A Search for Santa Claus (1897)

An example of a subgenre of Christmas poetry Victorians had really liked, what I've been calling the "miraculous Christmas death" for lack of a better term. Think, for example, "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen.

A SEARCH FOR SANTA CLAUS.
—
A bitter night—a squalid street
	A basement bleak and bare.
A hungry child with bleeding feet
	Alone sat waiting there
All day amid the surging throng.
	She'd wandered far and near—
All day had sung a feeble song
	That none had paused to hear.

But as she sang she caught the name
	Of Santa Claus, and how
On Christmas night he often came
	To hungry children now.
And so she waited in the dark
	For Santa Claus to come
Till in her breast the feeble spark
	Of hope grew faint and numb.

She thought because she had no light
	He failed to bring her share,
And crept at last into the night
	To lead the good saint there.
And Christmas morning came, and lo!
	Her dead face smiled, because
Amid a whirling drift of snow
Her little weary soul, I know,
	Had found its Santa Claus.
Omaha Daily Bee [NE]. December 19, 1897: 20 col 3. [Citing New York Herald.]