SONG OF THE BROOK.

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.

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,

SONG OF THE BROOK.

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;

For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE WAR-SONG OF DINAS VAWR.

THE mountain sheep are sweeter,
But the valley sheep are fatter;
We therefore deemed it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition;

We met a host, and quelled it;

We forced a strong position,

And killed the men who held it.

On Dyfed's richest valley,

Where herds of kine were browsing,

We made a mighty sally,

To furnish our carousing.

Fierce warriors rushed to meet us;

We met them, and o'erthrew them.

They struggled hard to beat us;

But we conquered them, and slew them.

As we drove our prize at leisure,

The king marched forth to catch us;

His rage surpassed all measure,

But his people could not match us.

THE WAR-SONG OF DINAS VAWR

He fled to his hall pillars;

And, ere our force we led off,
Some sacked his house and cellars,
While others cut his head off.

We there, in strife bewildering,
Spilt blood enough to swim in:
We orphaned many children,
And widowed many women.
The eagles and the ravens
We glutted with our foemen:
The heroes and the cravens,
The spearmen and the bowmen.

We brought away from battle,

(And much their land bemoaned them),

Two thousand head of cattle,

And the head of him who owned them:

Ednyfed, king of Dyfed,

His head was borne before us;

His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,

His overthrow our chorus.

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

MOTHER MARGERY.

ON a bleak ridge, from whose granite edges
Sloped the rough land to the grisly north,
And whose hemlocks, clinging to the ledges,
Like a thin banditti staggered forth:
In a crouching, wormy-timbered hamlet
Mother Margery shivered in the cold,
With a tattered robe of faded camlet

On her shoulders crooked, weak, and old!

Time on her had done his cruel pleasure;
For her face was very dry and thin,
And the records of his growing measure

Lined and cross-lined all her shrivelled skin.

Scanty goods to her had been allotted,

Yet her thanks rose oftener than desire; While her bony fingers, bent and knotted, Fed with withered twigs the dying fire.

Raw and weary were the northern winters;
Winds howled piteously around her cot,
Or with rude sighs made the jarring splinters
Moan the misery she bemoaned not.
Drifting tempests rattled at her windows,

And hung snow-wreaths round her naked bed. While the wind-flaws muttered on the cinders, Till the last spark fluttered and was dead.