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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 ; 1 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.2 All are gone."

So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a style 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

1 Brunelleschi.] The architect of the Duomo of Florence, who died in 1444, before his great work was completed. Of this beautiful cupola Michael Angelo said, "Come te non voglio, meglio di te non posso. Curiously enough, the story about the egg, usually attributed to Columbus, is told of Brunelleschi, who when asked to exhibit a model of his work, which he had boasted he would erect without the aid of the usual mechanical devices of scaffolding or a mould of earth, took an egg, saying, "This is the form of my dome, can you tell me how it is to be kept upright?" He then broke off the bottom of the egg, when everyone exclaimed, "I could have done that." "You should have done it, then," said Brunelleschi, with a satirical smile; adding, "and this is just what you would have said had I shown you my model for the dome."

2 Converse seasons.] At the Antipodes.

3 Waifs.] Connected with "waive " and "waft," something flung loosely about.

4 Tonsured.] From Latin tondere, to shave, generally said of friars and clergy with shaven crowns, here of a head naturally bald.

The fragil1 bindweed 2-bells and briony 3 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 threefold to show the fruit within:

Then, wondering, ask'd her "Are you from the farm?

"Yes," answer'd she. "Pray stay a little : pardon

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What surname?" "Willows." "No!" "That is my name.'

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"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,
back.

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we came

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!"

1 Fragil.] So spelt by the author here.

2 Bindweed.] The white convolvulus.

3 Briony, or bryony.] Bryonia, a wild climbing plant with greenishwhite flowers and lovely red berries.

THE LETTERS

I

STILL on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloom'd1 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."

2

I turn'd and humm'd a bitter song

That mock'd the wholesome human heart,
And then we met in wrath and wrong,

We met, but only meant to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
I saw with half-unconscious eye

She wore the colours I approved.

1 Gloom'd.] This word is very rarely used as here, transitively, for to make gloomy. Horace Walpole, however, speaks of "a bowwindow... gloomed with limes which shade half each window."

3

She took the little ivory chest,

With half a sigh she turn'd the key,
Then raised her head with lips comprest,
And gave my letters back to me.
And gave the trinkets and the rings,

My gifts, when gifts of mine could please; As looks a father on the things

Of his dead son, I look'd on these.

4

She told me all her friends had said;
I raged against the public liar;
She talk'd as if her love were dead,
But in my words were seeds of fire.
"No more of love; your sex is known:
I never will be twice deceived.
Henceforth I trust the man alone,
The woman cannot be believed.

5

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"Thro' slander, meanest spawn of Hell
(And women's slander is the worst),
And you, whom once I loved so well,
Thro' you, my life will be accurst.
I spoke with heart, and heat and force,
I shook her breast with vague alarms—
Like torrents from a mountain source
We rush'd into each other's arms.

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