Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net BEAUTIES OF TENNYSON. 20 ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC B. SCHELL. PORTER & COATES, PHILADELPHIA. [Illustration: LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.] Copyright, 1885, By Porter & Coates. * * * * * BEAUTIES OF TENNYSON. THE BROOK. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make 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. * * * 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. * * * And here and there a foamy lake 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. [Illustration: "I CHATTER OVER STONY WAYS, IN LITTLE SHARPS AND TREBLES."] SONG FROM "MAUD." See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design! What is it? a learned man Could give it a clumsy name. Let him name it who can, The beauty would be the same. The tiny cell is forlorn, Void of the little living will That made it stir on the shore. Did he stand at the diamond door Of his house in a rainbow frill? Did he push, when he was uncurl'd, A golden foot or a fairy horn Thro' his dim water-world. Slight, to be crushed with a tap Of my finger-nail on the sand, Small, but a work divine, Frail, but of force to withstand, Year upon year, the shock Of cataract seas that snap The three-decker's oaken spine Athwart the ledges of rock, Here on the Breton strand! [Illustration: "SEE WHAT A LOVELY SHELL, LYING CLOSE TO MY FOOT."] A FAREWELL. Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, Thy tribute wave deliver: No more by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, A rivulet then a river: Nowhere by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever. But here will sigh thine alder tree, And here thine aspen shiver; And here by thee will hum the bee, For ever and for ever. A thousand suns will stream on thee, A thousand moons will quiver; But not by thee my steps shall be, For ever and for ever.