The tyrant Harry felt love's softening flame,
And sighing breathed his Anna Boleyn's name.
A bit of doggerel just about worthy of the occasion!
A more interesting association, though one that leads us rather far from the river, is Milton's residence at Horton. He lived here with his parents for five years after leaving Cambridge, and no doubt his rambles over country which would not then be hedged in and cut up as it is now, often led him in the direction of the river. It was this scenery, noted at those deeply impressionable years, that he could still see when earthly sight was gone.
Lycidas and Comus were both written in the next four or five years, and in
The willows and the hazel copses green
we have a touch of real nature breaking through the conventional allusions to vines and wild thyme; also:
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;