“A grief—then changed to something else,
Sung by a long forgotten mind.”
Nevertheless, these considerations shall not deter the Poet—
“But what of that? My darken’d ways
Shall ring with music all the same;
To breathe my loss is more than fame,
To utter love more sweet than praise.”
LXXVIII.
Another Christmas Eve arrives, with snow and calm frosty weather. Though, as of old, they had games, and tableaux vivants, and dance, and song, and “hoodman blind”[53]—blindman’s bluff—yet in spite of these recreations,
“over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.”
There were no visible signs of distress—no tears or outward mourning. Could regret then have died out?
“No—mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.”
LXXIX.
“More than my brothers are to me”—