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 many 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 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 forever.