He neither envies the cage-born bird “that never knew the summer woods,” and is content without liberty; nor the beast that lives uncontrolled by conscience; nor the heart that never loved; “nor any want-begotten rest,” that is, repose arising from defective sensibility.
On the contrary,
“I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
Seneca in Epistle 99 says, Magis gauderes quod habueras quam mæreres quod amiseras.—See P. lxxxv., 1.
The Poem seems to halt here, and begin afresh with a description of Christmastide.
XXVIII.
Christmas Eve at Somersby, and possibly at the end of the year 1833. If so, throughout the year he had been at ease, until the blow came—he had “slept and woke with pain,” and then he almost wished he might never more hear the Christmas bells.
But a calmer spirit seems to come over him: as he listens to the Christmas peals rung at four neighbouring[23] churches, and the sound soothes him with tender associations:
“But they my troubled spirit rule,
For they controll’d me when a boy;
They bring me sorrow touch’d with joy,
The merry, merry bells of Yule.”
Yule is Christmas, a jubilee which brings glad tidings of great joy to all people.