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The Worlds of Gilbert and Sullivan

The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is part of a longer narrative poem about: expectations, a 19th Century Lincolnshire farm, love gained and lost, death and disappointment; and a lovely 'surprise' at the end. Described as An Idyl, it begins:

Here, by this brook we parted: I to the East
And he for Italy - too late - too late . . .

and ends:

My brother James is in the harvest-field
But she - you will be welcome - O, come in!

However, the part that lives in our minds today weaves in and out (like a brook!) throughout the narrative. And, edited into our poetry books, the selected verses run thus:

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.

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.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

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 for ever.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among the skimming swallows:
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 for ever.

And now down to that library to check out the full poem! You'll love it. It really is worth the reading . . .

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