Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy, To me that loved him; for "O brook,” he says, "O babbling brook," says Edmund in his rhyme, "Whence come you?" and the brook, why not? replies. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, 'Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out, Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge, I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, With many a curve my banks I fret 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 I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, 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, 'O darling Katie Willows, his one child! A maiden of our century, yet most meek; A daughter of our meadows, yet not coarse; Straignt, but as lissome as a hazel wand; In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell '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, 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 |