will you fill my bower with fruit and flowers
To enjoy while we’re apart?
Will you buy the things that you promised me,
Like a bangle for my wrist,
Or a diamond, topaz, sapphire ring,
Or a giant amethyst?’

He stood, head down and he held her hand
As she lay so pale in the bed,
He didn’t tell her his job was lost
Or what his employer said.
There were charges he would have to face
That would fill her heart with gloom,
That by Christmas Day he would be away
And not be returning soon.

‘I’d rather give you the crescent Moon
As a coronet, dear Tess,
And pluck the stars from the Milky Way
As sequins for your dress,
Then call on the Charioteer, my dear
For your transport to the heights,
Where the gods will fall on their knees to bless
This glimpse of paradise.’

She smiled, then faded away to sleep
And dream of a ghostly tower,
Where her prince stood long at the battlements
At the height of a fateful hour,
An army lay in the fields about
In a siege for her, no less,
‘We’ve come for the Queen of Golders Green,
And we won’t leave without Tess!’

While he sat bowed in a lonely cell
And wept at his sense of loss,
He’d only needed another month
And the price would be worth the cost,
He’d not be there when she needed him
As she glided out through the door,
The Judge fixed him with a puzzled eye,
‘Just who was the coffin for?’

On Christmas Eve she awoke before
Her heart pit-pattered and stopped,
Her fading eyes had looked to the door
Along with her hopes, they dropped.
But in her hair was a crescent Moon
And stars were all over her dress,
While a Charioteer came into the room,
‘I’ve a chariot here, for Tess!’

David Lewis Paget