Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/156

148 her beautiful gift, but because it had ever been the habit of his royal ancestors freely to grant favors to those who stood in need of their protection, but not to receive aught by way of recompense."

came stealing from the ground;

You scarcely saw its silvery gleam

Among the herbs that hung around

The borders of that winding stream,—

A pretty stream, a placid stream,

A softly gliding, bashful stream.

A breeze came wandering from the sky,

Light as the whispers of a dream;

He put the o'erhanging grasses by,

And gayly stooped to kiss the stream,—

The pretty stream, the flattered stream,

The shy, yet unreluctant stream.

The water, as the wind passed o'er,

Shot upward many a glancing beam,

Dimpled and quivered more and more,

And tripped along a livelier stream,—

The flattered stream, the simpering stream,

The fond, delighted, silly stream.

Away the airy wanderer flew

To where the fields with blossoms teem,

To sparkling springs and rivers blue,

And left alone that little stream,—

The flattered stream, the cheated stream,

The sad, forsaken, lonely stream.

That careless wind no more came back;

He wanders yet the fields, I deem;

But on its melancholy track

Complaining went that little stream,—

The cheated stream, the hopeless stream,

The ever murmuring, moaning stream.