THE THAMES.

FROM “COOPER’S HILL.”

Thames, the most lov’d of all the Ocean’s sons,

By his old sire, to his embraces runs;

Hasty to pay his tribute to the sea,

Like mortal life to meet eternity,

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,

Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold,

His genuine and less guilty wealth t’ explore,

Search not his bottoms, but survey his shore,

O’er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,

And hatches plenty for the ensuing spring;

Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,

Like mothers who their infants overlay;

Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,

Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.

No unexpected inundations spoil

The mower’s hopes, or mock the plowman’s toil;

But God-like his unwearied bounty flows;

First loves to do, then loves the good he does.

Nor are his blessings to his banks confin’d,

But free and common, as the sea or wind;

When he to boast or to disperse his stores,

Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,

Visits the world, and in his flying tow’rs

Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours;

Finds wealth where ’tis, bestows it where it wants—

Cities in deserts, woods in cities plants.

So that to us no thing, no place is strange,

While his fair bosom is the world’s exchange.

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong without rage; without o’erflowing, full.

Heaven her Eridanus no more shall boast,

Whose fame in thine, like lesser current, lost;

Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove’s abodes,

To shine among the stars and bathe the gods.

Here nature, whether more intent to please

Us or herself, with strange varieties,

(For things of wonder give no less delight

To the wise Maker’s than beholders’ sight;

Though these delights from sev’ral causes move,

For so our children, thus our friends we love),

Wisely she knew the harmony of things,

As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.

Such was the discord which did first disperse

Form, order, beauty, through the universe;

While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,

All that we have, and that we are, subsists;

While the steep, horrid roughness of the wood

Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,

Such huge extremes, when Nature doth unite,

Wonder from thence results, from thence delight.

The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,

That had the self-enamor’d youth gaz’d here,

So fatally deceiv’d he had not been,

While he the bottom, not his face, had seen.

But his proud head the airy mountain hides

Among the clouds; his shoulders and his side

A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows

Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows;

While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,

The common fate of all that’s high or great.

Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac’d,

Between the mountain and the stream embrac’d;

Which shade and shelter from the hill derives,

While the kind river wealth and beauty gives;

And in the mixture of all these appears

Variety, which all the rest endears.

Sir John Denham, 1618–1668.