Yet the fountain’s low singing is heard over all.
There is no place, one can see from reading Charles Lamb, which he loved more than the Temple to wander in. ‘What a transition for a country-man visiting London for the first time,’ he remarks in his Essays, ‘the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent, ample squares, its classic green recesses!... What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I had made to rise and fall, how many times!’ Among the Temple trees there was formerly a colony of rooks, brought there by Sir Edward Northey, a well-known lawyer in the time of Queen Anne, from his house at Epsom. The thought had in it a touch of humour. The rook, both in his plumage as well as in his habits, is a legal bird: he is strongly addicted to discussions, lives in communities, and has altogether the grave appearance of a ‘learned brother.’ But these rooks have ceased to assemble in the Temple Gardens for many years.
For a long time, also, a favourite residence of rooks was that beautiful tree which still stands at the left-hand corner of Wood Street, on turning out of Cheapside. As late as 1845, two new nests were built there; and a trace of them is still visible. The spot where the tree stands marks the site of the church of St Peter-in-Cheap, a church destroyed by the Great Fire. The terms of the lease of the low houses at this west corner, with their frontage in Cheapside, forbid the erection of another story, it is said, or the removal of this tree. Is it possible that Wordsworth, passing one summer day down Cheapside, observed the tree, and gained the inspiration which led to the Reverie of Poor Susan?
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud—it has sung for three years;
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the bird.
’Tis a note of enchantment. What ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,