'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 cresses; 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 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 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 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 me; 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!'