And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river,

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

Yes, men may come and go; and these are gone,
All gone. My dearest brother, Edmund, sleeps,
Not by the well-known stream and rustic spire,
But unfamiliar Arno, and the dome

Of Brunelleschi; sleeps in peace and he,
Poor Philip, of all his lavish waste of words
Remains the lean P. W. on his tomb:

I scraped the lichen from it: Katie walks

By the long wash of Australasian seas

Far off, and holds her head to other stars,
And breathes in converse seasons. All are gone.'

So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile

In the long hedge, and rolling in his mind
Old waifs of rhyme, and bowing o'er the brook

A tonsured head in middle age forlorn,

Mused, and was mute. On a sudden a low breath

Of tender air made tremble in the hedge
The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings;
And he look'd up. There stood a maiden near,
Waiting to pass. In much amaze he stared
On eyes a bashful azure, and on hair

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

Then, wondering, ask'd her Are you from the

What do they call you?'- 'Katie.' That were

strange.

What surname ?'. -Willows.'-'No!'-'That is

my name.'

'Indeed!' and here he look'd so self-perplext,

That Katie laugh'd, and laughing blush'd, till he
Laugh'd also, but as one before he wakes,

Who feels a glimmering strangeness in his dream.

Then looking at her; Too happy, fresh and fair,

Too fresh and fair in our sad world's best bloom,

To be the ghost of one who bore

your name

About these meadows, twenty years ago.'

'Have you not heard?' said Katie, ‘we came

back.

We bought the farm we tenanted before.

Am I so like her? so they said on board.

Sir, if you knew her in her English days,

My mother, as it seems you did, the days
That most she loves to talk of, come with me.
My brother James is in the harvest-field:

But she you will be welcome — O, come in!'

THE LETTERS.

1.

STILL on the tower stood the vane,

A black yew gloom'd the stagnant air,

I peer'd athwart the chancel pane

And saw the altar cold and bare.

A clog of lead was round my feet, A band of pain across my brow; 'Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet

Before you hear my marriage vow.'