The firm house lingers, though averse to square <br />With the new city street it has to wear A number in. <br />But what about the brook <br />That held the house as in an elbow-crook? <br />I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength <br />And impulse, having dipped a finger length <br />And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed <br />A flower to try its currents where they crossed. <br />The meadow grass could be cemented down <br />>From growing under pavements of a town; <br />The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame. <br />Is water wood to serve a brook the same? <br />How else dispose of an immortal force <br />No longer needed? Staunch it at its source <br />With cinder loads dumped down? The brook wasthrown <br />Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone <br />In fetid darkness still to live and run - <br />And all for nothing it had ever done <br />Except forget to go in fear perhaps. <br />No one would know except for ancient maps <br />That such a brook ran water. But I wonder <br />If from its being kept forever under <br />The thoughts may not have risen that so keep <br />This new-built city from both work and sleep.<br /><br />Robert Lee Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-brook-in-the-city-2/
