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.

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.

1 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.

27

ALFRED TENNYSON.

The Question.

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter was changed suddenly to Spring,

And gentle odors led my steps astray,

Mixed with the sound of waters murmuring, Along a shelvy bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in a dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies-those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets;

Faint oxlips; tender blue-bells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets, Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth, Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. And in the warm hedge grew bush-eglantine,

Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colored May; And cherry-blossoms, and white caps whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine

With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray; And flowers azure, black and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge,

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white;

And starry river buds among the sedge

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.