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Till last by Philip's farm I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

'Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,

Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge, It has more ivy; there the river; and there

Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

I chatter over stony ways,

In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,

And many a fairy foreland set

With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

'But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird; Old Philip; all about the fields you caught

His weary daylong chirping, like the dry
High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass.

I wind about, and in and out,

With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake

Upon me, as I travel,

With many a silvery waterbreak

Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow

To join the brimming river,

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

'O darling Katie Willows, his one child! A maiden of our century, yet most meek; A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse ;

Straight, but as lissome as a hazel wand;
Her eyes a bashful azure, and her hair

In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell
Divides three-fold to show the fruit within.

'Sweet Katie, once I did her a good turn, Her and her far-off cousin and betrothed,

James Willows, of one name and heart with her.
For here I came, twenty years back - the week
Before I parted with poor Edmund; crost
By that old bridge which, half in ruins then,
Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam
Beyond it, where the waters marry — crost,
Whistling a random bar of Bonny Doon,

And push'd at Philip's garden-gate. The gate,
Half-parted from a weak and scolding hinge,
Stuck; and he clamor'd from a casement, "run,"

To Katie somewhere in the walks below,

"Run, Katie !" Katie never ran: she moved

To meet me, winding under woodbine bowers,

A little flutter'd, with her eyelids down,

Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.

'What was it? less of sentiment than sense

Had Katie; not illiterate; neither one

Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,
And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philanthropies,
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

She told me. She and James had quarrell'd.

Why?

What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause; James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,

I learnt that James had flickering jealousies

Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said. But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine,

And sketching with her slender pointed foot

Some figure like a wizard's pentagram

On garden gravel, let my query pass

Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd

If James were coming. "Coming every day,"

She answered, "ever longing to explain,

But evermore her father came across

With some long-winded tale, and broke him short;

And James departed vext with him and her.” How could I help her? "Would I was it wrong?"

(Claspt hands and that petitionary grace

Of sweet seventeen subdued me ere she spoke)

"O would I take her father for one hour,

For one half-hour, and let him talk to me!"

And even while she spoke, I saw where James
Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,
Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.

'O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake!

For in I went, and call'd old Philip out

To show the farm: full willingly he rose :
He led me thro' the short sweet-smelling lanes
Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went.

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