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Chapter XXVII
“CHRISTMAS AT THE ‘MERMAID’”
Second in importance to ‘The Coming of Love’ among Mr. Watts-Dunton’s poems is the poem I have already mentioned – the poem which Mr. Swinburne has described as ‘a great lyrical epic’ – “Christmas at the ‘Mermaid.’” The originality of this wonderful poem is quite as striking as that of ‘The Coming of Love.’ No other writer would have dreamed of depicting the doomed Armada as being led to destruction by a golden skeleton in the form of one of the burnt Incas, called up by ‘the righteous sea,’ and squatting grimly at the prow of Medina’s flag-ship. Here we get ‘The Renascence of Wonder’ indeed. Some Aylwinians put it at the head of all his writings. The exploit of David Gwynn is accepted by Motley and others as historic, but it needed the co-operation of the Golden Skeleton to lift his narrative into the highest heaven of poetry. Extremely unlike ‘The Coming of Love’ as it is in construction, it is built on the same metrical scheme; and it illustrates equally well with ‘The Coming of Love’ the remarks I have made upon a desideratum in poetic art – that is to say, it is cast in a form which gives as much scope to the dramatic instinct at work as is given by a play, and yet it is a form free from the restrictions by which a play must necessarily be cramped. The poem was written, or mainly written, during one of those visits which, as I have already said, Mr. Watts-Dunton used to pay to Stratford-on-Avon. The scene is laid, however, in London, at that famous ‘Mermaid’ tavern which haunts the dreams of all English poets: —
“With the exception of Shakespeare, who has quitted London for good, in order to reside at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, which he has lately rebuilt, all the members of the ‘Mermaid’ Club are assembled at the ‘Mermaid’ Tavern. At the head of the table sits Ben Jonson dealing out wassail from a large bowl. At the other end sits Raleigh, and at Raleigh’s right hand, the guest he had brought with him, a stranger, David Gwynn, the Welsh seaman, now an elderly man, whose story of his exploits as a galley-slave in crippling the Armada before it reached the Channel had, years before, whether true or false, given him in the low countries a great reputation, the echo of which had reached England. Raleigh’s desire was to excite the public enthusiasm for continuing the struggle with Spain on the sea, and generally to revive the fine Elizabethan temper, which had already become almost a thing of the past, save, perhaps, among such choice spirits as those associated with the ‘Mermaid’ club.”
It opens with a 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?
Then Ben Jonson rises, fills the cup with wassail and drinks to Shakespeare, and thus comments upon his absence: —
That he, the star of revel, bright-eyed Will,
With life at golden summit, fled the town
And took from Thames that light to dwindle down
O’er Stratford farms, doth make me marvel still.
Then he calls upon Shakespeare’s most intimate friend – the mysterious Mr. W. H. of the sonnets – to give them reminiscences of Shakespeare with a special reference to the memorable evening when he arrived at Stratford on quitting London for good and all.
To the sixth edition of the poem Mr. Watts-Dunton prefixed the following remarks, and I give them here because they throw light upon his view of Shakespeare’s friend: —
“Since the appearance of this volume, there has been a great deal of acute and learned discussion as to the identity of that mysterious ‘friend’ of Shakespeare, to whom so many of the sonnets are addressed. But everything that has been said upon the subject seems to fortify me in the opinion that ‘no critic has been able to identify’ that friend. Southampton seems at first to fit into the sacred place; so does Pembroke at first. But, after a while, true and unbiassed criticism rejects them both. I therefore feel more than ever justified in ‘imagining the friend for myself.’ And this, at least, I know, that to have been the friend of Shakespeare, a man must needs have been a lover of nature; – he must have been a lover of England, too. And upon these two points, and upon another – the movement of a soul dominated by friendship as a passion – I have tried to show Shakespeare’s probable influence upon his ‘friend of friends.’ It would have been a mistake, however, to cast the sonnets in the same metrical mould as Shakespeare’s.”
Shakspeare’s friend thus records what Shakespeare had told him about his return to Stratford: —
As down the bank he strolled through evening dew,
Pictures (he told me) of remembered eves
Mixt with that dream the Avon ever weaves,
And all his happy childhood came to view;
He saw a child watching the birds that flew
Above a willow, through whose musky leaves
A green musk-beetle shone with mail and greaves
That shifted in the light to bronze and blue.
