The Brook; An Idyl

'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;

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,

They flourish'd then or then; but life in him

Could scarce be said to nourish, 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,

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,

"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,

      To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,

      Or slip between the ridges,

By twenty thorps, a little town,

      And half a hundred bridges.

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 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; neither one

Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,

And nursed by mealy-mouth'd philanthropies,

Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.

'She told me. She and James had quarrell'd. Why?

What cause of quarrel? None, she said, no cause;

James had no cause: but when I prest the cause,

I learnt that James had flickering jealousies

Which anger'd her. Who anger'd James? I said.

But Katie snatch'd her eyes at once from mine,

And sketching with her slender pointed foot

Some figure like a wizard's pentagram

On garden gravel, let my query pass

Unclaim'd, in flushing silence, till I ask'd

If James were coming. "Coming every day,"

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

Made toward us, like a wader in the surf,

Beyond the brook, waist-deep in meadow-sweet.

'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 led me thro' the short sweet-smelling lanes

Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went.

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;

His pigeons, who in session on their roofs

Approved him, bowing at their own deserts:

Then from the plaintive mother's teat he took

Her blind and shuddering puppies, naming each,

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:

'That was the four-year-old I sold the Squire.'

And there he told a long long-winded tale

Of how the Squire had seen the colt at grass,

And how it was the thing his daughter wish'd,

And how he sent the bailiff to the farm

To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd,

And how the bailiff swore that he was mad,

But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;

He gave them line: and five days after that

He met the bailiff at the Golden Fleece,

Who then and there had offer'd something more,

But he stood firm; and so the matter hung;

He knew the man; the colt would fetch its price;

He gave them line: and how by chance at last

(It might be May or April, he forgot,

The last of April or the first of May)

He found the bailiff riding by the farm,

And, talking from the point, he drew him in,

And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale,

Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.

'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 fragil 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!'