The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Channel: My Outcast State
Date: 2014-07-03

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 comeand 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 silver water-break
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.