An album of nine songs

I see the wealthy miller yet,
   His double chin, his portly size,
And who that knew him could forget
   The busy wrinkles round his eyes?
The slow wise smile that, round about
   His dusty forehead drily curl'd,
Seem'd half-within and half-without,
   And full of dealings with the world?

In yonder chair I see him sit,
   Three fingers round the old silver cup -- 
I see his gray eyes twinkle yet
   At his own jest -- gray eyes lit up
With summer lightnings of a soul
   So full of summer warmth, so glad,
So healthy, sound, and clear and whole,
   His memory scarce can make me sad.

Yet fill my glass: give me one kiss:
   My own sweet Alice, we must die.
There's somewhat in this world amiss
   Shall be unriddled by and by.
There's somewhat flows to us in life,
   But more is taken quite away.
Pray, Alice, pray, my darling wife,
   That we may die the self-same day.

Have I not found a happy earth?
   I least should breathe a thought of pain.
Would God renew me from my birth
   I'd almost live my life again.
So sweet it seems with thee to walk,
   And once again to woo thee mine -- 
It seems in after-dinner talk
   Across the walnuts and the wine -- 

To be the long and listless boy
   Late-left an orphan of the squire,
Where this old mansion mounted high
   Looks down upon the village spire:
For even here, where I and you
   Have lived and loved alone so long,
Each morn my sleep was broken thro'
   By some wild skylark's matin song.

And oft I heard the tender dove
   In firry woodlands making moan;
But ere I saw your eyes, my love,
   I had no motion of my own.
For scarce my life with fancy play'd
   Before I dream'd that pleasant dream -- 
Still hither thither idly sway'd
   Like those long mosses in the stream.

Or from the bridge I lean'd to hear
   The milldam rushing down with noise,
And see the minnows everywhere
   In crystal eddies glance and poise,
The tall flag-flowers when they sprung
   Below the range of stepping-stones,
Or those three chestnuts near, that hung
   In masses thick with milky cones.

But, Alice, what an hour was that,
   When after roving in the woods
('Twas April then), I came and sat
   Below the chestnuts, when their buds
Were glistening to the breezy blue;
   And on the slope, an absent fool,
I cast me down, nor thought of you,
   But angled in the higher pool.

A love-song I had somewhere read,
   An echo from a measured strain,
Beat time to nothing in my head
   From some odd corner of the brain.
It haunted me, the morning long,
   With weary sameness in the rhymes,
The phantom of a silent song,
   That went and came a thousand times.

Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood
   I watch'd the little circles die;
They past into the level flood,
   And there a vision caught my eye;
The reflex of a beauteous form,
   A glowing arm, a gleaming neck,
As when a sunbeam wavers warm
   Within the dark and dimpled beck.

For you remember, you had set,
   That morning, on the casement-edge
A long green box of mignonette,
   And you were leaning from the ledge
And when I raised my eyes, above
   They met with two so full and bright -- 
Such eyes! I swear to you, my love,
   That these have never lost their light.

I loved, and love dispell'd the fear
   That I should die an early death:
For love possess'd the atmosphere,
   And fill'd the breast with purer breath.
My mother thought, what ails the boy?
   For I was alter'd, and began
To move about the house with joy,
   And with the certain step of man.

I loved the brimming wave that swam
   Thro' quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
   The pool beneath it never still,
The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor,
   The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door
   Made misty with the floating meal.

And oft in ramblings on the wold,
   When April nights began to blow,
And April's crescent glimmer'd cold,
   I saw the village lights below;
I knew your taper far away,
   And full at heart of trembling hope,
From off the wold I came, and lay
   Upon the freshly-flower'd slope.

The deep brook groan'd beneath the mill;
   And "by that lamp," I thought, "she sits!"
The white chalk-quarry from the hill
   Gleam'd to the flying moon by fits.
"O that I were beside her now!
   O will she answer if I call?
O would she give me vow for vow,
   Sweet Alice, if I told her all?"

Sometimes I saw you sit and spin;
   And, in the pauses of the wind,
Sometimes I heard you sing within;
   Sometimes your shadow cross'd the blind.
At last you rose and moved the light,
   And the long shadow of the chair
Flitted across into the night,
   And all the casement darken'd there.

But when at last I dared to speak,
   The lanes, you know, were white with may,
Your ripe lips moved not, but your cheek
   Flush'd like the coming of the day;
And so it was -- half-sly, half-shy,
   You would, and would not, little one!
Although I pleaded tenderly,
   And you and I were all alone.

And slowly was my mother brought
   To yield consent to my desire:
She wish'd me happy, but she thought
   I might have look'd a little higher;
And I was young -- too young to wed:
   "Yet must I love her for your sake;
Go fetch your Alice here," she said:
   Her eyelid quiver'd as she spake.

And down I went to fetch my bride:
   But, Alice, you were ill at ease;
This dress and that by turns you tried,
   Too fearful that you should not please.
I loved you better for your fears,
   I knew you could not look but well;
And dews, that would have fall'n in tears,
   I kiss'd away before they fell.

