Explore "Lavinia" by Rhoda Broughton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"It was the winter wild, / While the heaven-born child, / All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies; / Nature, in awe to him, / Had doffed her gaudy trim, / With her great Matter so to sympathies: / It was no season then for her / To wanton with the Sun her lusty paramour."
No one can qualify by the epithet "wild" the Christmas that follows Rupert Campion's death. It comes simpering in with a faded grey smile, swishy soft gusts, and a mock-April taste; and the Darcy family are conscious of no sting or frost-prick in cheek or finger as they stand silently round the new cross that heads Rupert's grave, and to whose final erection the workmen gave their last touches only two hours ago. For Rupert has elected to lie in the open, having notified his wish in a small memorandum, placed where it was certain to be found; and which proves that him at least the ambushed enemy had not surprised by his spring.