These dreams, said he, were born of fragrance falling
From trees he loved, the scent of musk recalling,
With power beyond all power of things beholden
Or things reheard, those days when elves of dusk
Came, veiled the wings of evening feathered golden,
And closed him in from all but willow musk.
And then a child beneath a silver sallow —
A child who loved the swans, the moorhen’s ‘cheep’ —
Angled for bream where river holes were deep —
For gudgeon where the water glittered shallow,
Or ate the ‘fairy cheeses’ of the mallow,
And wild fruits gathered where the wavelets creep
Round that loved church whose shadow seems to sleep
In love upon the stream and bless and hallow;
And then a child to whom the water-fairies
Sent fish to ‘bite’ from Avon’s holes and shelves,
A child to whom, from richest honey-dairies,
The flower-sprites sent the bees and ‘sunshine elves’;
Then, in the shifting vision’s sweet vagaries,
He saw two lovers walking by themselves —
Walking beneath the trees, where drops of rain
Wove crowns of sunlit opal to decoy
Young love from home; and one, the happy boy,
Knew all the thoughts of birds in every strain —
Knew why the cushat breaks his fond refrain
By sudden silence, ‘lest his plaint should cloy’ —
Knew when the skylark’s changing note of joy
Saith, ‘Now will I return to earth again’ —
Knew every warning of the blackbird’s shriek,
And every promise of his joyful song —
Knew what the magpie’s chuckle fain would speak;
And, when a silent cuckoo flew along,
Bearing an egg in her felonious beak,
Knew every nest threatened with grievous wrong.
He heard her say, ‘The birds attest our troth!’
Hark to the mavis, Will, in yonder may
Fringing the sward, where many a hawthorn spray
Round summer’s royal field of golden cloth
Shines o’er the buttercups like snowy froth,
And that sweet skylark on his azure way,
And that wise cuckoo, hark to what they say:
‘We birds of Avon heard and bless you both.’
And, Will, the sunrise, flushing with its glory,
River and church, grows rosier with our story!
This breeze of morn, sweetheart, which moves caressing,
Hath told the flowers; they wake to lovelier growth!
They breathe – o’er mead and stream they breathe – the blessing.
‘We flowers of Avon heard and bless you both!’
When Mr. ‘W. H.’ sits down, the friend and brother of another great poet, Christopher Marlowe, who had been sitting moody and silent, oppressed by thoughts of the dead man, many of whose unfriends were at the gathering, recites these lines ‘On Seeing Kit Marlowe Slain at Deptford’: —
’Tis Marlowe falls! That last lunge rent asunder
Our lyre of spirit and flesh, Kit Marlowe’s life,
Whose chords seemed strung by earth and heaven at strife,
Yet ever strung to beauty above or under!
Heav’n kens of Man, but oh! the stars can blunder,
If Fate’s hand guided yonder villain’s knife
Through that rare brain, so teeming, daring, rife
With dower of poets – song and love and wonder.
Or was it Chance? Shakspeare, who art supreme
O’er man and men, yet sharest Marlowe’s sight
To pierce the clouds that hide the inhuman height
Where man and men and gods and all that seem
Are Nature’s mutterings in her changeful dream —
Come, spell the runes these bloody rivulets write!
After they have all drunk in silence to the memory of Marlowe, Marlowe’s friend speaks: —
Where’er thou art, ‘dead Shepherd,’ look on me;
The boy who loved thee loves more dearly now,
He sees thine eyes in yonder holly-bough;
Oh, Kit, my Kit, the Mermaid drinks to thee!
Then Raleigh rises, and the great business of the evening begins with the following splendid chorus: —
Raleigh
(Turning to David Gwynn)
Wherever billows foam
The Briton fights at home:
His hearth is built of water —
Chorus
Water blue and green;
Raleigh
There’s never a wave of ocean
The wind can set in motion
That shall not own our England —
Chorus
Raleigh
The guest I bring to-night
Had many a goodly fight
On seas the Don hath found —
Chorus
Hath found for English sails;
Raleigh
And once he dealt a blow
Against the Don to show
What mighty hearts can move —
Chorus
Can move in leafy Wales.
