Near Cowey Stakes is Walton Bridge, on the far side of which is a large pool connected with the river by a channel; here are constantly to be found punt fishers. Turner painted Walton Bridge, and certainly, in some aspects, the place is worthy of being painted. The present bridge is of brick and iron, but the old one was of oak. Walton, like every other place on the Thames, depends greatly on the weather. On days when the cedars are seen against a vivid blue sky and the songs of a thousand birds are heard, when the meadows are lined with flowers, it is beautiful.
Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.
There are other days when the whole is curiously like a platinotype photograph; when the steel-grey water reflects a white sun, and all the countless twigs of the trees are seen in one feathery mass. All colours seem drawn out of the picture, even the green of the grass is turned to dun. Light is everything in estimating beauty, but it is sometimes difficult to realise quite how much one owes to it. We might quote from Cowley's Hymn to the Light:
Thou in the moon's bright chariot proud and gay
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey,
And all the year dost with thee bring