The Brook, I chatter as I flow

Tennyson published The Brook in 1855, in the volume Maud and Other Poems. The song of the brook sits inside a longer poem, and it is the part schools print. Tennyson was Poet Laureate from 1850 onwards and the best-selling poet of his century. This text comes from an anthology page on Wikisource.

Where this text comes fromWhat you copy is a song lifted out of a longer narrative poem, and the page linked below makes that visible in an unusual way: it is an anthology page, from a collection assembled for children, not a page from Tennyson’s own 1855 volume. The song has traveled that way for a century and a half, printed on its own until most readers have no idea there is a story around it. The stanzas you type are the ones that repeat, the chatter and the winding, before the refrain about men coming and going settles the poem down.

What you might not noticeThe refrain reads For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever, and the anthology linked here prints forever as one word. Editions taken from Tennyson’s own volume usually set it as for ever. Source

What it trainsNinety-three words across four sentences, averaging twenty-three words each, makes this the steadiest rhythm of the poems on this shelf: long enough to build speed, short enough that a full stop arrives before you lose the line. Twelve commas set that rhythm, and they are the main thing to get right. The one trap is forget-me-nots, a single word carrying two hyphens with no space anywhere in it, at fourteen letters the longest run in the passage. Twenty-one capitals appear and sixteen of them open verse lines, so Shift works on the beat of the poem rather than the beat of the sentences.

Read the full text at the publisher: Wikisource