With wassails of nut-brown ale,
To drink and carouse to all in the house
As merry as bucks in the dale;
Where cake, bread, and cheese are brought for your fees
To make you the longer stay;
At the fire to warm 'twill do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.
When Christmas's tide comes in like a bride
With holly and ivy clad,
Twelve days in the year much mirth and good cheer
In every household is had;
The country guise is then to devise
Some gambols of Christmas play,
Whereat the young men do best that they can
To drive the cold winter away.
When white-bearded frost hath threatened his worst,
And fallen from branch and brier,
Then time away calls from husbandry halls
And from the good countryman's fire,
Together to go to plough and to sow,
To get us both food and array,
And thus with content the time we have spent
To drive the cold winter away.
WINTER'S DELIGHTS.
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o'erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep's leaden spells remove.
The time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well:
Some, measures comely tread,
Some, knotted riddles tell,
Some, poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
_Thomas Campion._
A CHRISTMAS CATCH.
To shorten winter's sadness,
See where the nymphs with gladness
Disguised all are coming,
Right wantonly a-mumming.
Fa la.
Whilst youthful sports are lasting,
To feasting turn our fasting;
With revels and with wassails
Make grief and care our vassals.
Fa la.
For youth it well beseemeth
That pleasure he esteemeth;
And sullen age is hated
That mirth would have abated.
Fa la.
_Thomas Weelkes, A.D. 1597._
THE EPIC.
At Francis Allen's on the Christmas eve,--
The game of forfeits done--the girls all kissed
Beneath the sacred bush and past away,--
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebbed: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bumped the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and, half-awake, I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners,
Now hawking at geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith
Right through the world; "at home was little left,
And none abroad; there was no anchor, none,
To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder with, "I hold by him."
"And I," quoth Everard, "by the wassail-bowl."
"Why, yes," I said, "we knew your gift that way
At college; but another which you had,
I mean of verse (for so we held it then),
What came of that?" "You know," said Frank, "he burnt
His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books,"--
And then to me demanding why? "Oh, sir,
He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 'twas nothing--that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:
God knows, he has a mint of reasons: ask.
It pleased _me_ well enough." "Nay, nay," said Hall,
"Why take the style of those heroic times?
For nature brings not back the mastodon,
Nor we those times; and why should any man
Remodel models? These twelve books of mine
Were faint Homeric echoes, nothing-worth,
Mere chaff and draff, much better burnt." "But I,"
Said Francis, "picked the eleventh from this hearth,
And have it: keep a thing, its use will come.
I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes."
He laughed, and I, though sleepy, like a horse
That hears the corn-bin open, pricked my ears;
For I remembered Everard's college fame
When we were freshmen: then, at my request,
He brought it; and the poet, little urged,
But, with some prelude of disparagement,
Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes,
Deep-chested music, and to this result:
MORTE D'ARTHUR.
So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"The sequel of to-day unsolders all
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep
They sleep--the men I loved. I think that we
Shall nevermore, at any future time,
Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,
Walking about the gardens and the halls
Of Camelot, as in the days that were.
I perish by this people which I made,--
Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again
To rule once more,--but let what will be, be,
I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm
That without help I cannot last till morn.
Thou, therefore, take my brand, Excalibur,
Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword--and how I rowed across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king:
And, whensoever I am sung or told
In after time, this also shall be known:
But now delay not: take Excalibur
And fling him far into the middle mere:
Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word."
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere:
"It is not meet, Sir King, to leave thee thus,
Aidless, alone, and smitten through the helm.
A little thing may harm a wounded man,
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full,
Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word."
So saying, from the ruined shrine he stept
And in the moon athwart the place of tombs,
Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.
There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,
And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewelry. He gazed so long
That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood,
This way and that dividing the swift mind,
In act to throw: but at the last it seemed
Better to leave Excalibur concealed
There in the many-knotted water-flags
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.
So strode he back slow to the wounded King.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere:
"Hast thou performed my mission which I gave?
What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the ripple washing in the reeds,
And the wild water lapping on the crag."
To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale:
"Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseemed
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight:
For surer sign had followed, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.
Yet now, I charge thee, quickly go again
As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing
I bad thee, watch, and lightly bring me word."
Then went Sir Bedivere the second time
Across the ridge and paced beside the mere,
Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought;
But when he saw the wonder of the hilt,
How curiously and strangely chased, he smote
His palms together, and he cried aloud,
"And if, indeed, I cast the brand away,
Surely a precious thing, one worthy note,
Should thus be lost forever from the earth,
Which might have pleased the eyes of many men.
What good should follow this, if this were done?
What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey,
Seeing obedience is the bond of rule.