I watch'd the little flutterings,
   The doubt my mother would not see;
She spoke at large of many things,
   And at the last she spoke of me;
And turning look'd upon your face,
   As near this door you sat apart,
And rose, and, with a silent grace
   Approaching, press'd you heart to heart.

Ah, well -- but sing the foolish song
   I gave you, Alice, on the day
When, arm in arm, we went along,
   A pensive pair, and you were gay
With bridal flowers -- that I may seem,
   As in the nights of old, to lie
Beside the mill-wheel in the stream,
   While those full chestnuts whisper by.

       It is the miller's daughter,
          And she is grown so dear, so dear,
       That I would be the jewel
          That trembles in her ear:
       For hid in ringlets day and night,
       I'd touch her neck so warm and white.

       And I would be the girdle
          About her dainty dainty waist,
       And her heart would beat against me,
          In sorrow and in rest:
       And I should know if it beat right,
       I'd clasp it round so close and tight.

       And I would be the necklace,
          And all day long to fall and rise
       Upon her balmy bosom,
          With her laughter or her sighs,
       And I would lie so light, so light,
       I scarce should be unclasp'd at night.

A trifle, sweet! which true love spells -- 
   True love interprets -- right alone.
His light upon the letter dwells,
   For all the spirit is his own.
So, if I waste words now, in truth
   You must blame Love. His early rage
Had force to make me rhyme in youth,
   And makes me talk too much in age.

And now those vivid hours are gone,
   Like mine own life to me thou art,
Where Past and Present, wound in one,
   Do make a garland for the heart:
So sing that other song I made,
   Half-anger'd with my happy lot,
The day, when in the chestnut shade
   I found the blue Forget-me-not.

        Love that hath us in the net,
        Can he pass, and we forget?
        Many suns arise and set.
        Many a chance the years beget.
        Love the gift is Love the debt.
                 Even so.
        Love is hurt with jar and fret.
        Love is made a vague regret.
        Eyes with idle tears are wet.
        Idle habit links us yet.
        What is love? for we forget:
                 Ah, no! no!

Look thro' mine eyes with thine. True wife,
   Round my true heart thine arms entwine
My other dearer life in life,
   Look thro' my very soul with thine!
Untouch'd with any shade of years,
   May those kind eyes for ever dwell!
They have not shed a many tears,
   Dear eyes, since first I knew them well.

Yet tears they shed: they had their part
   Of sorrow: for when time was ripe,
The still affection of the heart
   Became an outward breathing type,
That into stillness past again,
   And left a want unknown before;
Although the loss had brought us pain,
   That loss but made us love the more,

With farther lookings on. The kiss,
   The woven arms, seem but to be
Weak symbols of the settled bliss,
   The comfort, I have found in thee:
But that God bless thee, dear -- who wrought
   Two spirits to one equal mind -- 
With blessings beyond hope or thought,
   With blessings which no words can find.

Arise, and let us wander forth,
   To yon old mill across the wolds;
For look, the sunset, south and north,
   Winds all the vale in rosy folds,
And fires your narrow casement glass,
   Touching the sullen pool below:
On the chalk-hill the bearded grass
   Is dry and dewless. Let us go.

Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East
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.
O had he lived!  In our schoolbooks we say,
Of those that held their heads above the crowd,    
They flourish'd then or then; but life in him
Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd
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 ev'n 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:

    I come from haunts of coot and hern,
      I make a sudden sally,
    And sparkle out among the fern,
      To bicker down a valley.

    By thirty hills I hurry down,
      Or slip between the ridges,
    By twenty thorps, a little town,
      And half a hundred bridges.  

    Till last by Philip's farm I flow
      To join the brimming river,
    For men may come and men may go,
      But I go on for ever.

'Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,  
Travelling to Naples.  There is Darnley bridge,
It has more ivy; there the river; and there
Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

    I chatter over stony ways,
      In little sharps and trebles,     
    I bubble into eddying bays,
      I babble on the pebbles.

    With many a curve my banks I fret
      By many a field and fallow,
    And many a fairy foreland set
      With willow-weed and mallow.

    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.  

'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, 
      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   
    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;  
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, 
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 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" 
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.   

'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.    
'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. 
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 ask'd    
If James were coming.  "Coming every day,"
She answer'd, "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)
"O 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.

'O Katie, what I suffer'd for your sake!
For in I went, and call'd old Philip out   
To show the farm: full willingly he rose:
He led me thro' the short sweet-smelling lanes
Of his wheat-suburb, babbling as he went,
He praised his land, his horses, his machines;
He praised his ploughs, 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 wish'd,    
And how he sent the bailiff to the farm
To learn the price, and what the price he ask'd,
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 offer'd 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 mellow'd all his heart with ale,    
Until they closed a bargain, hand in hand.

'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,
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,   
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,
      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;
    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;
      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.

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,
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.'

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,    
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  
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 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 harvest-field:
But she -- you will be welcome -- O, come in!'