Sugar Brook (A Memory of Boyhood)

It ran through the green old meadows
     Where we as children played, 
With a shimmering gleam in the sunlight,
     A gloom in the dappled shade; 
And under the rippling waters
     Did the smooth, white pebbles look 
Like lumps of crystal sugar,
     So we called it "Sugar Brook."

In the overhanging beeches
     The robin and bobolink 
Sang all the summer morning
     To the kine that came to drink; 
And the brook with a drowsy murmur
     Sent forth its answering tune 
To the bees in the nodding clover
     Through the still, bright days of June.

There I went to fill my runlet
     From the spring beneath the birch,
Or to wile, with a pin-made fish-hook 
     From its depths, the shining perch ;
And I thought — 'twas a childish fancv —
     That never was brook so fair, 
And never such musical song-birds
     As sang from the beeches there.

There I forded the crystal shallows
     With trousers rolled up from my legs, 
Or foraged the clumps of alder
     For the blackbirds' speckled eggs; 
And Nature, the dear old mother,
     Stole silently into my heart, 
And the beautiful lore she taught me
     Is still of my life a part.