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.