C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
The Brook
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892)
“H
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.
Oh, had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,
They flourished then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish,—only touched
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 even 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:
Traveling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge—
It has more ivy; there the river; and there
Stands Philip’s farm where brook and river meet.
Old Philip; all about the fields you caught
His weary daylong chirping, like the dry
High-elbowed grigs that leap in summer grass.
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.
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 pushed at Philip’s garden gate. The gate,
Half parted from a weak and scolding hinge,
Stuck; and he clamored 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 fluttered, with her eyelids down,—
Fresh apple-blossom, blushing for a boon.
Had Katie: not illiterate; nor of those
Who dabbling in the fount of Active tears,
And nursed by mealy-mouthed philanthropies,
Divorce the Feeling from her mate the Deed.
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 angered her. Who angered James? I said.
But Katie snatched 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 asked
If James were coming. ‘Coming every day,’
She answered, ‘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)
‘Oh, 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.
For in I went, and called old Philip out
To show the farm: full willingly he rose;
He led me through the short sweet-smelling lanes
Of his wheat suburb, babbling as he went.
He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
He praised his plows, 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 wished,
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm
To learn the price, and what the price he asked,
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 offered 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 mellowed all his heart with ale,
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.
Poor fellow, could he help it?—recommenced,
And ran through 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 turned our foreheads from the falling sun,
And following our own shadows thrice as long
As when they followed us from Philip’s door,
Arrived, and found the sun of sweet content
Re-risen in Katie’s eyes, and all things well.
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 April-autumns. All are gone.”
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 fragile bindweed bells and briony rings;
And he looked 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, asked her, “Are you from the farm?”
“Yes,” answered 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 looked so self-perplext
That Katie laughed, and laughing blushed, till he
Laughed 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—oh, come in!”