This darksome burn, horseback brown,
 His rollback highroad roaring down,
 In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
 Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
 Turns and twindles over the broth
 Of a pool so pitchblack, fell frowning,
 It rounds and rounds Despair and drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
 Are the groins of the braes that the brook threads through.
 Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
 And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
 Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
 O let them be left, wildness and wet;
 Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.