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 threefold 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 clamour'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, A little fluttered, 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 Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears, And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philanthropies, Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.