Stream side walks . . . . .

 

I was a bit stumped for inspiration for art group on Friday – what project next on a foggy, wet afternoon?

In desperation Thursday afternoon I trawled through my photographs and found some I had taken on an August afternoon last year. I had walked along the canal tow path and then turned to climb up a woodland path running along side a brook, which has a parallel channel to divert water, when needed, into the canal itself. Further on up the stream widened into a pool, where it was held back by a dam and where there was a sluice gate at the mouth of the channel. It was lovely gladed spot with bright sunshine filtering down through the trees.

So below is my interpretation with added mallard! (There lots of ducks lower down on the canal, so why not one here . . )

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 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. 

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I can remember having to learn this poem in school many years ago . . .