Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/192

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Poems That Every Child Should Know

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;