| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837)
X. “I was a Brook” | | By Sarah Coleridge (1802–1850) |
| | (From Chapter XXVIII.)
I WAS a brook in straitest channel pent, | |
| Foreing ’mid rocks and stones my toilsome way, | |
| A scanty brook in wandering well-nigh spent; | |
| But now with thee, rich stream, conjoin’d I stray, | |
| Through golden meads the river sweeps along, | 5 |
| Murmuring its deep full joy in gentlest undersong. | |
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| I crept through desert moor and gloomy glade, | |
| My waters ever vex’d, yet sad and slow, | |
| My waters ever steep’d in baleful shade: | |
| But, whilst with thee, rich stream, conjoined I flow, | 10 |
| E’en in swift course the river seems to rest, | |
| Blue sky, bright bloom and verdure imag’d on its breast. | |
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| And, whilst with thee I roam through regions bright | |
| Beneath kind love’s serene and gladsome sky, | |
| A thousand happy things that seek the light, | 15 |
| Till now in darkest shadow forc’d to lie, | |
| Up through the illumin’d waters nimbly run, | |
| To show their forms and hues in the all revealing sun. | | | | |
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