Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

A Brook Near Jacki Kellum’s Home in the Ozarks

The Brook
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

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 thorpes, 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.

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 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.

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.

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Personification is a literary device used to give human qualities to a non-human thing. In the following passage, the stream has been given the human ability to talk [chatter and babble].

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

In smoothing over the “stony,” “sharp:” rocks, the brook has a mission.

And here is the greater message of the poem:

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.

1. The brook flows. It is not stagnant and foul.
2. It joins the river, which is a huge symbol in literature.
3. It [and the river] go on forever.

Some of the greatest river writing is in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willow.

We’ll begin to Look at Wind in the Willows next week.

You can read Wind in the Willows Free: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/289/289-h/289-h.htm