Page:Maud, and other poems.djvu/122

102 Could scarce be said to nourish, 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, 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, "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, 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.