A little blind girl wandering,
While daylight pales beneath the moon,
And with a brook meandering,
To hear its gentle tune.
The little blind girl by the brook,
It told her something—you might guess,
To see her smile, to see her look
Of listening eagerness.
Though blind, a never silent guide
Flowed with her...
Through his million veins are poured
The splendors of the heaven whence he fell.
Wise above his thought is he:
Deep things he has to tell
To such as with a swift dexterity
Can aptly gloss his tangled word.
To an eternal song he frames his dance,
And urges his advance
Through numbers, motions intricately woven.
No pedant’s...
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...
Fresh from the fountains of the wood
A rivulet of the valley came,
And glided on for many a rood,
Flushed with the morning’s ruddy flame.
The air was fresh and soft and sweet;
The slopes in spring’s new verdure lay,
And wet with dew-drops at my feet
Bloomed the young violets of May.
No sound of busy life was heard...
From “The Brook: an Idyl”
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...
Because my Brook is fluent
I know 'tis dry —
Because my Brook is silent
It is the Sea —
And startled at its rising
I try to flee
To where the Strong assure me
Is "no more Sea" —
Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so ?
And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there ;
And yet your little...
The Sea said "Come" to the Brook —
The Brook said "Let me grow" —
The Sea said "Then you will be a Sea —
I want a Brook — Come now"!
The Sea said "Go" to the Sea.
The Sea said "I am he
You cherished" — "Learned Waters —
Wisdom is stale to Me" —
The Well upon the Brook
Were foolish to depend —
Let Brooks — renew of Brooks —
But Wells — of failless Ground!
