Wassail

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Title:     Wassail
Author: (Poet) Robert Herrick [More Titles by Herrick]

Give way, give way, ye gates, and win
An easy blessing to your bin
And basket, by our entering in.

May both with manchet[T] stand replete,
Your larders, too, so hung with meat,
That though a thousand thousand eat,

Yet ere twelve moons shall whirl about
Their silvery spheres, there's none may doubt
But more's sent in than was served out.

Next, may your dairies prosper so
As that your pans no ebb may know;
But if they do, the more to flow,

Like to a solemn, sober stream,
Banked all with lilies, and the cream
Of sweetest cowslips filling them.

Then may your plants be pressed with fruit,
Nor bee or hive you have be mute,
But sweetly sounding like a lute.

Last, may your harrows, shares, and ploughs,
Your stacks, your stocks, your sweetest mows,
All prosper by your virgin vows.

Alas! we bless, but see none here,
That brings us either ale or beer;
In a dry house all things are near.

Let's leave a longer time to wait,
Where rust and cobwebs bind the gate;
And all live here with needy fate;

Where chimneys do forever weep
For want of warmth, and stomachs keep
With noise the servants' eyes from sleep.

It is in vain to sing or stay
Our free feet here, but we'll away;
Yet to the Lares this we'll say:

The time will come when you'll be sad,
And reckon this for fortune bad,
T' have lost the good ye might have had.

 

FOOTNOTE:

[T] White bread.

[The end]
Robert Herrick's poem: Wassail

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