The Brook -- Alfred Tennyson

The Brook – Alfred 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 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 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. 

 

                      ----

 

 ed. mastanappa puletipalli