'The splendid barge
Row'd, regular, to harmony; around,
The boat, light-skimming, stretched its oary wings.'
Up to this time, the river had been called 'clear' and 'crystal,' in
spite of 'sooty hulks;' but, with the advent of Cowper, another note is
struck. With him the Thames is
'The finest stream
That wavers to the noon-day beam,'
but it is not, alas! absolutely pure:
'Nor yet, my Delia, to the main
Runs the sweet tide without a stain,
Unsullied as it seems;
The nymphs of many a sable flood
Deform with streaks of oozy mud
The bosom of the Thames.'
Happily, this is about the only word of depreciation which the poets
have permitted themselves. Wordsworth, standing on Westminster Bridge in
1803, notes that 'the river glideth at its own sweet will,' and if his
olfactory nerves were at all distressed he has not said so in verse. Of
later singers, none has been more enthusiastic about the Thames than
Eliza Cook, who has told us that, though it bears no azure wave and
rejoices in no leaping cascades, yet she ever loved to dwell where she
heard its gushing swell--in which expression, we may be sure, there is
no allusion to the British 'dude.' Another lady--Mrs. Isa Craig
Knox--has supplied a very pretty description of the Thames in its more
idyllic phases, pointing out how
'It glimmers
Through the stems of the beeches;
Through the screen of the willows it shimmers
In long-winding reaches;
Flowing so softly that scarcely
It seems to be flowing;
But the reeds of the low little island
Are bent to its going;
And soft as the breath of a sleeper
Its heaving and sighing,
In the coves where the fleets of the lilies
At anchor are lying.'
Finally, there is that austere teacher, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, who,
addressing the Thames, exhorts it to go on soothing,
'With murmur low and ceaseless cheer,
The Imperial City's agitated ear,'
but beseeches it also to add a warning voice, telling her, to whom the
pomp of gold is dear, of 'Tyre that fell, of Fortune's perfidy.'
Other poetic celebrations--such as those of Mr. Ernest Myers, Mr.
Ashby-Sterry, and 'C. C. R.'--might be recorded; but the above will
suffice to show how prominent a place the Thames has always held in the
heart and mind of those poets who have come within the sphere of its
influence. Even if it were never made the subject of a future song, it
would still figure largely and conspicuously in the British _corpus
poetarum_.