THE BROOK. 



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. 



I chatter over stony ways. 

 In little sharps and trebles, 



I bubble into eddying bays, 

 I babble on the pebbles. 



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. 



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. 



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. 



■Alfred Tennyson. 



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