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

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness, let them be left
Oh, let them be left, wildness and wet

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet

A wind puff bonnet of fawn froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitch black, fell-frowning
It rounds and rounds, despair to drowning

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through
And wiry heath packs and flinches of fern
And the bead bonny ash that sits over the burn