From this time there is a break of many years, when the enclosure received another member of the younger generation. Miss Rotha Quillinan, named after the murmuring river, by the banks of which her life was spent, died on the 1st February, 1876. She was the younger daughter of Mr. Quillinan, and, apart from the subsequent relationship, had been an object of especial interest to the poet as his god-daughter. He wrote the following lines in her album:—
"Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey
When at the sacred font for thee I stood:
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay;
Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day
For stedfast hope the contract to fulfil;
Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still,
Embodied in the music of this Lay,
Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream,