And how he sent the bailiff to the To learn the price, and what the price 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, He knew the man; the colt would fetch (It might be May or April, he forgot, And, talking from the point, he drew And there he mellow'd all his heart with ale, por pited i Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand. To-rst rod brs TI Approved him, bowing at their own Her blind and shuddering puppies, And naming those, his friends, for To show Sir Arthur's deer. In copse Poor fellow, could he help it? recom And ran thro' all the coltish chronicle, Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Arbaces, and Phenomenon, & and the Re-risen in Katie's eyes, and all things | The fragile bindweed-bells and briony well. 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: Ther, 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 harvestfield: But she-you will be welcome - O, come in!" He lean'd not on his fathers but him- Against the rush of the air in the self. But Leolin, his brother, living oft With Averill, and a year or two before Cail'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 playmates, he (Since Averill was a decade and a half His elder, and their parents underground) prone swing, Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green In living letters, told her fairy-tales, Show'd her the fairy footings on the 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 perhaps Lay hidden as the music of the moon Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin gale. |