{
 "id": "edward-thomas/the-brook",
 "title": "The Brook",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edward Thomas",
 "poet_slug": "edward-thomas",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Last Poems",
 "book_slug": "last-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 61,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1918,
  "venue": "Last Poems (1918)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22732"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edward-thomas_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22423",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22732",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Collected_Poems/LMsEAQAAIAAJ",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Two_Poems/3ycPAAAAQAAJ"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 28,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
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 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Seated once by a brook, watching a child",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not far off in the oak and hazel brush,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A butterfly alighted. From aloft",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He took the heat of the sun, and from below.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On the hot stone he perched contented so,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if never a cart would pass again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That way; as if I were the last of men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he the first of insects to have earth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sun together and to know their worth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was divided between him and the gleam,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The motion, and the voices, of the stream,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The waters running frizzled over gravel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That never vanish and for ever travel.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A grey flycatcher silent on a fence",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I sat as if we had been there since",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The horseman and the horse lying beneath",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The horseman and the horse with silver shoes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I lost. And then the child’s voice raised the dead.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“No one’s been here before” was what she said",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And what I felt, yet never should have found",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}