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.

He praised his land, his horses, his machines;

He praised his ploughs, his cows, his hogs, his dogs;

He praised his hens, his geese, his guinea-hens;

His pigeons, who in session on their roofs
Approved him, bowing at their own deserts:

Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took
Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,

And naming those, his friends, for whom they

were:

Then crost the common into Darnley chase

To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse and fern

Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail.
Then, seated on a serpent-rooted beech,

He pointed out a pasturing colt, and said:
'That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire.'
And there he told a long long-winded tale

Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass,
And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd,
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm

To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd,

And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,
But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;
He gave them line: and five days after that
He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,

Who then and there had offer'd something more,
But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;

He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;

He

gave them line: and how by chance at last

(It might be May or April, he forgot,

The last of April or the first of May)

He found the bailiff riding by the farm,
And, talking from the point, he drew him in,
And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale,
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.

Then, while I breathed in sight of haven, he, Poor fellow, could he help it? recommenced,

And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle,
Wild Will, Black Bess, Tantivy, Tallyho,
Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt,

Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest,

Till, not to die a listener, I arose,

And with me Philip, talking still; and so
We turn'd our foreheads from the falling sun,
And following our own shadows thrice as long
As when they follow'd us from Philip's door,
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content
Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things well.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,

Among my skimming swallows;

I make the netted sunbeam dance

Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I linger by my shingly bars;

I loiter round my oresses;

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,