William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.
A Christmas CarolRobert Herrick (15911674)
W
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our Heavenly King?
Awake the voice! awake the string!
Heart, ear, and eye, and everything
Awake! the while the active finger
Runs division with the singer.
1.Dark and dull night fly hence away!
And give the honour to this day
That sees December turn’d to May.
The why and wherefore all things here
Seem like the spring-time of the year.
Smile like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like to a mead new shorn,
Thus on a sudden?
4.Come and see
The cause why things thus fragrant be:
’Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and lustre, public mirth,
To heaven and the under-earth.
Who with his sunshine and his showers
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
And fit it is we find a room
To welcome Him.
2.The nobler part
Of all the house here is the heart,
This holly and this ivy wreath
To do Him honour, who’s our King
And Lord of all this revelling.