Were it well to obey then, if a king demand
An act unprofitable against himself?"
* * * * *
So spake he, clouded with his own conceit,
And hid Excalibur the second time,
And so strode back slow to the wounded King.
Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:
"What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?"
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere:
"I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds."
To whom replied King Arthur much in wrath:
"Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue,
Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me!
Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widowed of the power of his eye
That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art;
For thou, the latest left of all my knights,
In whom should meet the offices of all,
Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes.
Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time may prosper, get thee hence;
But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur,
I will arise and slay thee with my hands."
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush-beds, and clutched the sword
And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the northern sea,
So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt and brandished him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.
* * * * *
Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long
Had winked, and threatened darkness, flared and fell:
At which the Parson, sent to sleep with sound,
And waked with silence, grunted "Good!" but we
Sat rapt: it was the tone with which he read--
Perhaps some modern touches here and there
Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness--
Or else we loved the man, and prized his work;
I know not; but we sitting as I said,
The cock crew loud; as at that time of year
The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn:
Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill-used,
"There now--that's nothing!" drew a little back,
And drove his heel into the smouldered log,
That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue:
And so to bed; where yet in sleep I seemed
To sail with Arthur under looming shores,
Point after point; till on to dawn, when dreams
Begin to feel the truth and stir of day,
To me, methought, who waited with a crowd,
Then came a bark that, blowing forward, bore
King Arthur, like a modern gentleman
Of stateliest port; and all the people cried,
"Arthur is come again: he cannot die."
Then those that stood upon the hills behind
Repeated "Come again, and thrice as fair;"
And, further inland, voices echoed, "Come
With all good things, and war shall be no more."
At this a hundred bells began to peal,
That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed
The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas morn.
_Lord Tennyson._
THE COUNTRY LIFE.
For sports, for pageantries, and plays,
Thou hast thy eves and holidays
On which the young men and maids meet
To exercise their dancing feet,
Tripping the comely country-round,
With daffodils and daisies crowned.
Thy wakes, thy quintals, here thou hast,
Thy May-poles, too, with garlands graced,
Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale,
Thy shearing-feast, which never fail,
Thy harvest home, thy wassail-bowl,
That's tossed up after fox-i'-th'-hole,
Thy mummeries, thy Twelfthtide kings
And queens, thy Christmas revellings,
Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit,
And no man pays too dear for it.
O happy life! if that their good
The husbandmen but understood,
Who all the day themselves do please
And younglings with such sports as these,
And, lying down, have naught t' affright
Sweet sleep, that makes more short the night.
_Robert Herrick._
CHRISTMAS OMNIPRESENT.
Christmas comes! He comes, he comes,
Ushered with a rain of plums;
Hollies in the windows greet him;
Schools come driving post to meet him;
Gifts precede him, bells proclaim him,
Every mouth delights to name him;
Wet, and cold, and wind, and dark
Make him but the warmer mark;
And yet he comes not one-embodied,
Universal's the blithe godhead,
And in every festal house
Presence hath ubiquitous.
Curtains, those snug room-enfolders,
Hang upon his million shoulders,
And he has a million eyes
Of fire, and eats a million pies,
And is very merry and wise;
Very wise and very merry,
And loves a kiss beneath the berry.
Then full many a shape hath he,
All in said ubiquity:
Now is he a green array,
And now an "eve," and now a "day;"
Now he's town gone _out_ of town,
And now a feast in civic gown,
And now the pantomime and clown
With a crack upon the crown,
And all sorts of tumbles down;
And then he's music in the night,
And the money gotten by't:
He's a man that can't write verses,
Bringing some to ope your purses:
He's a turkey, he's a goose,
He's oranges unfit for use;
He's a kiss that loves to grow
Underneath the mistletoe;
And he's forfeits, cards, and wassails,
And a king and queen with vassals,
All the "quizzes" of the time
Drawn and quarter'd with a rhyme;
And then, for their revival's sake,
Lo! he's an enormous cake,
With a sugar on the top,
Seen before in many a shop,
Where the boys could gaze forever,
They think the cake so very clever.
Then, some morning, in the lurch
Leaving romps, he goes to church,
Looking very grave and thankful,
After which he's just as prankful.
Now a saint, and now a sinner,
But, above all, he's a dinner;
He's a dinner, where you see
Everybody's family;
Beef, and pudding, and mince-pies,
And little boys with laughing eyes,
Whom their seniors ask arch questions,
Feigning fears of indigestions
As if they, forsooth, the old ones,
Hadn't, privately, tenfold ones:
He's a dinner and a fire,
Heap'd beyond your heart's desire,--
Heap'd with log, and bak'd with coals,
Till it roasts your very souls,
And your cheek the fire outstares,
And you all push back your chairs,
And the mirth becomes too great,
And you all sit up too late,
Nodding all with too much head,
And so go off to too much bed.
