Brooks, streams, rivulets

I'm not very good at translating from Italian into English and vice versa, I haven't got the right sort of brain. I have a lovely French friend who is the same. She thinks and speaks in English or French, one at a time, so I console myself. It's a gift to be able to pass instantly from one language to another that I greatly admire. I get really embarrassed and flustered when an Italian friend asks me linguistic advice on the street or in a bar with no dictionary at hand. Basically I feel dumb.. so today when I was asked the difference between a stream, a rivulet and a brook, I stammered helplessly that I though they were more or less the same thing, maybe slightly different sizes and make different noises. A stream glides, a brook babbles, a river winds and meanders, a rivulet I'm not sure.
At home I pounced on my dictionary to see how much of a fool  I had made myself.
According to my Oxford Italian- English dictionary a stream is a Ruscello  a brook is a Ruscello and rivulet wasn't in there. So I looked in my English dictionary and it described a rivulet as a small stream, so a Ruscello piccolo.
Whatever the word you use a stream or a brook or a rivulet is always a joy to see and it reminded me of a poem by Tennyson (1809-1892) called The Brook and that reminded me of a lovely stream where I took my children to play and have picnics. So here it is , my poem for the day.

The Brook

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

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 farrow,
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.

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.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
  I slide by hazel covers,
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
  That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
  Among my skimming swallows,
I make the netted sunbeam dance,
  Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
  In brambly wildernesses,
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses.

And out again I curve and flow
  To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
  But I go on for ever.
 
Alfred, Lord Tennyson


 

A stream that glides

A brook that babbles

A rivulet ...