The Brook was almost tired
Of vainly hoping to become a Naiad;
When on a certain Summer’s day,
Dame Nature came that way,
Busy as usual,
With great and small;
Who, at the water-side
Dipping her clever fingers in the tide,
Out of the mud drew creeping things,
And, smiling on them, gave them radiant wings. 
Now when the poor Brook murmured, “Mother dear!”
Dame Nature bent to hear,
And the sad stream poured all its woes into her sympathetic ear,
Crying,—­“Oh, bounteous Mother! 
Do not do more for one child than another;
If of a dirty grub or two
(Dressing them up in royal blue)
You make so many shining Demoiselles,[3]
Change me as well;
Uplift me also from this narrow place,
Where life runs on at such a petty pace;
Give me a human form, dear Dame, and then
See how I’ll flit, and flash, and fascinate the race of men!”

[Footnote 3:  The “Demoiselle” Dragon-fly, a well-known slender
variety (Libellula), with body of brilliant blue.]

    Then Mother Nature, who is wondrous wise,
    Did that deluded little Brook advise
    To be contented with its own fair face,
        And with a good and cheerful grace,
    Run, as of yore, on its appointed race,
    Safe both from giving and receiving harms;
    Outliving human lives, outlasting human charms. 
    But good advice, however kind,
    Is thrown away upon a made-up mind,
    And this was all that babbling Brook would say—­
    “Give me a human face and form, if only for a day!”

Then quoth Dame Nature:—­“Oh, my foolish child! 
Ere I fulfil a wish so wild,
Since I am kind and you are ignorant,
This much I grant: 
You shall arise from out your grassy bed,
And gathered to the waters overhead
Shall thus and then
Look down and see the world, and all the ways of men!”
Scarce had the Dame
Departed to the place from whence she came,
When in that very hour,
The sun burst forth with most amazing power. 
Dame Nature bade him blaze, and he obeyed;
He drove the fainting flocks into the shade,
He ripened all the flowers into seed,
He dried the river, and he parched the mead;
Then on the Brook he turned his burning eye,
Which rose and left its narrow channel dry;
And, climbing up by sunbeams to the sky,
Became a snow-white cloud, which softly floated by.

It was a glorious Autumn day,
And all the world with red and gold was gay;
When, as this cloud athwart the heavens did pass,
Lying below, it saw a Poet on the grass,
The very Poet who had such a stir made,
To prove the Brook was a fresh-water mermaid. 
And now,
Holding his book above his corrugated brow—­
He read aloud,
And thus apostrophized the passing cloud: 
“Oh, snowy-breasted Fair! 
Mysterious messenger of upper air! 
Can you be of those female forms so dread,[4]