“

Every river is like life’s journey, I think. 

Tennyson wrote a lovely, simple poem about this experience, with the lines

               “men may come and men may go

               But I go on for ever”

The river is always in movement, always changing.  “You can never step into the same river twice” said Heraclitus, and this was not just because the water is always changing, but also because we are always changing.

“To live is to change” wrote John Henry Newman, and whenever I wander alongside my local river in Shrewsbury, the Rae Brook, I feel the excitement, the bustle and the change of the river.

There is always energy there.  There is always life.  It has power to erode the banks yet the power is channelled around beautiful smooth meanders.  The change is a creative change – always being renewed, always being revitalised by new water, new movement, new life.

I know rivers can cause destruction and chaos.  They can be deadly and dangerous and take lives.

But for me life is good alongside the Rae Brook.  Life is good when it speaks to me, for itself and also as a metaphor.

Tennyson’s poem goes like this:

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.

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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.

Do you have a favourite river?  Where is it?  What is it like to visit it?

Does the metaphor of change and energy speak to you?

 Share your thoughts with me about Lif4Gd and rivers!