LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,028)
  • Text Authors (19,311)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,112)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by James Withcomb Riley (1849 - 1916)

The Brook Song
 (Sung text for setting by R. Stöhr)
 See original
Language: English 
Little brook! Little brook!
You have such a happy look-
Such a very merry manner, as you swerve and
curve and crook-
And your ripples, one and one,
Reach each other's hand and run
Like laughing little children in the sun!

 ... 

Little brook-sing a song
Of a leaf that sailed along
Down the golden-braided center of your current
swift and strong,
And a dragon-fly that lit
On the tilting rim of it,
And rode away and wasn't scared a bit.

Little brook, sing to me:
Sing about a bumblebee
That tumbled from a lily-bell and grumbled
mumblingly,
Because he wet the film
Of his wings, and had to swim,
While the water-bugs raced around and laughed
at him!

 ... 

And sing-how oft in glee
Came a truant boy like me,
Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting
melody,
Till the gurgle and refrain
Of your music in his brain
Wrought a happiness as keen to him as pain.

Little brook-laugh and leap!
Do not let the dreamer weep;
Sing him all the songs of summer till he sinks in
softest sleep;
And then sing soft and low
Through his dreams of long ago-
Sing back to him the rest he used to know!

Composition:

    Set to music by Richard Stöhr (1874 - 1967), "The Brook Song", op. 91 (Twelve Songs) no. 1 (1943-1944), stanzas 1,3,2,4-5 [ voice and piano ], unpublished; manuscript at Saint Michael's College Archives and available in scanned form at the Petrucci Music Library

Text Authorship:

  • by James Withcomb Riley (1849 - 1916)

Go to the general single-text view


Researcher for this page: Johann Winkler

This text was added to the website: 2021-09-12
Line count: 36
Word count: 204

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris