Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By James HerbertMorse

794 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.