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From “The Brook: an Idyl”
I COME from haunts of coot and hern: | |
| I make a sudden sally | |
| And sparkle out among the fern, | |
| To bicker down a valley. | |
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| By thirty hills I hurry down, | 5 |
| Or slip between the ridges, | |
| By twenty thorps, a little town, | |
| And half a hundred bridges. | |
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| Till last by Philip’s farm I flow | |
| To join the brimming river, | 10 |
| For men may come and men may go, | |
| But I go on forever. | |
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| I chatter over stony ways, | |
| In little sharps and trebles, | |
| I bubble into eddying bays, | 15 |
| I babble on the pebbles. | |
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| 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. | 20 |
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| I chatter, chatter, as I flow | |
| To join the brimming river; | |
| For men may come and men may go, | |
| But I go on forever. | |
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| I wind about, and in and out, | 25 |
| With here a blossom sailing, | |
| And here and there a lusty trout, | |
| And here and there a grayling, | |
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| And here and there a foamy flake | |
| Upon me, as I travel | 30 |
| With many a silvery waterbreak | |
| Above the golden gravel, | |
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| And draw them all along, and flow | |
| To join the brimming river; | |
| For men may come and men may go, | 35 |
| But I go on forever. | |
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| I steal by lawns and grassy plots: | |
| I slide by hazel covers; | |
| I move the sweet forget-me-nots | |
| That grow for happy lovers. | 40 |
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| I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, | |
| Among my skimming swallows; | |
| I make the netted sunbeam dance | |
| Against my sandy shallows; | |
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| I murmur under moon and stars | 45 |
| In brambly wildernesses; | |
| I linger by my shingly bars; | |
| I loiter round my cresses; | |
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| And out again I curve and flow | |
| To join the brimming river; | 50 |
| For men may come and men may go, | |
| But I go on forever. | |
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