O plethora of beef and bliss!
Monkish feaster, sly of kiss!
Southern soul in body Dutch!
Glorious time of great Too-Much!
Too much heat and too much noise,
Too much babblement of boys;
Too much eating, too much drinking,
Too much ev'rything but thinking;
Solely bent to laugh and stuff,
And trample upon base Enough.
Oh, right is thy instructive praise
Of the wealth of Nature's ways!
Right thy most unthrifty glee,
And pious thy mince-piety!
For, behold! great Nature's self
Builds her no abstemious shelf,
But provides (her love is such
For all) her own great, good Too-Much,--
Too much grass, and too much tree,
Too much air, and land, and sea,
Too much seed of fruit and flower,
And fish, an unimagin'd dower!
(In whose single roe shall be
Life enough to stock the sea,--
Endless ichthyophagy!)
Ev'ry instant through the day
Worlds of life are thrown away;
Worlds of life, and worlds of pleasure,
Not for lavishment of treasure,
But because she's so immensely
Rich, and loves us so intensely.
She would have us, once for all,
Wake at her benignant call,
And all grow wise, and all lay down
Strife, and jealousy, and frown,
And, like the sons of one great mother,
Share, and be blest, with one another.
_Leigh Hunt._
AN OLD ENGLISH CHRISTMAS-TIDE.
Thrice holy ring, afar and wide,
The merry bells this Christmas-tide;
Afar and wide, through hushed snow,
From ivied minster-portico,
Sweet anthems swell to tell the tale
Of that young babe the shepherds hail
Sitting amid their nibbling flocks
What time the Hallelujah shocks
The drowsy earth, and Cherubim
Break through the heaven with harp and hymn.
Belated birds sing tingling notes
To warm apace their chilly throats,
Or they, mayhap, have caught the story
And pipe their part from branches hoary;
While up aloft, his tempered beams
The sun has poured in gentle streams,
Sending o'er snowy hill and dell
A pleasance to greet the Christmas bell!
Now every yeoman starts abroad
For holly green and the ivy-tod;
Good folk to kirk are soon atrip
Mellow with cheer and good-fellowship,
And cosey chimneys, here and there
Puff forth the sweets o' Christmas fare.
Ho! rosy wenches and merry men
From over the hill and field and fen,
Great store is here, the drifts between
Of myrtle red-berried, and mistletoe green!
Ho, Phyllis and Kate and bonny Nell
Come hither, and buffet the goodmen well,
An they gather not for hall and hearth,
Fair bays to grace the evening mirth.
Aye, laugh ye well! and echoed wide
Your voices sing through the Christmas-tide,
And wintry winds emblend their tones
At the minster-eaves with the organ groans:
The carols meet with laughter sweet
In a gay embrace mid the drifting sleet.
Anon the weary sun's at rest,
And clouds that hovered all day by,
Like silver arras down the sky
Enfold him--while the winds are whist--
But not the Christmas jollity,
For, little space, and wassail high
Flows at the board; and hautboys sound
The tripping dance and merry round.
Here youths and maidens stand in row
Kissing beneath the mistletoe;
And many a tale of midnight rout
O' Christmas-tide the woods about,
Of faery meetings beneath the moon
In wintry blast or summer swoon,
Goes round the hearth, while all aglow
The yule-log crackles the crane below.
Drink hael! good folk, by the chimney side,
O sweet's the holy Christmas-tide!
Drink hael! Drink hael! and pledge again:
"Here's peace on earth, good-will to men!"
_H. S. M._
SIGNS OF CHRISTMAS.
When on the barn's thatch'd roof is seen
The moss in tufts of liveliest green;
When Roger to the wood pile goes,
And, as he turns, his fingers blows;
When all around is cold and drear,
Be sure that Christmas-tide is near.
When up the garden walk in vain
We seek for Flora's lovely train;
When the sweet hawthorn bower is bare,
And bleak and cheerless is the air;
When all seems desolate around,
Christmas advances o'er the ground.
When Tom at eve comes home from plough,
And brings the mistletoe's green bough,
With milk-white berries spotted o'er,
And shakes it the sly maids before,
Then hangs the trophy up on high,
Be sure that Christmas-tide is nigh.
When Hal, the woodman, in his clogs,
Bears home the huge unwieldly logs,
That, hissing on the smould'ring fire,
Flame out at last a quiv'ring spire;
When in his hat the holly stands,
Old Christmas musters up his bands.
When cluster'd round the fire at night,
Old William talks of ghost and sprite,
And, as a distant out-house gate
Slams by the wind, they fearful wait,
While some each shadowy nook explore,
Then Christmas pauses at the door.
