Did you know?
“The Brook,” was written by the English poet Alfred Tennyson (1812-1889)
The poem is typical of the interest many nineteenth-century English poets showed in writing poems about the attractive aspects of nature. In the 1800s, England was losing much of its natural beauty, thanks to the growth of huge cities and heavy industry during the so-called Industrial Revolution.
It is not surprising, then, that many Romantic poets (such as William Wordsworth) and many Victorian authors (such as Tennyson) celebrated, somewhat nostalgically, the lovely landscapes that were so often threatened by the rise of the new mechanized, industrial culture.
It is amazing to think that after all this time - nearly 200 years - we are having the same discussions today.
I know that we have to be worried about global warming and how it is melting the ice
Cerys
The air can taste horrible sometimes. There are so many cars and fumes. We've got a poster outside to encourage parents to turn their engines off if they are waiting for their kids
Akasha
The children also loved the poem as there is a brook that runs right past the school hall. To think that it might both start and end in the same way as the brook in the poem really captured the children's interest!
Why not have a go at learning this poem yourself?
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.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
