The Brook

For other uses, see The Brook (disambiguation).
The Brook

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.

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

The Brook is an exclusive private gentlemen's club located at 111 East 54th Street in Manhattan (New York City).

It was founded in 1903 by a group of prominent men who belonged to other New York City private clubs, such as the Knickerbocker Club, the Union Club of the City of New York, and the Metropolitan Club.[1] The name is derived from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem The Brook, whose lines "For men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever" were consistent with the intention that the Club would provide 24-hour service and would never close its doors.[1] In 1992, the City Journal wrote that the name was "supposed to mean that the Club is always open and the conversation flows on forever," but that "neither is strictly true."[2] One version of the club's origin holds that The Brook was formed by two young men who had been expelled from the Union Club for trying to poach an egg on the bald head of another club member.[3]

When the club was formed, it was announced that membership was only by private invitation and would be limited to 100 men. New York City residents who were not club members would not be admitted as guests. Membership, however, was not restricted to New York City residents — some original members came from Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia.[1]

In 1954 the membership was 400 men.[3] The Club's building, erected in 1925, was designed by the architecture firm of Delano & Aldrich,[4] who also designed the houses of the Union Club, the Knickerbocker, and other exclusive clubs.

Summary

In “The Brook,” by the English poet Alfred Tennyson (1812-1889), the Brook named in the title speaks for itself, describing its origins, its travels, and its ultimate union with a large, brimming river. The poem is typical of the interest many nineteenth-century English poets showed in writing poems about the attractive aspects of nature. In the 1800s, England was losing much of its natural beauty, thanks to the growth of huge cities and heavy industry during the so-called Industrial Revolution. It is not surprising, then, that many Romantic poets (such as William Wordsworth) and many Victorian authors (such as Tennyson) celebrated, somewhat nostalgically, the lovely landscapes that were so often threatened by the rise of the new mechanized, industrial culture.

“The Brook” is shaped like the very thing it describes. On the page, it looks long and narrow. Rather than using the common ten-syllable line that had become very conventional in much English poetry by this time, Tennyson instead chooses alternating lines of four syllables and three syllables. The poem thus has a shape that seems appropriate to the appearance and rhythms of a brook, now moving outward, then moving inward, and then back outward again, much as a brook’s waters might move. The poem’s effect would be different if every single line were exactly the same length. Instead, Tennyson makes the work move in a pattern that is at once irregular and predictable, much like the brook itself.

Tennyson’s decision to let the brook describe itself and its routes makes the stream seem almost alive. Rather than depicting the stream from a distanced, objective perspective, he gives the brook a kind of literal vitality by personifying it. Apparently, the brook begins in a kind of lake populated by water birds (“coot and hern” ), but no sooner does the poem allude to this place of origins than the text, like the brook itself, makes a “sudden sally” (2), a noun suggesting a quick movement or leap. The brook moves swiftly, and so does the poem: only eight lines into the work, the stream has already passed twenty villages (or “thorpes” ) and fifty “bridges” , presumably small rural bridges made of wood or stone rather than the kinds of massive, imposing steel bridges being erected elsewhere.

Finally the brook flows past “Philip’s farm” , phrasing that again suggests that the brook is almost alive, almost human: it is aware not only of human dwellings in general (as in the reference to the “thorpes”) but of one human...

About the author

About the Poet Lord Tennyson (1809–92) was born in Lincolnshire. Poet Laureate for over 40 years, Tennyson is representative of the Victorian age. His skilled craftsmanship and noble ideals retained a large audience for poetry in an age when the novel was engrossing more and more readers. Tennyson's real contribution lies in his shorter poems like The Lady of Shallot, The Princess, Ulysses, The Palace of Art etc. His fame rests on his perfect control of sound, the synthesis of sound and meaning, the union of pictorial and musical.

Notable members, past and present

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 "New Club is Launched," The New York Times (Apr. 2, 1903).
  2. ↑ Lejeune, Anthony. "A Tour of New York's Clubland," City Journal (Winter 1992).
  3. 1 2 3 The Great Club Revolution, by Cleveland Amory, American Heritage Magazine, December 1954, Volume 6, Issue 1
  4. ↑ Streetscapes/The Architecture of Delano & Aldrich; How an Upper-Class Firm Tweaked Classical Norms by Christopher Gray, April 27, 2003
  5. ↑ Murphy, Dean E. "Bloomberg Quietly Left Four Mostly White Clubs," The New York Times (July 25, 2001)
  6. ↑ "Admiral James L. Holloway III, US Navy (Ret.)," Biographies in Naval History: Naval History & Heritage Command. Accessed Apr. 26, 2011.
  7. ↑ "W.K. Vanderbilt, Jr., and Wife Parted?," The New York Times (Sept. 22, 1909).
  8. ↑ Aldrich, Nelson W. Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America (Allworth Communications, Inc., 1996) ISBN 1-880559-64-1, ISBN 978-1-880559-64-2, pages 50-51.
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