C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832–1914)
Wassail Chorus
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—
Where?
Whence, dear Ben, I come again:
Bright with golden roofs and walls—
El Dorado’s rare domain—
Seem those halls when sunlight launches
Shafts of gold through leafless branches,
When the winter’s feathery mantle blanches
Field and farm and lane.
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—
Where?
Through the boughs a lace of rime,
While the bells of Christmas Eve
Fling for Will the Stratford-chime
O’er the river-flags embossed
Rich with flowery runes of frost—
O’er the meads where snowy tufts are tossed—
Strains of olden time.
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place
Where?
Where our Shakespeare’s feet are set.
There smiles Christmas, holly-crowned
With his blithest coronet.
Friendship’s face he loveth well:
’Tis a countenance whose spell
Sheds a balm o’er every mead and dell
Where we used to fret.
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—
Where?
Winter weaves by wood or stream,
Christmas loves our London, when
Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam—
Clouds like these, that, curling, take
Forms of faces gone, and wake
Many a lay from lips we loved, and make
London like a dream.
Where he goes with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair:
Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—
Where?
Yet the new shall suffer proof;
Love’s old drink of Yule brew I,
Wassail for new love’s behoof:
Drink the drink I brew, and sing
Till the berried branches swing,
Till our song make all the Mermaid ring—
Yea, from rush to roof.
Christmas saith with fondest face,
Brightest eye, brightest hair,
“Ben! the drink tastes rare of sack and mace;
Rare!”