Sounds

Wanted to share this poem I was reminded of this evening. What I find adorable about this one is its amazing ability to force us to listen to all the various sounds that the brook makes on its way to join the brimming river. Who says sounds and sights are best captured on high-definition digital cameras and sound recorders? Recite it aloud or silently read it – you get the same audio-visual effects each time!

The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

I come form the 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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