CV.[74]
It is Christmas Eve, but the holly outside their new home shall stand ungathered. He deprecates repeating their old observances of this season in a new place. He thinks of his father’s grave “under other snows” than those he looks on; and how the violet will blow there, “but we are gone.”
What was done in the old home cannot be repeated in the new habitation,
“For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.”[75]
He would have this Christmas Eve kept with reverent solemnity: no joyous forms retained from which the spirit has gone; no music, dance, or motion,
“save alone
What lightens in the lucid East
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.”
This refers to the scintillation of the stars rising. Let these run out their
“measured arcs, and lead
The closing cycle rich in good;”
bringing Christ’s second advent.
CVI.