Raleigh
Stand up, bold Master Gwynn,
Who hast a heart akin
To England’s own brave hearts —
Chorus
Brave hearts where’er they beat;
Raleigh
Stand up, brave Welshman, thou,
And tell the Mermaid how
A galley-slave struck hard —
Chorus
Struck hard the Spanish fleet.
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?
Upon being thus called forth the old sea-dog rises, and tells a wonderful story indeed, the ‘story of how he and the Golden Skeleton crippled the Great Armada sailing out’: —
‘A galley lie’ they called my tale; but he
Whose talk is with the deep kens mighty tales:
The man, I say, who helped to keep you free
Stands here, a truthful son of truthful Wales.
Slandered by England as a loose-lipped liar,
Banished from Ireland, branded rogue and thief,
Here stands that Gwynn whose life of torments dire
Heaven sealed for England, sealed in blood and fire —
Stands asking here Truth’s one reward, belief!
And Spain shall tell, with pallid lips of dread,
This tale of mine – shall tell, in future days,
How Gwynn, the galley-slave, once fought and bled
For England when she moved in perilous ways;
But say, ye gentlemen of England, sprung
From loins of men whose ghosts have still the sea —
Doth England – she who loves the loudest tongue —
Remember mariners whose deeds are sung
By waves where flowed their blood to keep her free?
I see – I see ev’n now – those ships of Spain
Gathered in Tagus’ mouth to make the spring;
I feel the cursed oar, I toil again,
And trumpets blare, and priests and choir-boys sing;
And morning strikes with many a crimson shaft,
Through ruddy haze, four galleys rowing out —
Four galleys built to pierce the English craft,
Each swivel-gunned for raking fore and aft,
Snouted like sword-fish, but with iron snout.
And one we call the ‘Princess,’ one the ‘Royal,’
‘Diana’ one; but ’tis the fell ‘Basana’
Where I am toiling, Gwynn, the true, the loyal,
Thinking of mighty Drake and Gloriana;
For by their help Hope whispers me that I —
Whom ten hours’ daily travail at a stretch
Has taught how sweet a thing it is to die —
May strike once more where flags of England fly,
Strike for myself and many a haggard wretch.
True sorrow knows a tale it may not tell:
Again I feel the lash that tears my back;
Again I hear mine own blaspheming yell,
Answered by boatswain’s laugh and scourge’s crack;
Again I feel the pang when trying to choke
Rather than drink the wine, or chew the bread
Wherewith, when rest for meals would break the stroke,
They cram our mouths while still we sit at yoke;
Again is Life, not Death, the shape of dread.
By Finisterre there comes a sudden gale,
And mighty waves assault our trembling galley
With blows that strike her waist as strikes a flail,
And soldiers cry, ‘What saint shall bid her rally?’
Some slaves refuse to row, and some implore
The Dons to free them from the metal tether
By which their limbs are locked upon the oar;
Some shout, in answer to the billows’ roar,
‘The Dons and we will drink brine-wine together.’
‘Bring up the slave,’ I hear the captain cry,
‘Who sank the golden galleon “El Dorado,”
The dog can steer.’
‘Here sits the dog,’ quoth I,
‘Who sank the ship of Commodore Medrado!’
With hell-lit eyes, blistered by spray and rain,
Standing upon the bridge, saith he to me:
‘Hearken, thou pirate – bold Medrado’s bane! —
Freedom and gold are thine, and thanks of Spain,
If thou canst take the galley through this sea.’
‘Ay! ay!’ quoth I. The fools unlock me straight!
And then ’tis I give orders to the Don,
Laughing within to hear the laugh of Fate,
Whose winning game I know hath just begun.
I mount the bridge when dies the last red streak
Of evening, and the moon seems fain for night
Oh then I see beneath the galley’s beak
A glow like Spanish auto’s ruddy reek —
Oh then these eyes behold a wondrous sight!
A skeleton, but yet with living eyes —
A skeleton, but yet with bones like gold —
Squats on the galley-beak, in wondrous wise,
And round his brow, of high imperial mould,
A burning circle seems to shake and shine,
Bright, fiery bright, with many a living gem,
Throwing a radiance o’er the foam-lit brine:
‘’Tis God’s Revenge,’ methinks. ‘Heaven sends for sign
That bony shape – that Inca’s diadem.’
