I come from haunts of coot and hern, <br />I make a sudden sally <br />And sparkle out among the fern, <br />To bicker down a valley. <br /> <br />By thirty hills I hurry down, <br />Or slip between the ridges, <br />By twenty thorpes, a little town, <br />And half a hundred bridges. <br /> <br />Till last by Philip's farm I flow <br />To join the brimming river, <br />For men may come and men may go, <br />But I go on for ever. <br /> <br />I chatter over stony ways, <br />In little sharps and trebles, <br />I bubble into eddying bays, <br />I babble on the pebbles. <br /> <br />With many a curve my banks I fret <br />By many a field and fallow, <br />And many a fairy foreland set <br />With willow-weed and mallow. <br /> <br />I chatter, chatter, as I flow <br />To join the brimming river, <br />For men may come and men may go, <br />But I go on for ever. <br /> <br />I wind about, and in and out, <br />With here a blossom sailing, <br />And here and there a lusty trout, <br />And here and there a grayling, <br /> <br />And here and there a foamy flake <br />Upon me, as I travel <br />With many a silvery waterbreak <br />Above the golden gravel, <br /> <br />And draw them all along, and flow <br />To join the brimming river <br />For men may come and men may go, <br />But I go on for ever. <br /> <br />I steal by lawns and grassy plots, <br />I slide by hazel covers; <br />I move the sweet forget-me-nots <br />That grow for happy lovers. <br /> <br />I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, <br />Among my skimming swallows; <br />I make the netted sunbeam dance <br />Against my sandy shallows. <br /> <br />I murmur under moon and stars <br />In brambly wildernesses; <br />I linger by my shingly bars; <br />I loiter round my cresses; <br /> <br />And out again I curve and flow <br />To join the brimming river, <br />For men may come and men may go, <br />But I go on for ever.<br /><br />Alfred Lord Tennyson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-brook/
