balatronic(adj.) pertaining to buffoons

`O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
 `Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies.

     I come from haunts of coot and hern,
     I make a sudden sally,
     And sparkle out among the fern,
     To bicker down a valley.

     By thirty hills I hurry down,
     Or slip between the ridges,
     By twenty thorps, a little town,
     And half a hundred bridges.

     Till last by Philip's farm I flow
     To join the brimming river,
     For men may come and men may go,
     But I go on for ever.

 `Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out,
 Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge,
 It has more ivy; there the river; and there
 Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet.

     I chatter over stony ways,
     In little sharps and trebles,
     I bubble into eddying bays,
     I babble on the pebbles.

     With many a curve my banks I fret
     By many a field and fallow,
     And many a fairy foreland set
     With willow-weed and mallow.

     I chatter, chatter, as I flow
     To join the brimming river,
     For men may come and men may go,
     But I go on for ever.

 `But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird;
 Old Philip; all about the fields you caught
 His weary daylong chirping, like the dry
 High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass. [grig = cricket - m.]

     I wind about, and in and out,
     With here a blossom sailing,
     And here and there a lusty trout,
     And here and there a grayling,

     And here and there a foamy flake
     Upon me, as I travel
     With many a silvery waterbreak
     Above the golden gravel,

     And draw them all along, and flow
     To join the brimming river,
     For men may come and men may go,
     But I go on for ever.

-- Alfred Lord Tennyson