THE BROOK.
I come from haunts of coot[1] and hern,[2]
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker[3] down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps,[4] 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[5] 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 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[6] covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom,[7] I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my shady shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly[8] 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.
NOTES.
This little lyric forms a part of "an idyl" of the same title, published in 1855. The poet introduces it in the following manner:
"Here, by this brook, we parted; I to the East
And he to Italy—too late—too late:
. . . . . . . . . Yet the brook he loved
. . . . . seems, as I re-listen to it,
Prattling the primrose fancies of the boy,
To me that loved him; for, 'O brook,' he says,
'O babbling brook,' says Edmund in his rhyme,
'Whence come you?' and the brook, why not? replies:
'I come from haunts of coot and hern,'" etc.
In reading this poem, observe how strikingly the sound is made to correspond to the sense.
[1.] coot. A wild water-fowl, resembling the duck.
[2.] hern. Heron.
[3.] bicker. To move unsteadily.
[4.] thorps. Small villages. A. S. thorpe. From Ger. trupp, a troop.
[5.] foreland. A promontory.
[6.] hazel covers. Hazel thickets.
[7.] gloom. Glimmer, shine obscurely.
[8.] shingly. Gravelly.
