The Brook-song
James Whitcomb Riley
Little brook! Little brook!
You have such a happy look—
Such a very merry manner, as you swerve and
curve and crook—
And your ripples, one and one,
Reach each other’s hands and run
Like laughing little children in the sun!
Little brook, sing to me:
Sing about a bumblebee
That tumbled from a lily-bell and grumbled
mumblingly,
Because he wet the film
Of his wings, and had to swim,
While the water-bugs raced round and laughed
at him!
Little brook—sing a song
Of a leaf that sailed along
Down the golden-braided center of your current
swift and strong,
And a dragon-fly that lit
On the tilting rim of it,
And rode away and wasn’t scared a bit.
And sing—how oft in glee
Came a truant boy like me,
Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting
melody,
Till the gurgle and refrain
Of your music in his brain
Wrought a happiness as keen to him as pain.
Little brook—laugh and leap!
Do not let the dreamer weep;
Sing him all the songs of summer till he sink in
softest sleep;
And then sing soft and low
Through his dreams of long ago—
Sing back to him the rest he used to know!
