THE little brook over the hill that my childhood knew Where fragrant mint and slender willows grew— Like vanishing flashes of light the minnows swam In its rippled shallows. I mind me the dripping dam Builded of logs and stones and sod breast-high, Where the brimming waters stole a patch of the sky And we splashed 'mid clouds and parted watery trees, And shouted and leaped, and raced at naked ease. I believe in dryads and nymphs and satyrs still Because of the little brook at the foot of the hill. How it flashed a thousand bickering gleams in one When it caught the full effulgence of the sun. How it teemed with life: for a thousand tribes dwelt there, Curious, delicate, purple, and argent-fair— The dragon fly that poised on a rippling blade Of grass, unnumbered creatures of sun and shade, Wee lives that throve under stones and scurried away When a wanton hand let in a storm of the day— Claw, and fin, and scale, and shell, and gill, There was life a-swarm in the little brook over the hill. The little brook over the hill—I wandered away, And then, grown taller of life, came back one day, And I found they had taken my little brook over the hill To turn the roaring wheels of a smoky mill; Blue-bursting bubbles, circle-wise swimming, had slain The teeming lives of which my heart had been fain— Only belligerent crayfish here and there Fought on for being; and willows draggled and bare Strove for the sun; the trees were shrunken and wried And all the beautiful little lives had died. ... And I cursed the greedy world and the ruthless mill That had swept with death the little brook over the hill. |