II.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
 Or slip between the ridges;
By twenty thorps, a little town,
 And half a hundred bridges.

III.

I chatter over stony ways,
 In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
 I babble on the pebbles.

IV.

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.

V.

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.

VI.

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.

VII.

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me as I travel,
With many a silvery water-break
Above the golden gravel.

VIII.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers,
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

IX.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

X.

I murmur, under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses,
I linger by my shingly bars,
I loiter round my cresses.

XI.

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.

Alfred Tennyson.

Old aunt Mary’s.

Wasn’t it pleasant, O, brother mine,
In those old days of the lost sunshine
Of youth—­when the Saturday’s chores were through,
And the “Sunday’s wood” in the kitchen, too,
And we went visiting, “me and you,”
   Out to Old Aunt Mary’s?

It all comes back so clear to-day! 
Though I am as bald as you are gray—­
Out by the barn-lot, and down the lane,
We patter along in the dust again,
As light as the tips of the drops of the rain,
   Out to Old Aunt Mary’s!

We cross the pasture, and through the wood
Where the old gray snag of the poplar stood,
Where the hammering “red-heads” hopped awry,
And the buzzard “raised” in the “clearing” sky,
And lolled and circled, as we went by
   Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.

And then in the dust of the road again;
And the teams we met, and the countrymen;
And the long highway, with sunshine spread
As thick as butter on country bread,
Our cares behind, and our hearts ahead
   Out to Old Aunt Mary’s.