Give way, give way, ye gates, and win <br />An easy blessing to your bin <br />And basket, by our entering in. <br /> <br />May both with manchet stand replete; <br />Your larders, too, so hung with meat, <br />That though a thousand, thousand eat, <br /> <br />Yet, ere twelve moons shall whirl about <br />Their silv'ry spheres, there's none may doubt <br />But more's sent in than was served out. <br /> <br />Next, may your dairies prosper so, <br />As that your pans no ebb may know; <br />But if they do, the more to flow, <br /> <br />Like to a solemn sober stream, <br />Bank'd all with lilies, and the cream <br />Of sweetest cowslips filling them. <br /> <br />Then may your plants be press'd with fruit, <br />Nor bee or hive you have be mute, <br />But sweetly sounding like a lute. <br /> <br />Last, may your harrows, shares, and ploughs, <br />Your stacks, your stocks, your sweetest mows, <br />All prosper by your virgin-vows. <br /> <br />--Alas! we bless, but see none here, <br />That brings us either ale or beer; <br />In a dry-house all things are near. <br /> <br />Let's leave a longer time to wait, <br />Where rust and cobwebs bind the gate; <br />And all live here with needy fate; <br /> <br />Where chimneys do for ever weep <br />For want of warmth, and stomachs keep <br />With noise the servants' eyes from sleep. <br /> <br />It is in vain to sing, or stay <br />Our free feet here, but we'll away: <br />Yet to the Lares this we'll say: <br /> <br />'The time will come when you'll be sad, <br />'And reckon this for fortune bad,<br /><br />Robert Herrick<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wassail/
