Here ended Hall, and our last light, that long Had wink'd and threatened darkness, flared and fell: At which the Parson, sent to sleep with sound, And waked with silence, grunted 'Good!' but we 55 Sat rapt: it was the tone with which he read-- Perhaps some modern touches here and there Redeem'd it from the charge of nothingness-- Or else we loved the man, and prized his work; I know not: but we sitting, as I said, 60 The cock crew loud; as at that time of year The lusty bird takes every hour for dawn: Then Francis, muttering, like a man ill-used, 'There now--that's nothing!' drew a little back, And drove his heel into the smoulder'd log, 65 That sent a blast of sparkles up the flue: And so to bed; where yet in sleep I seem'd To sail with Arthur under looming shores, Point after point; till on to dawn, when dreams Begin to feel the truth and stir of day, 70 To me, methought, who waited with a crowd, There came a bark that, blowing forward, bore King Arthur, like a modern gentleman Of stateliest port; and all the people cried, 'Arthur is come again: he cannot die.' 75 Then those that stood upon the hills behind Repeated--'Come again, and thrice as fair;' And, further inland, voices echo'd--'Come With all good things, and war shall be no more.' At this a hundred bells began to peal, 80 That with the sound I woke, and heard indeed The clear church-bells ring in the Christmas-morn. THE BROOK Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East And he for Italy--too late--too late; One whom the strong sons of the world despise; For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share, And mellow metres more than cent for cent; 5 Nor could he understand how money breeds; Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make The thing that is not as the thing that is. O had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say, Of those that held their heads above the crowd, 10 They flourish'd then or then; but life in him Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd On such a time as goes before the leaf, When all the wood stands in a mist of green, And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved, 15 For which, in branding summers of Bengal, Or ev'n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air I panted, seems; as I re-listen to it, Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy, To me that loved him; for 'O brook,' he says, 20 'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme, 'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies: I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, 25 To bicker down a valley.