THE GENIUS OF THE THAMES
By
Thomas Love Peacock

PART I

THE moonlight rests, with solemn smile,
On sylvan shore and willowy isle:
While Thames, beneath the imaged beam,
Rolls on his deep and silent stream.
The wasting wind of autumn sighs:
The oak’s discolored foliage flies
The grove, in deeper shadow cast,
Waves darkly in the eddying blast.
All hail, ye breezes, loud and drear,
That peal the death-song of the year!
Your rustling pinions waft around
A voice, that breathes no mortal sound,
And in mysterious accents sings
The flight of time, the change of things.
The seasons pass, in swift career:
Storms close, and zephyrs wake, the year:
The streams roll on, nor e’er return
To fill again their parent urn;
But bounteous nature, kindly-wise,
Their everlasting flow supplies.
Like planets round the central sun,
The rapid wheels of being run,
By laws, from earliest time pursued,
Still changed, still wasted, still renewed.
Reflected in the present scene,
Return the forms that once have been
The present’s varying tints display
The colors of the future day.
By laws, from earliest time pursued,
Still changed, still wasted, still renewed.
Reflected in the present scene,
Return the forms that once have been:
The present’s varying tints display
The colors of the future day.

Ye bards, that, in these secret shades,
These tufted woods, and sloping glades,
Awoke, to charm the sylvan maids,
Your soul-entrancing minstrelsy!
Say, do your spirits yet delight
To rove, beneath the starry night,
Along this water’s margin bright,
Or mid the woodland scenery;
And strike, to notes of tender fire,
With viewless hands, the shadowy lyre,
Till all the wandering winds respire
A wildly-awful symphony?

Hark! from beneath the aged spray,
Where hangs my humbler lyre on high,
Soft music fills the woodlands grey,
And notes aerial warble by!
What flying touch, with elfin spell,
Bids its responsive numbers swell?
Whence is the deep Æolian strain,
That on the wind its changes flings ?
Returns some ancient hard again,
To wake to life the slumbering strings ?
Or breathed the spirit of the scene
The lightly-trembling chords between,
Diffusing his benignant power
On twilight’s consecrated hour

Even now, methinks, in solemn guise,
By yonder willowy islet grey,
I see thee, sedge-crowned Genius! rise,
And point the glories of thy way.
Tall reeds around thy temples play
Thy hair the liquid crystal gems:
To thee I pour the votive lay,
Oh Genius of the silver Thames!

The shepherd-youth, on Yarrow braes,
Of Yarrow stream has sung the praise,
To love and beauty dear:
And long shall Yarrow roll in fame,
Charm with the magic of a name,
And claim the tender tear.
Who has not wept, in pastoral lay
To hear the maiden’s song of woe,
Who mourned her lover snatched away,
And plunged the sounding surge below ?
The maid, who never ceased to weep,
And tell the winds her tale of sorrow,
Till on his breast she sunk to sleep,
Beneath the lonely waves of Yarrow.

The minstrel oft, at evening-fall,
Has leaned on Roxburgh’s ruined wall,
Where, on the wreck of grandeur past,
The wild wood braves the sweeping blast:
And while, beneath the embowering shade,
Swelled, loud and deep, his notes of flame,
Has called the spirits of the glade,
To hear the voice of Teviot’s fame.

While artless love, and spotless truth,
Delight the waking dreams of youth;
While nature’s beauties, softly-wild,
Are dear to nature’s wandering child;
The lyre shall ring, where sparkling Tweed,
By red-stone cliff, and broom-flowered mead,
And ivied walls in fair decay,
Resounds along his rock-strown way.
There oft the bard, at midnight still,
When rove his eerie steps alone,
Shall start to hear, from haunted hill,
The bugle-blast at distance blown:
And oft his raptured eye shall trace,
Amid the visionary gloom,
The foaming courser’s eager pace,
The mail-clad warrior’s crimson plume,
The beacons, blazing broad and far,
The lawless marchmen ranging free,
And all the pride of feudal war,
And pomp of border chivalry.

And Avon too has claimed the lay,
Whose listening wave forgot to stray,
By Shakespeare’s infant reed restrained:
And Severn, whose suspended swell
Felt the dread weight of Merlin’s spell,
When the lone spirits of the dell
Of Arthur’s fall complained.
And sweetly winds romantic Dee,
And Wye’s fair banks all lovely smiles:
But all, oh Thames! submit to thee,
The monarch-stream of Albion’s isle.

From some ethereal throne on high,
Where clouds in nectar-dews dissolve,
The muse shall mark, with eagle-eye,
The world’s diminished orb revolve.
At once her ardent glance shall roll,
From clime to clime, from pole to pole,
O’er waters, curled by zephyr’s wing,
O’er shoreless seas, by whirlwinds tost;
O’er vallies of perennial spring,
And wastes of everlasting frost;
O’er deserts, where the Siroc raves,
And heaves the sand in fiery waves;
O’er caverns of mysterious gloom;
O’er lakes, where peaceful islets bloom,
Like emerald spots, serenely-bright,
Amid a sapphire field of light;
O’er mountain-summits, thunder-riven,
That rear eternal snows to heaven;
O’er rocks, in wild confusion hurled,
And woods, coeval with the world.

