"Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain."
Goldsmith's
Traveller, lines 9, 10.
The allusion is to the familiar lines inserted by Isaac Bickerstaffe in
Love in a Village
(1762), act i. sc. 3 —
"There was a jolly miller once,
Liv'd on the river Dee;
He work'd and sung from morn till night;
No lark more blithe than he.
"And this the burden of his song,
For ever us'd to be —
I care for nobody, not I,
If no one cares for me."