Whither, but why, you well may guess.

For often he whispered a certain name,

The talisman dear of his happiness,

That warmed his blood like a Yule-log's flame.

While we waited there, till its owner came,

We saw how the castle's baronial girth,

Like a giant's, loosed for revelling more,

Shone; and we heard the wassail and mirth

Where the mistletoe hung in the hearth's red roar,

And the holly brightened the weaponed wall