The ducks are clacking by the brook;
The sun is hot, but cool their feathers look.
Ducks do not plan ambitious schemes:
Their commerce is in weeds and streams.
They ask, what's life but sparkle and spray
In a lazy brook on a lazy day?
I think, if I were five feet something shorter,
I might have been a duck upon the water,
A portly duck, with a shining bill
Yellow and spruce as a daffodil.
To me, possessed of an idle mind,
That seems a life of the perfect kind.

Two bicycles plunge into the water -
Two boys intending war and slaughter.
The brook is shallow here. There is a noise
Of water, and terror and reckless boys.
The stream turns brown with mud. It rocks and heaves,
They waddle and cackle in consternation,
While the boys are leaping with jubilation,
And I can see that man and duck
Are both cursed by a dancing luck.