They put up no Christmas evergreens, they attempt no games and no charades. His sister Mary does not touch the harp and they indulge in no dancing, though it was a pastime of which they were extremely fond. But as of old Alfred looks out into the night and sees the stars rise, “The rising worlds by yonder wood,” and receives comfort. All this points to the sad year 1837, when they left the well-beloved place of his birth. And now in section 106 we have a New Year’s hymn of a very different character. It has a jubilant sound, and was certainly written some years after its predecessors. In 1837 he was in no mood to say “Ring happy bells across the snow.” But there is no allusion in this splendid hymn to Arthur Hallam at all, and in the following section they keep Arthur’s birthday, not any more in sadness, but “We keep the day, with festal cheer, With books and music, surely we Will drink to him, whate’er he be And sing the songs he loved to hear.” But to return to Somersby. [Illustration: _Tennyson’s Home, Somersby._] [Sidenote: THE OLD HOME] The quaint house with its narrow passages and many tiny rooms, the brothers’ own particular little western attic with its small window from which they could see the ‘golden globes’ in the dewy grass which had “dropped in the silent autumn night,” the dining-room and its tall gothic windows with carved heads and graceful gables, the low grey tower patched with brick, just across the road, (for the “noble tall towered churches” spoken of in _The Memoir_ are not in this part of the county,) and the pre-Reformation (not “Norman”) cross near the porch, all these may still be seen much as they were one hundred years ago. [Sidenote: THE CHURCH RE-OPENED]