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.