Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East And he for Italy--too late--too late; One whom the strong sons of the world despise; For lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share, And mellow metres more than cent for cent; 5 Nor could he understand how money breeds; Thought it a dead thing; yet himself could make The thing that is not as the thing that is. O had he lived! In our schoolbooks we say, Of those that held their heads above the crowd, 10 They flourish'd then or then; but life in him Could scarce be said to flourish, only touch'd On such a time as goes before the leaf, When all the wood stands in a mist of green, And nothing perfect: yet the brook he loved, 15 For which, in branding summers of Bengal, Or ev'n the sweet half-English Neilgherry air I panted, seems; as I re-listen to it, Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy, To me that loved him; for 'O brook,' he says, 20 'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme, 'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies:
I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, 25 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. 30
Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.
'Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out, 35 Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge, It has more ivy; there the river; and there Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.
I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, 40 I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set 45 With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. 50
'But Philip chattered more than brook or bird; Old Philip; all about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass.
I wind about, and in and out, 55 With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling,
And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel 60 With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel,