LXXVI.

AGAIN at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth,
The silent snow possessed 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 showed 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, mixed 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 kiud,

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 curled

Through all his eddying coves; the same All winds that roam the twilight came In whispers of the beauteous world.

At one dear knee we proffered vows,

One lesson from one book we learned, Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turned To black and brown on kindred brows.

And so my wealth resembles thine,

But he was rich where I was poor, And he supplied my want the more As his unlikeness fitted mine.

LXXVIII.

If any vague

desire should rise,

That holy Death, ere Arthur died,

Had moved me kindly from his side, And dropped the dust on tearless eyes;

Then fancy shapes, as fancy can,

The grief my loss in him had wrought, A grief as deep as life or thought, But stayed in peace with God and man.

I make a picture in the brain;

I hear the sentence that he speaks;
He bears the burthen of the weeks,

But turns his burthen into gain.

His credit thus shall set me free;

And, influence-rich to soothe and save,
Unused example from the grave,

Reach out dead hands to comfort me.