GEORGE W. CABLE.

THE BROOK.

Tennyson's "The Brook" is included out of love to a dear old schoolmate
in Colorado. The real brook, near Cambridge, England, is tame compared
to your Colorado streams, O beloved comrade. This poem is well liked by
the majority of pupils. (1809-92.)

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.

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 sunbeams 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.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

THE BALLAD OF THE "CLAMPHERDOWN."

"The Ballad of the _Clampherdown_," by Rudyard Kipling, is included
because my boys always like it. It needs a great deal of explanation,
and few boys will hold out to the end in learning it. But "it pays."
(1865-.)

It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_
Would sweep the Channel clean,
Wherefore she kept her hatches close
When the merry Channel chops arose,
To save the bleached marine.

She had one bow-gun of a hundred ton,
And a great stern-gun beside;
They dipped their noses deep in the sea,
They racked their stays and stanchions free
In the wash of the wind-whipped tide.

It was our war-ship _Clampherdown_,
Fell in with a cruiser light
That carried the dainty Hotchkiss gun
And a pair o' heels wherewith to run,
From the grip of a close-fought fight.

She opened fire at seven miles--
As ye shoot at a bobbing cork--
And once she fired and twice she fired,
Till the bow-gun drooped like a lily tired
That lolls upon the stalk.

"Captain, the bow-gun melts apace,
The deck-beams break below,
'Twere well to rest for an hour or twain,
And botch the shattered plates ag