Brook Song

  brook, would thou couldst flow With a music all thine own— Thy babble of music alone— Not a word of the Long Ago In thy brawling down below, Not a sigh of the wind by thee, The wind in the willow tree! Or, Brook, if thou couldst go, As once, in the prime of May, For a whole long holiday, When the cowslips down below, And the violets watched thy flow, With the babble of two by thee, And the wind in the willow tree! O Brook, if thou couldst so Make a living music, and sing Of a faded, bygone spring, And down by the violets flow With that babble of Long Ago,— I would listen forever to thee And the wind in the willow tree.