At first the sign is only seen of me,
But well I know that God’s Revenge hath come
To strike the Armada, set old ocean free,
And cleanse from stain of Spain the beauteous foam.
Quoth I, ‘How fierce soever be the levin
Spain’s hand can hurl – made mightier still for wrong
By that great Scarlet One whose hills are seven —
Yea, howsoever Hell may scoff at Heaven —
Stronger than Hell is God, though Hell is strong.’
‘The dog can steer,’ I laugh; ‘yea, Drake’s men know
How sea-dogs hold a ship to Biscay waves.’
Ah! when I bid the soldiers go below,
Some ’neath the hatches, some beside the slaves,
And bid them stack their muskets all in piles
Beside the foremast, covered by a sail,
The captives guess my plan – I see their smiles
As down the waist the cozened troop defiles,
Staggering and stumbling landsmen, faint and pale.
I say, they guess my plan – to send beneath
The soldiers to the benches where the slaves
Sit, armed with eager nails and eager teeth —
Hate’s nails and teeth more keen than Spanish glaives,
Then wait until the tempest’s waxing might
Shall reach its fiercest, mingling sea and sky,
Then seize the key, unlock the slaves, and smite
The sea-sick soldiers in their helpless plight,
Then bid the Spaniards pull at oar or die.
Past Ferrol Bay each galley ’gins to stoop,
Shuddering before the Biscay demon’s breath.
Down goes a prow – down goes a gaudy poop:
‘The Don’s “Diana” bears the Don to death,’
Quoth I, ‘and see the “Princess” plunge and wallow
Down purple trough, o’er snowy crest of foam:
See! see! the “Royal,” how she tries to follow
By many a glimmering crest and shimmering hollow,
Where gull and petrel scarcely dare to roam.’
Now, three queen-galleys pass Cape Finisterre;
The Armada, dreaming but of ocean-storms,
Thinks not of mutineers with shoulders bare,
Chained, bloody-wealed and pale, on galley-forms,
Each rower murmuring o’er my whispered plan,
Deep-burnt within his brain in words of fire,
‘Rise, every man, to tear to death his man —
Yea, tear as only galley-captives can,
When God’s Revenge sings loud to ocean’s lyre.’
Taller the spectre grows ’mid ocean’s din;
The captain sees the Skeleton and pales:
I give the sign: the slaves cry, ‘Ho for Gwynn!’
‘Teach them,’ quoth I, ‘the way we grip in Wales.’
And, leaping down where hateful boatswains shake,
I win the key – let loose a storm of slaves:
‘When captives hold the whip, let drivers quake,’
They cry; ‘sit down, ye Dons, and row for Drake,
Or drink to England’s Queen in foaming waves.’
We leap adown the hatches; in the dark
We stab the Dons at random, till I see
A spark that trembles like a tinder-spark,
Waxing and brightening, till it seems to be
A fleshless skull, with eyes of joyful fire:
Then, lo: a bony shape with lifted hands —
A bony mouth that chants an anthem dire,
O’ertopping groans, o’ertopping Ocean’s quire —
A skeleton with Inca’s diadem stands!
It sings the song I heard an Indian sing,
Chained by the ruthless Dons to burn at stake,
When priests of Tophet chanted in a ring,
Sniffing man’s flesh at roast for Christ His sake.
The Spaniards hear: they see: they fight no more;
They cross their foreheads, but they dare not speak.
Anon the spectre, when the strife is o’er,
Melts from the dark, then glimmers as before,
Burning upon the conquered galley’s beak.
And now the moon breaks through the night, and shows
The ‘Royal’ bearing down upon our craft —
Then comes a broadside close at hand, which strows
Our deck with bleeding bodies fore and aft.
I take the helm; I put the galley near:
We grapple in silver sheen of moonlit surge.
Amid the ‘Royal’s’ din I laugh to hear
The curse of many a British mutineer,
The crack, crack, crack of boatswain’s biting scourge.
‘Ye scourge in vain,’ quoth I, ‘scourging for life
Slaves who shall row no more to save the Don’;
For from the ‘Royal’s’ poop, above the strife,
Their captain gazes at our Skeleton!
