Poem: For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

Michael & Mary Josephine (Mullane) Coyle c 1895

Mary Josephine Mullane Coyle

3 Aug 1867 Ireland - 17 Dec 1927 NY 

This was a favorite poem of my great grandmother, Mary Josephine (Mullane) Coyle, 1867 – 1927. Her youngest daughter, Kathleen G. Coyle, told me her mother would recite the poem to her children. 

I like the soothing rhythm of the poem, the image of the brook flowing past the birds [coot and hern], the valley, the town and into the river. It clatters over the stones, under bridges and past fields as men go their own way. I like the simple power of this little brook, ‘For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.’

Mary Jo was a mother to 7 children but she never became a grandmother. She died a couple months before my mother was born. She missed one of life's greatest joys. 

It would have been nice to sit in my great grandmother’s kitchen, share a cup of tea and discuss this poem.

The Garden in the Woods, Framingham, MA 2012

The Brook

By Alfred Lord Tennyson

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.

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, 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.

 Related Posts:

• Mary Jo Mullane
• Marriage of Mary Jo & Michael
• Funeral Card Mary Jo Mullane Coyle