The Brook
I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make 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. And here and there a foamy lake 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.
The Brook - context Summary
Published in 1850
Published in 1850 in Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Brook" gives voice to a running stream whose continual movement contrasts with human transience. The poem reflects Tennyson's interest in nature and the passage of time, tracing the brook through hills, villages, and bridges as a symbol of enduring natural cycles. Its mid‑Victorian publication fits the poet's wider preoccupation with permanence and change.
Read Complete Analyses
Feel free to be first to leave comment.