So Lawrence Aylmer, seated on a stile

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,

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 selfperplext,

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

field:

a low breath

-you will be welcome-O, come in!"

"Some other race of Averills"-prov'n

or no,

What cared he? what, if other or the

same?

Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd

His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt

self.

But Leolin, his brother, living oft

With Averill, and a year or two before Call'd to the bar, but ever call'd away By one low voice to one dear neighborhood,

Would often, in his walks with Edith,

claim

A distant kinship to the gracious blood That shook the heart of Edith hearing him.

Sanguine he was: a but less vivid hue Than of that islet in the chestnutbloom

Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes, that still

Took joyful note of all things joyful, beam'd,

Beneath a manelike mass of rolling gold,

Their best and brightest, when they dwelt on hers,

Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else,

But subject to the season or the mood, Shone like a mystic star between the less

And greater glory varying to and fro, We know not wherefore; bounteously made,

And yet so finely, that a troublous touch

Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a day,

A joyous to dilate, as toward the light. And these had been together from the first.

Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers:

So much the boy foreran: but when his date

Doubled her own, for want of play

mates, he

(Since Averill was a decade and a half His elder, and their parents underground)

grass,

The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, The petty marestail forest, fairy pines,

Or from the tiny pitted target blew What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd

All at one mark, all hitting: makebelieves

For Edith and himself: or else he forged,

But that was later, boyish histories Of battle, bold adventure, dungeon, wreck,

Flights, terrors, sudden rescues, and true love

Crown'd after trial; sketches rude and faint,

But where a passion yet unborn per

haps

Lay hidden as the music of the moon Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin

gale.

And thus together, save for college

times

Or Temple-eaten terms, a couple, fair
As ever painter painted, poet sang,
Or Heaven in lavish bounty moulded,
grew.

And more and more, the maiden woman-grown,

He wasted hours with Averill; there,

when first

The tented winter-field was broken up Into that phalanx of the summer

spears

That soon should wear the garland;

there again

When burr and bine were gather'd; lastly there

At Christmas; ever welcome at the Hall,

On whose dull sameness his full tide of youth

Broke with a phosphorescence charming even

My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid

Gather'd the blossoni that rebloon.'d, and drank

The magic cup that ûlled itself anew.

A whisper half reveal'd her to herself.

For out beyond her lodges, where the brook

ring —

ran

By sallowy rims, arose the laborers'

homes,

A frequent haunt of Edith, on low knolls

That dimpling died into each other,

huts

At random scatter'd, each a nest in bloom.

wrought

About them: here was one that, summer-blanch'd,

Was parcel-bearded with the trav eller's joy

In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad; and here The warm-blue breathings of a hidden hearth

Broke from a bower of vine and honeysuckle:

One look'd all rosetree, and another