LXXVI
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth,
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve;
The yule-clog sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic pictures breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
No single tear, no type of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, Regret can die!
No—mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
LXXVII
‘More than my brothers are to me’—
Let this not vex thee, noble heart!
I know thee of what force thou art,
To hold the costliest love in fee.
But thou and I are one in kind,
As moulded like in nature’s mint;
And hill and wood and field did print
The same sweet forms in either mind.
For us the same cold streamlet curl’d
Through all his eddying coves; the same
All winds that roam the twilight came
In whispers of the beauteous world.