‘What! is it thou, Pirate of “El Dorado”?
He shouts in English tongue. And there, behold!
Stands he, the devil’s commodore, Medrado.
‘Ay! ay!’ quoth I, ‘Spain owes me one strappado
For scuttling Philip’s ship of stolen gold.’
‘I come for that strappado now,’ quoth I.
‘What means yon thing of burning bones?’ he saith.
‘’Tis God’s Revenge cries, “Bloody Spain shall die!”
The king of El Dorado’s name is Death.
Strike home, ye slaves; your hour is coming swift,’
I cry; ‘strong hands are stretched to save you now;
Show yonder spectre you are worth the gift.’
But when the ‘Royal,’ captured, rides adrift,
I look: the skeleton hath left our prow.
When all are slain, the tempest’s wings have fled,
But still the sea is dreaming of the storm:
Far down the offing glows a spot of red,
My soul knows well it hath that Inca’s form.
‘It lights,’ quoth I, ‘the red cross banner of Spain
There on the flagship where Medina sleeps —
Hell’s banner, wet with sweat of Indian’s pain,
And tears of women yoked to treasure train,
Scarlet of blood for which the New World weeps.’
There on the dark the flagship of the Don
To me seems luminous of the spectre’s glow;
But soon an arc of gold, and then the sun,
Rise o’er the reddening billows, proud and slow;
Then, through the curtains of the morning mist,
That take all shifting colours as they shake,
I see the great Armada coil and twist
Miles, miles along the ocean’s amethyst,
Like hell’s old snake of hate – the winged snake.
And, when the hazy veils of Morn are thinned,
That snake accursed, with wings which swell and puff
Before the slackening horses of the wind,
Turns into shining ships that tack and luff.
‘Behold,’ quoth I, ‘their floating citadels,
The same the priests have vouched for musket-proof,
Caracks and hulks and nimble caravels,
That sailed with us to sound of Lisbon bells —
Yea, sailed from Tagus’ mouth, for Christ’s behoof.
For Christ’s behoof they sailed: see how they go
With that red skeleton to show the way
There sitting on Medina’s stem aglow —
A hundred sail and forty-nine, men say;
Behold them, brothers, galleon and galeasse —
Their dizened turrets bright of many a plume,
Their gilded poops, their shining guns of brass,
Their trucks, their flags – behold them, how they pass —
With God’s Revenge for figurehead – to Doom!’
Then Ben Jonson, the symposiarch, rises and calls upon Raleigh to tell the story of the defeat of the Great Armada. I can give only a stanza or two and the chorus: —
Raleigh
The choirboys sing the matin song,
When down falls Seymour on the Spaniard’s right.
He drives the wing – a huddled throng —
Back on the centre ships, that steer for flight.
While galleon hurtles galeasse,
And oars that fight each other kill the slaves,
As scythes cut down the summer grass,
Drake closes on the writhing mass,
Through which the balls at closest ranges pass,
Skimming the waves.
Fiercely do galley and galeasse fight,
Running from ship to ship like living things.
With oars like legs, with beaks that smite,
Winged centipedes they seem with tattered wings.
Through smoke we see their chiefs encased
In shining mail of gold where blood congeals;
And once I see within a waist
Wild English captives ashen-faced,
Their bending backs by Spanish scourges laced
In purple weals.
[David Gwynn here leaps up, pale and panting, andbares a scarred arm, but at a sign from Raleigh sits down again.
The Don fights well, but fights not now
The cozened Indian whom he kissed for friend,
To pluck the gold from off the brow,
Then fling the flesh to priests to burn and rend.
He hunts not now the Indian maid
With bloodhound’s bay – Peru’s confiding daughter,
Who saw in flowery bower or glade
The stranger’s god-like cavalcade,
And worshipped, while he planned Pizarro’s trade
Of rape and slaughter.
His fight is now with Drake and Wynter,
Hawkins, and Frobisher, and English fire,
Bullet and cannon ball and splinter,
Till every deck gleams, greased with bloody mire:
Heaven smiles to see that battle wage,
Close battle of musket, carabine, and gun:
Oh, vainly doth the Spaniard rage
Like any wolf that tears his cage!
