Afluent versifier of to-day has complained that, though many a poet has
'dearer made the names' of Tweed and Nith and Doon, and what not, no one
has 'sung our Thames;' and he goes on especially to rate 'green Kent and
Oxfordshire and Middlesex,' because those counties have offered, he
says, no rhythmical tribute to our premier stream. Now, the Thames has
not, perhaps, found many laureates of late. The glories of Henley may be
celebrated annually in the comic or 'society' press, but in these times
we hear more, no doubt, of sewage and steam-launches than of any other
phenomena of the Thames. We are a practical generation, with a keen eye
to business, and disposed to take not only as read, but as written, the
praises which might well be bestowed upon the river even as it is.
If, however, the Thames does not often or greatly inspire the rhymers of
to-day, it cannot, certainly, be described as songless. On the contrary,
it has received from the poets more magnificent and more frequent
eulogium than any of its compeers. If one goes back even so far as
Spenser, one finds that writer picturing it in one poem as 'noble
Thamis'--a 'lovely bridegroom,' 'full, fresh and jolly,' 'all decked in
a robe of watchet hew,' and adorned by a coronet 'in which were many
towres and castels set;' while, in another work from the same hand, it
figures as a 'gentle river,' is characterized as 'christall Thamis,' and
is lauded for its 'pure streames' and 'sweete waters.' Chapman, in his
'Ovid's Banquet of Sense,' discourses eloquently of the 'wanton Thamysis
that hastes to greet The brackish coast of old Oceanus':
'And as by London's bosom she doth fleet,
Casts herself proudly through the bridge's twists,
Where, as she takes again her crystal feet,
She curls her silver hair like amourists,
Smooths her bright cheeks, adorns her brow with ships,
And, empress-like, along the coast she trips'--
a description almost as impressive as the thing described. Among the
lovers of the Thames must be ranked, too, Herrick, who, in one of his
pieces, sends to his 'silver-footed Thamasis' his 'supremest kiss.' 'No
more,' he regrets, will he 'reiterate' its strand, whereon so many
stately structures stand; no more, in the summer's sweeter evenings,
will he go to bathe in it, as thousand others do:
'No more shall I along thy christall glide,
The barge with boughes and rushes beautifi'd....
To Richmond, Kingstone, and to Hampton Court.
Never againe shall I with finnie ore
Cut from or draw unto the faithfull shore,
And landing here, or safely landing there,
Make way to my beloved Westminster.'
Milton, in his 'Vacation Exercise,' bestows upon the Thames the epithet
of 'Royal-towered.' How Denham celebrated it is well known to most. In
his view it was 'the most loved of all the Ocean's sons,' and he
commended it especially for its freedom from sudden and impetuous wave,
from the unexpected inundations which spoil the mower's hopes and mock
the ploughman's toil.
'Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full'--
such was the famous panegyric he passed upon it. From Denham, too, came
an early poetical recognition of the growth of London's commerce. The
Thames, he says, brings home to us, and makes the Indies ours; his fair
bosom is the world's exchange. To Pope, in his 'Windsor Forest,' the
Thames appears as the 'great father of the British floods,' on whose
shores figure future navies.
'No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear,
No lakes so gentle, and no spring so clear.'
And the poet ends by prophesying the time when 'unbounded Thames shall
flow for all mankind,' whole nations entering with each swelling tide.
Elsewhere he assures us that 'blest Thames's shores the brightest
beauties yield.' Thomson, again, dwells on the extent of the trade
fostered by the river. Commerce, he says, has chosen for his grand
resort 'Thy stream, O Thames, large, gentle, deep, majestic, King of
floods!' And he describes how, on either hand,
'Like a long wintry forest, groves of masts
Shot up their spires.'