Canto CIII
This holly by the cottage-eave,To night, ungather’d, shall it stand:We live within the stranger’s land,And strangely falls our Christmas eve.
Our father’s dust is left aloneAnd silent under other snows:There in due time the woodbine blows,The violet comes, but we are gone.
No more shall wayward grief abuseThe genial hour with mask and mime;For change of place, like growth of time,Has broke the bond of dying use.
Let cares that petty shadows cast,By which our lives are chiefly proved,A little spare the night I loved,And hold it solemn to the past.
But let no footstep beat the floor,Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm;For who would keep an ancient formThrough which the spirit breathes no more?
Be neither song, nor game, nor feast,Nor harp be touch’d, nor flute be blown;No dance, no motion, save aloneWhat lightens in the lucid east
Of rising worlds by yonder wood.Long sleeps the summer in the seed;Run out your measur’d arcs, and leadThe closing cycle rich in good.