The Thread of Gold

Quem locum nôsti mihi destinatum? Quo meos gressus regis?
FIRST EDITION, . . . . . . . . . . November 1905 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . November 1905 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1906 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . October 1906 SECOND EDITION, . . . . . . . . . December 1906 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1907 THIRD EDITION, . . . . . . . . . . October 1907 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . November 1907 FOURTH EDITION (1/- net) . . . . . May 1910 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . October 1910 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . January 1911 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . May 1911 Reprinted, . . . . . . . . . . . . July 1912

I sate to-day, in a pleasant hour, at a place called The Seven Springs , high up in a green valley of the Cotswold hills. Close beside the road, seven clear rills ripple out into a small pool, and the air is musical with the sound of running water. Above me, in a little thicket, a full-fed thrush sent out one long-drawn cadence after another, in the joy of his heart, while the lengthening shadows of bush and tree crept softly over the pale sward of the old pasture-lands, in the westering light of the calm afternoon.
These springs are the highest head-waters of the Thames , and that fact is stated in a somewhat stilted Latin hexameter carved on a stone of the wall beside the pool. The so-called Thames-head is in a meadow down below Cirencester , where a deliberate engine pumps up, from a hidden well, thousands of gallons a day of the purest water, which begins the service of man at once by helping to swell the scanty flow of the Thames and Severn Canal . But The Seven Springs are the highest hill-fount of Father Thames for all that, streaming as they do from the eastward ridge of the great oolite crest of the downs that overhang Cheltenham . As soon as those rills are big enough to form a stream, the gathering of waters is known as the Churn , which, speeding down by Rendcomb with its ancient oaks, and Cerney , in a green elbow of the valley, join the Thames at Cricklade .