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.