A speaker sits beside a brook, half-watching a child paddling, and drifts into a trance of sensory detail. A blackbird and thrush sing unseen, mugwort gives off a dull honey scent, and a butterfly settles on a sun-warmed stone kicked by a cart-horse. The butterfly’s contentment is so complete that the speaker imagines they are the last man and the first insect, alone with earth and sun. He is suspended between this motionless creature and the stream’s endless frizzling travel over gravel. A flycatcher perches silent, and the whole scene feels as ancient and still as a barrow on the heath where a horseman last galloped. In this moment, he loses everything he can lose. Then the child’s voice breaks the spell: “No one’s been here before.” Suddenly, the feeling he couldn’t name becomes clear — a sense of discovering the world for the very first time, as if no one had ever truly seen this place until now.
The Brook — Summary
SEATED once by a brook, watching a child Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled. Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush Not far off in the oak and hazel brush, Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft A butterfly alighted. From aloft He took the heat of the sun, and from below. On the hot stone he perched contented so, As if never a cart would pass again That way; as if I were the last of men And he the first of insects to have earth And sun together and to know their worth. I was divided between him and the gleam, The motion, and the voices, of the stream, The waters running frizzled over gravel, That never vanish and for ever travel. A grey flycatcher silent on a fence And I sat as if we had been there since The horseman and the horse lying beneath The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath, The horseman and the horse with silver shoes, Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose I lost. And then the child's voice raised the dead. "No one's been here before" was what she said And what I felt, yet never should have found A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.