Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

300 traditional songs, inc sheet music with full piano accompaniment & lyrics.

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THE BROOK.
201
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.
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 lusty trout, And here and there a grayling;
And here and there a foamy flake,
Upon me as I travel, With many a silvery water-break,
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 gleam, I glance, Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeams dance Against my sandy shallows.
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,
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.