The Brooklet
A LITTLE brooklet trilled a song
As merry as the day was long,
At which a music-hater stung
To frenzy said: 'I’ll bind thy tongue,
And quell thy merriment:' That night,
A dam check’d babbler’s song and flight;
But blind are ever hate and spite!
And so it fell, the brook did swell—
Ah, truth to say, ere dawn of day,
Had grown a sea, unquelled would be,
And soon with ruin, down the dell,
Dashed with a fierce triumphant yell;
And cried, 'Ha, ha! ho, ho! oh, la!
Where now thy skill, my voice to still?—
Ah, dost thou find that he who’d bind
The tongue e’en of a rillet, may
Be doomed to hear instead, one day,
What shall with terror seize, control,
And wring with agony his soul?—
In very deed then, reek the rede!’
Thus yell’d the flood and onward swept;
And music-hater heard and wept:
And so weep all who’d try, or long,
To render dumb the child of song.
Other works by Joseph Skipsey...
