Tuesday peotry

THE BROOK

by: Alfred Lord Tennyson

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.

I find Tennyson's vision of the world just that bit too close to the edge, personally.