THE BROOK

By Alfred Tennison



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 forever.



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 forever.



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 forever.



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 forever.



DEFINITIONS:

Coot, a kind of wild duck.

Hern, a wading bird, heron.

Bicker, run with a quivering, tremulous motion.

Thorps, small villages.

Foreland, headland.

Shingly, gravelly.

****

Top of Page

< BACK    NEXT >

| Home | Reading Room | The New McGuffey Fourth Reader