When Dick comes shiv'ring from the yard,
And says the pond is frozen hard,
While from his hat, all white with snow,
The moisture, trickling, drops below,
While carols sound, the night to cheer,
Then Christmas and his train are here.
_Edwin Lees._
THE MISTLETOE.
When winter nights grow long,
And winds without blow cold,
We sit in a ring round the warm wood-fire,
And listen to stories old!
And we try to look grave, (as maids should be,)
When the men bring in boughs of the Laurel-tree.
_O the Laurel, the evergreen tree!_
_The poets have laurels, and why not we?_
How pleasant, when night falls down
And hides the wintry sun,
To see them come in to the blazing fire,
And know that their work is done;
Whilst many bring in, with a laugh or rhyme,
Green branches of Holly for Christmas time!
_O the Holly, the bright green Holly,_
_It tells (like a tongue) that the times are jolly!_
Sometimes--(in our grave house,
Observe, this happeneth not;)
But, at times, the evergreen laurel boughs
And the holly are all forgot!
And then! what then? why, the men laugh low
And hang up a branch of the Mistletoe!
_O brave is the Laurel! and brave is the Holly!_
_But the Mistletoe banisheth melancholy!_
_Ah, nobody knows, nor ever shall know,_
_What is done--under the Mistletoe._
_Bryan Waller Proctor._
CHRISTMAS OF OLD.
IN GERMANY.
Three weeks before the day whereon was born the Lord of grace,
And on the Thursday, boys and girls do run in every place,
And bounce and beat at every door, with blows and lusty snaps,
And cry the advent of the Lord, not born as yet, perhaps:
And wishing to the neighbors all, that in the houses dwell,
A happy year, and everything to spring and prosper well:
Here have they pears, and plums, and pence; each man gives willingly,
For these three nights are always thought unfortunate to be,
Wherein they are afraid of sprites and cankered witches' spite,
And dreadful devils, black and grim, that then have chiefest might.
In these same days, young, wanton girls that meet for marriage be,
Do search to know the names of them that shall their husbands be.
Four onions, five, or eight they take, and make in every one
Such names as they do fancy most and best do think upon.
Thus near the chimney then they set, and that same onion than
The first doth sprout doth surely bear the name of their good man.
Their husband's nature eke they seek to know and all his guise:
When as the sun hath hid himself, and left the starry skies,
Unto some woodstack do they go, and while they there do stand,
Each one draws out a fagot stick, the next that comes to hand,
Which if it straight and even be, and have no knots at all,
A gentle husband then they think shall surely to them fall;
But, if it foul and crooked be, and knotty here and there,
A crabbed, churlish husband then they earnestly do fear.
Then comes the day wherein the Lord did bring his birth to pass,
Whereas at midnight up they rise, and every man to Mass.
This time so holy counted is, that divers earnestly
Do think the waters all to wine are changèd suddenly
In that same hour that Christ himself was born and came to light,
And unto water straight again transformed and altered quite.
There are beside that mindfully the money still do watch
That first to altar comes, which then they privily do snatch.
The priests, lest other should it have, take oft the same away,
Whereby they think throughout the year to have good luck in play,
And not to lose: then straight at game till daylight do they strive
To make some present proof how well their hallowed pence will thrive.
This done, a wooden child in clouts is on the altar set,
About the which both boys and girls do dance and trimly get,
And carols sing in praise of Christ, and for to help them here,
The organs answer every verse with sweet and solemn cheer.
The priests do roar aloud, and round about the parents stand,
To see the sport, and with their voice do help them and their hand.
Thus wont the Coribants perhaps upon the mountain Ide,
The crying noise of Jupiter, new born, with song to hide,
To dance about him round, and on their brazen pans to beat,
Lest that his father, finding him, should him destroy and eat.
Then followeth Saint Stephen's Day, whereon doth every man
His horses jaunt and course abroad, as swiftly as he can.
Until they do extremely sweat, and then they let them blood,
For this being done upon this day, they say doth do them good,
And keeps them from all maladies and sickness through the year,
As if that Stephen any time took charge of horses here.
Next, John, the son of Zebedee, hath his appointed day,
Who once, by cruel tyrant's will, constrained was, they say,
Strong poison up to drink, therefore the Papists do believe
That whoso puts their trust in him, no poison them can grieve.
The wine beside that hallowed is, in worship of his name,
The priests do give the people that bring money for the same.
And after with the selfsame wine are little manchets[F] made,
Against the boisterous winter storms, and sundry such like trade.
The men upon this solemn day do take this holy wine,
To make them strong, so do the maids to make them fair and fine.