‘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-**** 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 chatter’d 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. [grig = cricket – m.]
I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a ***** 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.