'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, 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; Straight, 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 clamour'd from a casement, "run" To Katie somewhere in the walks below, 66 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; nor of those 'She told me. She and James had quarrell'd. Why? What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause; On garden gravel, let my query pass Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd She answer'd, "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 '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 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; Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took 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: Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass, And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd, To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd, |