Brooks and Rivers in Eskdale

29 July, 2022 3 Comments

I will now bring you to my experiences wherein my senses have not failed me as much, but instead have provided me with images and recollections that have lasted up until today. To help convince you better about the story I am going to tell you, I will take more photos out of my Magical Memory Box, most of which came from our picnics, day trips and holidays in Scotland, the Lake District, and brooks and rivers in Eskdale. Here, we often didn’t need toys or sports equipment bought in shops; nature, ‘the big freebie shop’ was more than enough for us.

There would always be a brook or river nearby, where we could play, find pebbles, skim stones, or just paddle in the water after we had taken off our shorts, shoes and socks.

The Brook by Alfred Tennyson

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.