This week’s poems celebrate rivers and streams, the waterways that are presently more than somewhat swollen from Storm Christoph’s after-effects.
Rudyard Kipling tells us an imaginative pre-history of the Thames in “The River’s Tale”, then Alfred, Lord Tennyson emphasises their timeless nature in “The Brook” and finally Samuel Taylor Coleridge reflects on the passage of time in his “Sonnet: To The River Otter”.
Poem 130. The River’s Tale (Prehistoric)
And I remember like yesterday
Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew —
Wanted to know what the River knew,
Twenty Bridges or twenty-two,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:—
“I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I'd have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.”
“I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in —
And that's where your history-books begin!”
I like this poem because Kipling mixes the modern districts of London with imaginary events that are nonetheless believable. “The earliest Cockney” makes me smile, too.
He personifies the Thames as recounting its pre-history to the twenty or so bridges that cross the river between Teddington (“Tide-end-town”, I’ll have to remember that) and Maplin Sands (where the estuary opens out into the sea) starting with the time when the island was joined to mainland Europe and the river was part of a larger network and great pre-historic animals roamed the area.
Time moves on and he describes the arrival of the first men to hunt the area and fight their rivals, followed by the growth of early civilisation brought by the ancient seafarers before the coming of the Romans and the Danes which marks the beginning of recorded history.
Poem 131. The Brook
For men may come and men may go,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809—1892)
But I go on forever.
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 thorps, 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 forever.
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 forever.
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 silver water-break
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 forever.
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 forever.
Tennyson uses the English language beautifully in this poem.
It is full of alliteration that makes one think of a flowing stream and he describes the brook so wonderfully with its fish and birds and plants on the banks. I particularly like the fourth stanza:
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
It reminds me very strongly of time spent by shallow streams in my past with the “little sharps and trebles” being a great description of the shrill sounds that make a sort of music from the water’s noise.
Then there is the refrain, “For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever” which reminds us of the longevity of the landscape in which we live.
Comments (from the original post)
- Roger Till: Classic and so appropriate for us at the moment. At least the natural world is some solace for all of us,(also a nod to all the rain we are getting!). As I mentioned my late mother’s favourite poem.
- Matt Willing: Roger Till I remembered your comment and I’m glad I’ve had an opportunity at last to bring back some memories.
Poem 132. Sonnet: To the River Otter
Visions of Childhood! oft have ye beguil’d
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have past,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimm’d the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,
And bedded sand that vein’d with various dyes
Gleam’d through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of Childhood! oft have ye beguil’d
Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless Child!
Coleridge sees his particular brook—the river Otter which rises near Ottery St. Mary in Devon—as a means of reflecting on the passage of time and the carelessness of his youth which comes back to him on revisiting the stream he remembers so well.
Like Tennyson, Coleridge describes the river but very concisely (since he is writing a sonnet) and with the eye of a child who sees the colours of the sands and willow trees and the reflected colours of the waters. This scene, he says, impressed itself so forcibly on his mind as a child that he can never close his eyes without seeing it in his mind’s eye, rather like Wordsworth’s daffodils:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
“Daffodils” by William Wordsworth.
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.