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LESSON LX.

coot, a water-bird.

hern (her’on), a wading bird.

ed’dying, moving in small circles.

mal’low, a kind of plant.

bick’er, move quickly; quarrel.

fal’low, plowed land.

gray’ling, a kind of fish.

cress’es, a kind of water-plant.

sal’ly, a rushing or bursting forth.

thorps, villages.

bram’bly, full of rough shrubs.

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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 bank I fret
    By many a field and fallow,
  And many a fairy foreland set
    With willow-wood 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.

  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.

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Directions for Reading.—­Point out the places in the poem where two lines should be joined in reading.

Mark the inflection of the following lines.

  “I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
    Among my skimming swallows.”