Tennyson

A general view of Somersby

I enjoyed a lovely walk in the southern Lincolnshire Wolds on Tuesday. The weather was gorgeous. A bright, clear winter's day with frost on the ground when the sun rose up above that rolling chalkland. 

Somersby Church where Tennyson was
christened in 1809

The walk brought me to two tiny villages where, in the early years of the nineteenth century, The Reverend George Tennyson was the local vicar. In one of these villages - Somersby - he and his wife Elizabeth had twelve children. Their fourth child was named Alfred, later Alfred Lord Tennyson who was to become England's Poet Laureate, an office he held for forty years spanning most of the Victorian era.

In the other village, the curiously named Bag Enderby, there was a little display inside the church  in honour of Tennyson. It included the following poem, in which the poet imagines himself as a stream. The lines were undoubtedly embroidered with memories from his rural childhood - the same landscape through which I was walking.

In St Margaret's Church, where the Reverend Tennyson often preached, I read the poem through and contemplated its loveliness, like The River Lymm babbling its narrow way to the sea. I leave it here for you to enjoy too....

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 Tennyson (1809-1892)