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. 50

  ’But Philip chattered 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, 55
        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 60
      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; 70
  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, 75
  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 80
  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” 85
  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. 90

  ’What was it? less of sentiment than sense
  Had Katie; not illiterate; nor of those
  Who dabbling in the fount of fictive tears,
  And nursed by mealy-mouth’d philanthropies,
  Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed. 95
  ’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. 100
  But Katie snatch’d her eyes at once from mine,
  And sketching with her slender pointed foot
  Some figure like a wizard pentagram
  On garden gravel, let my query pass
  Unclaimed, in flushing silence, till I