THE BROOK

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 forever.

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 forever.

THE BROOK

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 forever.

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,

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For men may come and men may go,

But I

go on forever.

Alfred Tennyson.

GLENARA

Он, heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale, Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail?

'Tis the Chief of Glenara laments for his dear, And her sire and her people are called to her bier.

Glenara came first with the mourners and shroud; His kinsmen they followed but mourned not aloud. Their plaids o'er their bosoms were folded around, They marched all in silence, they looked on the

ground.

In silence they went, over mountain and moor,
To a heath where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar;
"Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn;
Why speak ye no word?" said Glenara the stern.

"And tell me, I charge you, ye clan of my spouse, Why fold ye your mantles, why cloud ye your brows?"

So spake the rude chieftain: - no answer is made Till each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed.

Cried a voice from the kinsmen all wrathful and

loud:

"I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud,

KUBLA KHAN

And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem; Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"

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Oh pale grew the cheek of that chieftain, I ween, When the shroud was unclosed and no lady was

seen;

When a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in

scorn,

'Twas the youth who had loved the fair Ellen of

"I dreamt of my lady, I dreamt of her grief;
I dreamt that her lord was a barbarous chief;
On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem!
Glenara! Glenara! now read me my dream!"

In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground,
And the desert revealed where his lady was found;
From a rock in the ocean that beauty is borne,
Now joy to the house of fair Ellen of Lorn!
Thomas Campbell.

KUBLA KHAN 1

A VISION IN A DREAM

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

1 Note 5.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seeth

ing

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail;
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.