December / Folgore da San Geminiano

from Of the Months

December

Last, for December, houses on the plain,
    Ground-floors to live in, logs heaped mountain-high,
    And carpets stretched, and newest games to try,
And torches lit, and gifts from man to man
(Your host, a drunkard and a Catalan);
    And whole dead pigs, and cunning cooks to ply
    Each throat with tit-bits that shall satisfy;
And wine-butts of Saint Galganus' brave span.
And be your coats well-lined and tightly bound,
    And wrap yourselves in cloaks of strength and weight,
        With gallant hoods to put your faces through.
And make your game of abject vagabond
    Abandoned miserable reprobate
    Misers; don't let them have a chance with you.

~~
Folgore da San Geminiano (?1270-1332?)
translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
from The Early Italian Poets, 1861

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

[January]

Folgore da San Geminiano biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti biography

Joseph Nash, Christmas revels at Haddon Hall, from 

Mansions of England in the Olden Time. Wikimedia Commons.