title: From Saint Nicholas
author: Clement Clarke Moore
date: c. 1821-1822
source: Original manuscript, Museum of the City of New York, doc. 54.331.4; transcribed by Mary S. Van Deusen, henrylivingston.com, fetched via the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/2024/https://www.henrylivingston.com/xmas/livingstonmoore/moorefromstnicholas.htm
form: anapestic tetrameter couplets (with a triplet; some iambic substitutions)
lines: 23
attribution: certain
notes: Verse letter 'from St. Nicholas' to Moore's daughter Charity Elizabeth ('little Sis', b. 1816), left with her Christmas stocking; site dates it 1822 (allmoorepoetry.htm), i.e. the same season as the Visit. Comic-affectionate, admonitory. Closest metrical analogue to the Visit in Moore's known verse. Listed in the site's Jackson phoneme data set (data/favoredphonemes/moore/moorefromstnicholas.txt), so apparently part of Jackson's main Moore corpus rather than a held-back text; unverified against Jackson 2016 itself. Site line count 23 agrees.

What! My sweet little Sis, in bed all alone;
No light in your room! And your nursy too gone!
And you, like a good child, are quietly lying,
While some naughty ones would be fretting or crying?
Well, for this you must have something pretty, my dear;
And, I hope, will deserve a reward too next year.
But, speaking of crying, I'm sorry to say
Your screeches and screams, so loud ev'ry day,
Were near driving me and my goodies away.
Good children I always give good things in plenty;
How sad to have left your stocking quite empty:
But you are beginning so nicely to spell,
And, in going to bed, behave always so well,
That, although I too oft see the tear in your eye,
I cannot resolve to pass you quite by.
I hope, when I come here again the next year,
I shall not see even the sign of a tear.
And then, if you get back your sweet pleasant looks,
And do as you're bid, I will leave you some books,
Some toys, or perhaps what you still may like better,
And then too may write you a prettier letter.
At present, my dear, I must bid you good bye;
Now, do as you're bid; and, remember, don't cry.