as they went, their scales against his landing-stage to clear them of
the sea-lice; to watch them and their young passing seaward in the
early spring; to watch and wait and spread his nets in the due
season. But for the youngsters this running water was a constant
lure--the song of it and the dimple on it. It coaxed them, as it
coaxed the old galleon, to lean over and listen. And the moment that
listening became intolerable, they were off. Only one of them--the
poet before mentioned--had ever expressed any desire to return and
revisit--

The shining levels and the dazzled wave
Emerging from his covert, errant long,
In solitude descending by a vale
Lost between uplands, where the harvesters
Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes to watch
Some barge or schooner stealing up from sea;
Themselves in sunset, she a twilit ghost
Parting the twilit woods . .

Ah, loving God!
Grant, in the end, this world may slip away
With whisper of that water by the bows
Of such a bark, bearing me home--thy stars
Breaking the gloom like kingfishers, thy heights
Golden with wheat, thy waiting angels there
Wearing the dear rough faces of my kin!

I doubt if he meant it, any more than Virgil meant his "_flumina amem
silvasque inglorius_." At any rate, the public knew what was due to
itself, and when the time came, gave the man a handsome funeral in