’Tis English sails shall win the weather gauge
Till set of sun!
Their troops, superfluous as their gold,
Out-numbering all their seamen two to one,
Are packed away in every hold —
Targets of flesh for every English gun —
Till, like Pizarro’s halls of blood,
Or slaughter-pens where swine or beeves are pinned,
Lee-scuppers pour a crimson flood,
Reddening the waves for many a rood,
As eastward, eastward still the galleons scud
Before the wind.
The chief leit-motiv of the poem is the metrical idea that whenever a stanza ends with the word ‘sea,’ Ben Jonson and the rest of the jolly companions break into this superb chorus: —
The sea!
Thus did England fight;
And shall not England smite
With Drake’s strong stroke in battles yet to be?
And while the winds have power
Shall England lose the dower
She won in that great hour —
The sea?
Raleigh leaves off his narrative at the point when the Armada is driven out to the open sea. He sits down, and Gwynn, worked into a frenzy of excitement, now starts up and finishes the story in the same metre, but in quite a different spirit. In Gwynn’s fevered imagination the skeleton which he describes in his own narrative now leads the doomed Armada to its destruction: —
Gwynn
With towering sterns, with golden stems
That totter in the smoke before their foe,
I see them pass the mouth of Thames,
With death above the billows, death below!
Who leads them down the tempest’s path,
From Thames to Yare, from Yare to Tweedmouth blown,
Past many a Scottish hill and strath,
All helpless in the wild wind’s wrath,
Each mainmast stooping, creaking like a lath?
The Skeleton!
At length with toil the cape is passed,
And faster and faster still the billows come
To coil and boil till every mast
Is flecked with clinging flakes of snowy foam.
I see, I see, where galleons pitch,
That Inca’s bony shape burn on the waves,
Flushing each emerald scarp and ditch,
While Mother Carey, Orkney’s witch,
Waves to the Spectre’s song her lantern-switch
O’er ocean-graves.
The glimmering crown of Scotland’s head
They pass. No foe dares follow but the storm.
The Spectre, like a sunset red,
Illumines mighty Wrath’s defiant form,
And makes the dreadful granite peak
Burn o’er the ships with brows of prophecy;
Yea, makes that silent countenance speak
Above the tempest’s foam and reek,
More loud than all the loudest winds that shriek,
‘Tyrants, ye die!’
The Spectre, by the Orkney Isles,
Writes ‘God’s Revenge’ on waves that climb and dash,
Foaming right up the sand-built piles,
Where ships are hurled. It sings amid the crash;
Yea, sings amid the tempest’s roar,
Snapping of ropes, crackling of spars set free,
And yells of captives chained to oar,
And cries of those who strike for shore,
‘Spain’s murderous breath of blood shall foul no more
The righteous sea!’
The poem ends with the famous wassail chorus which has been often quoted in anthologies: —
WASSAIL CHORUS
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,
Where 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?
Shakspeare’s Friend
’Tis, methinks, on any ground
Where our Shakspeare’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!’
This poem, when it first appeared in the volume of ‘The Coming of Love,’ fine as it is, was overshadowed by the wild and romantic poem which lends its name to the volume. But in 1902, Mr. John Lane included it in his beautiful series, ‘Flowers of Parnassus,’ where it was charmingly illustrated by Mr. Herbert Cole, and this widened its vogue considerably. There is no doubt that for originality, for power, and for music, “Christmas at the ‘Mermaid’” is enough to form the base of any poet’s reputation. It has been enthusiastically praised by some of the foremost writers of our time. I have permission to print only one of the letters in its praise which the author received, but that is an important one, as it comes from Thomas Hardy, who wrote: —
“I have been beginning Christmas, in a way, by reading over the fire your delightful little ‘Christmas at the “Mermaid”’ which it was most kind of you to send. I was carried back right into Armada times by David Gwynn’s vivid story: it seems remarkable that you should have had the conjuring power to raise up those old years so brightly in your own mind first, as to be able to exhibit them to readers in such high relief of three dimensions, as one may say.
The absence of Shakespeare strikes me as being one of the finest touches of the poem: it throws one into a ‘humourous melancholy’ – and we feel him, in some curious way, more than if he had been there.”
