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 a bumble bee,
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 braided centre 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 sinks 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.
_By permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Copyright, 1901._