Little brook! Little brook!
You have such a happy look--
Such a very merry manner, as you swerve and curve and crook--
And your ripples, one and one,
Reach each other's hands and run
Like laughing little children in the sun!
Little brook, sing to me;
Sing about the bumblebee
That tumbled from a lily bell and grumbled mumblingly,
Because he wet the film
Of his wings, and had to swim,
While the water bugs raced round and laughed at him.
Little brook--sing a song
Of a leaf that sailed along
Down the golden-hearted center of your current swift and strong,
And a dragon fly that lit
On the tilting rim of it,
And rode away and wasn't scared a bit.
And sing--how oft in glee
Came a truant boy like me,
Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody,
Till the gurgle and refrain
Of your music in his brain
Wrought a happiness as keen to him as pain.
Little brook--laugh and leap!
Do not let the dreamer weep:
Sing him all the songs of summer till he sink in softest sleep;
And then sing soft and low
Through his dreams of long ago--
Sing back to him the rest he used to know!
_James Whitcomb Riley_.
From "Rhymes of Childhood." Used by special permission of the
publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Copyright, 1900.
* * * * *
[Illustration: BY THE BROOK]
RIPPLES, little curling waves FILM, a thin skin or slight
covering.
CURRENT, the swiftest part of a stream; also applied to _air,
electricity_, etc.
What do the following expressions mean: tilting rim, lilting melody,
softest sleep, gurgle and refrain, a happiness as keen to him as pain?
What is a lullaby? Recite a stanza of one.
Insert _may_ or _can_ properly where you see a dash in the
following: The boy said, "--I leave the room?" "Mother, I--climb the
ladder;--I?"--a dog climb a tree?--I ask a favor?
Copy the following words--they are often misspelled: loving, using,
till, until, queer, fulfil, speech, muscle, quite, scheme, success,
barely, college, villain, salary, visitor, remedy, hurried, forty-four,
enemies, twelfth, marriage, immense, exhaust.
By means of the suffixes, _er, est, ness_, form three new words
from each of the following words: happy, sleepy, lively, greedy,
steady, lovely, gloomy.
Example: From happy,--happier, happiest, happiness. Note the change of
_y_ to _i_.
* * * * *
_15_
rag'ged
crin'kly
rub'bish
fil'tered
protect'ed
disor'derly
disturbed'
imme'diately