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 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, 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, 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 ‘Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, 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, 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 ‘Like a long wintry forest, groves of masts Then, as now, ‘the sooty hulk steered sluggish on,’ while ‘The splendid barge 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 but it is not, alas! absolutely pure: ‘Nor yet, my Delia, to the main Happily, this is about the only word of ‘It glimmers ‘With murmur low and ceaseless cheer, 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. |