The speaker is saying a final goodbye to a small stream, a place he knows intimately. He tells the cold water to keep flowing to the sea, knowing his own steps will never walk beside it again. This refrain — “For ever and for ever” — hammers home a deep, quiet finality. There’s no anger, just a gentle, aching sadness.
He names the trees that will miss him in their own way: the alder sighing, the aspen shivering. Even the bee will hum on here without him. The stream will go on through countless sunlit days and moonlit nights, utterly indifferent to his absence. The poem’s mood is one of tender resignation. Nature’s steady, beautiful persistence makes human departure feel small but also intensely personal. You sense the speaker is not just leaving a landscape but a part of himself, and that the world will keep turning, lovely and empty, in his wake.