The Brook

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

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.
 
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.
 
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, | Classic Poems
 

[ The Brook ] Blow, Bugle, Blow ] Come into the garden Maud ] Tithonus ] Ulysses ] Tears, Idle Tears ] The Lady of Shalott ] Song of the Lotus-Eaters ] The Charge of the Light Brigade ] In the Valley of Cauteretz ] In Memoriam ] The Eagle ]

 

 


 

 

 
 
 
 

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