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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

From ‘The Coming of Love and Other Poems’

CHORUS
CHRISTMAS knows a merry, merry place,

Where he goes with fondest face,

Brightest eye, brightest hair:

Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—

Where?

RALEIGH
’Tis by Devon’s glorious halls,

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.

CHORUS
Christmas knows a merry, merry place,

Where he goes with fondest face,

Brightest eye, brightest hair:

Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—

Where?

DRAYTON
’Tis where Avon’s wood-sprites weave

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.

CHORUS
Christmas knows a merry, merry place,

Where he goes with fondest face,

Brightest eye, brightest hair:

Tell the Mermaid where is that one place

Where?

“MR. W. H.”
’Tis, methinks, on any ground

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.

CHORUS
Christmas knows a merry, merry place,

Where he goes with fondest face,

Brightest eye, brightest hair:

Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—

Where?

HEYWOOD
More than all the pictures, Ben,

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.

CHORUS
Christmas knows a merry, merry place,

Where he goes with fondest face,

Brightest eye, brightest hair:

Tell the Mermaid where is that one place—

Where?

BEN JONSON
Love’s old songs shall never die,

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.

FINALE
Christmas loves this merry, merry place:—

Christmas saith with fondest face,

Brightest eye, brightest hair,

“Ben! the drink tastes rare of sack and mace;

Rare!”