’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, 160
  Reform, White Rose, Bellerophon, the Jilt,
  Arbaces, and Phenomenon, and the rest,
  Tilt, not to die a listener, I arose,
  And with me Philip, talking still; and so
  We turn’d our foreheads from the falling sun, 165
  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 thing’s well.

      I steal by lawns and grassy plots, 170
        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; 175
      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; 180
        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. 185

  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, 190
  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, 195
  And breathes in April autumns.  All are gone.’

  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, 200
  Mused and was mute.  On a sudden a low breath
  Offender air made tremble in the hedge
  The fragile bindweed-bells and briony rings;
  And he look’d up.  There stood a maiden near,
  Waiting to pass.  In much amaze he stared 205
  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; 210
  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