The Brook (excerpt) -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(Poem #80) The Brook (excerpt) `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, 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. 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 for ever. `Poor lad, he died at Florence, quite worn out, Travelling to Naples. There is Darnley bridge, It has more ivy; there the river; and there Stands Philip's farm where brook and river meet. 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. `But Philip chatter'd more than brook or bird; Old Philip; all about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbow'd grigs that leap in summer grass. [grig = cricket - m.] 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. -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

        Full poem at
        <[broken link] http://www.hti.umich.edu/bin/epd/epd-idx.pl?type=HTML&rgn=POEM&byte=>
        Reproduced from the English Poetry Full-Text Database Copyright (c)
        [1992-1995] Chadwyck-Healey Ltd.

This is a wonderfully lyrical poem, even for Tennyson - in places it verges
on pure music. In fact, it is hardly necessary to 'understand' it - just let
the images and beautifully patterned rhythms flow past, evoking the babbling
brook. I could go through this excerpt line by line, saying exactly what I
like about each one, but if this isn't a poem that should speak for itself,
I don't know what is. In passing, though - it has immortalized the phrase
'babbling brook', enshrining it so thoroughly into the language that even
those who have never heard of Tennyson would apply no other adjective.

m. (Happy Star Wars day! [1])

[1] May the 4th...