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: