But, loth to interrupt the sorrowers,
She led the children to the house of death;
And took a key from off the wooden peg,
Beside the settle, where she used to hang
The skeins of twine to mend the fishing nets:
Then gently led them up the narrow stair,
That creaked beneath their stealthy-moving tread.
Sacred the silence that we ever keep,
When death is in the house! we speak, we walk,
With muffled tone and step, as if the dead