THE BROOK.

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, j

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,

Q2

By ALFRED TENNYSON,

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 5

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.
— From Tennyson's Poems,