Access Notes

Just a brook, but look at the things Tennyson makes it do.

He uses 25 verbs to give the brook some muscle and make it an active participant in its fate, not just a passively moving body of water. Or 26, if you count chatter twice because it has 2 meanings in the poem — one to represent the sound of human speech and the other to indicate shivering.

Here is the poem The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson, followed by the 25 verbs.

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.

The 25 verbs:

1. come
2. make
3. sparkle
4. bicker
5. hurry
6. slip
7. flow
8. join
9. go
10. chatter
11. bubble
12. babble
13. fret
14. wind
15. travel
16. draw
17. steal
18. slide
19. move
20. gloom
21. glance
22. murmur
23. linger
24. loiter
25. curve

To read the full version of The Brook, click here.