And now the time came for Crabbe’s final move, and rector of Trowbridge he was to remain for the rest of his life.  He was glad to leave Muston, which now had for him the saddest of associations.  He had never been happy there, for reasons we have seen.  What Crabbe’s son calls “diversity of religious sentiment” had produced “a coolness in some of his parishioners, which he felt the more painfully because, whatever might be their difference of opinion, he was ever ready to help and oblige them all by medical and other aid to the utmost extent of his power.”  So that in leaving Muston he was not, as was evident, leaving many to lament his departure.  Indeed, malignity was so active in one quarter that the bells of the parish church were rung to welcome Crabbe’s successor before Crabbe and his sons had quitted the house!

For other reasons, perhaps, Crabbe prepared to leave his two livings with a sense of relief.  His wife’s death had cast a permanent shadow over the landscape.  The neighbouring gentry were kindly disposed, but probably not wholly sympathetic.  It is clear that there was a certain rusticity about Crabbe; and his politics, such as they were, had been formed in a different school from that of the county families.  A busy country town was likely to furnish interests and distractions of a different kind.  But before finally quitting the neighbourhood he visited a sister at Aldeburgh, and, his son writes, ’one day was given to a solitary ramble among the scenery of bygone years—­Parham and the woods of Glemham, then in the first blossom of May.  He did not return until night; and in his note-book I find the following brief record of this mournful visit: 

  “Yes, I behold again the place,
    The seat of joy, the source of pain;
  It brings in view the form and face
    That I must never see again.

  The night-bird’s song that sweetly floats
    On this soft gloom—­this balmy air—­
  Brings to the mind her sweeter notes
    That I again must never hear.

  Lo! yonder shines that window’s light,
    My guide, my token, heretofore;
  And now again it shines as bright,
    When those dear eyes can shine no more.

  Then hurry from this place away! 
    It gives not now the bliss it gave;
  For Death has made its charm his prey,
    And joy is buried in her grave.”

In family relationships, and indeed all others, Crabbe’s tenderness was never wanting, and the verse that follows was found long afterwards written on a paper in which his wife’s wedding-ring, nearly worn through before she died, was wrapped: 

  “The ring so worn, as you behold,
  So thin, so pale, is yet of gold: 
  The passion such it was to prove;
  Worn with life’s cares, love yet was love.”