THE BROOK;

AN IDYL.

'HERE, by this brook, we parted; I to the East

One whom the strong sons of the world despise ;

For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share,

And mellow metres more than cent for cent;
Nor could he understand how money breeds,
Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make
The thing that is not as the thing that is.

O had he lived! In our school-books we say,

Of those that held their heads above the crowd,

They flourish'd then or then; but life in him

Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd
On such a time as goes before the leaf,
When all the wood stands in a mist of green,
And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved,
For which, in branding summers of Bengal,
Or ev❜n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air,
I panted, seems, as I relisten to it,

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,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
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,
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,