Her eye shall thence the course explore
Of every river wandering wide,
From tardy Lena’s frozen shore
To vast La Plata’s sea-like tide.
Where Oby’s barrier-billows freeze,
And Dwina’s waves in snow-chains rest:
Where the rough blast from Arctic seas
Congeals on Volga’s ice-cold breast:
Where Rhine impels his confluent springs
Tumultuous down the Rhætian steep:
Where Danube’s world of waters brings
Its tribute to the Euxine deep:
Where Seine, beneath Lutetian towers,
Leads humbly his polluted stream,
Recalling still the blood-red hours
Of frantic freedom’s transient dream:
Where crowns sweet Loire his fertile soil:
Where Rhone’s impetuous eddies boil:
Where Garonne’s pastoral waves advance,
Responsive to the song and dance,
When the full vintage calls from toil
The youths and maids of southern France:
Where horned Po’s once-raging flood
Now moves with slackened force along,
By hermit-isle and magic wood,
The theme of old chivalric song:
Where yellow Tiber’s turbid tide
In mystic murmurings seems to breathe
Of ancient Rome’s imperial pride,
That passed away, as blasts divide
November’s vapory wreath:
Where proud Tajo’s golden river
Rolls through fruitful realms afar:
Where romantic Guadalquiver
Wakes the thought of Moorish war:
Where Penëus, smoothly-flowing,
Or Mæander’s winding shore,
Charm the pensive wanderer, glowing
With the love of Grecian lore:
Where Alphëus, wildly-falling,
Dashes far the sparkling spray;
In the eternal sound recalling
Lost Arcadia’s heaven-taught lay;
Following dark, in strong commotion,
Through the night of central caves,
Deep beneath the unmingling ocean,
Arethusa’s flying waves:
Where Tigris runs, in rapid maze:
Where swift Euphrates brightly strays;
To whose lone wave the night-breeze sings
A song of half-forgotten days
And old Assyrian kings:
Where, Gangà’s fertile course beside,
The Hindu roves, alone to mourn,
And gaze on heaven’s resplendent pride,
And watch for Veeshnu’s tenth return;
When fraud shall cease, and tyrant power
Torment no more, to ruin hurled,
And peace and love their blessings shower,
O’er all the renovated world:
Where Nile’s mysterious sources sleep:
Where Niger sinks, in sands unknown:
Where Gambia hears, at midnight deep,
Afflicted ghosts for vengeance groan:
Where Mississippi’s giant-stream
Through savage realms impetuous pours:
Where proud Potomac’s cataracts gleam,
Or vast Saint Lawrence darkly roars:
Where Amazon her pomp unfolds
Beneath the equinoctial ray,
And through her drear savannahs holds
Her long immeasurable way:
Where’er in youthful strength they flow,
Or seek old ocean’s wide embrace,
Her eagle-glance the muse shall throw,
And all their pride and power retrace:
Yet, wheresoe’er, from copious urn,
Their bursting torrents flash and shine,
Her eye shall not a stream discern
To vie, oh sacred Thames!  with thine.

Along thy course no pine-clad steep,
No alpine summits, proudly tower:
No woods, impenetrably deep,
O’er thy pure mirror darkly lower:
The orange-grove, the myrtle-bower,
The vine, in rich luxuriance spread;
The charms Italian meadows shower;
The sweets Arabian vallies shed;
The roaring cataract, wild and white;
The lotos-flower, of azure light;
The fields, where ceaseless summer smiles;
The bloom, that decks the Ægëan isles;
The hills, that touch the empyreal plain,
Olympian Jove’s sublime domain;
To other streams all these resign
Still none, oh Thames! shall vie with thine.

For what avails the myrtle-bower,
Where beauty rests at noon-tide hour;
The orange-grove, whose blooms exhale
Rich perfume on the ambient gale;
And all the charms in bright array,
Which happier climes than thine display ?
Ah! what avails, that heaven has rolled
A silver stream o’er sands of gold,
And decked the plain, and reared the grove,
Fit dwelling for primeval love;
If man defile the beauteous scene,
And stain with blood the smiling green;
If man’s worst passions there arise,
To counteract the favoring skies;
If rapine there, and murder reign,
And human tigers prowl for gain,
And tyrants foul, and trembling slaves,
Pollute their shores, and curse their waves ?

Far other charms than these possess,
Oh Thames! thy verdant margin bless:
Where peace, with freedom hand-in-hand,
Walks forth along the sparkling strand,
And cheerful toil, and glowing health,
Proclaim a patriot nation’s wealth.
The blood-stained scourge no tyrants wield:
No groaning slaves invert the field:
But willing labor’s careful train
Crowns all thy banks with waving grain,
With beauty decks thy sylvan shades,
With livelier green invests thy glades,
And grace, and bloom, and plenty, pours
On thy sweet meads and willowy shores.

The plain, where herds unnumbered rove,
The laurelled path, the beechen grove,
The lonely oak’s expansive pride,
The spire, through distant trees descried,
The cot, with woodbine wreathed around,
The field, with waving corn embrowned,
The fall, that turns the frequent mill,
The seat, that crowns the woodland hill,
The sculptured arch, the regal dome,
The fisher’s willow-mantled home,
The classic temple, flower-entwined,
In quick succession charm the mind,
Till, where thy widening current glides
To mingle with the turbid tides,
Thy spacious breast displays unfurled
The ensigns of the assembled world.

Throned in Augusta’s ample port,
Imperial commerce holds her court,
And Britain’s power sublimes:
To her the breath of every breeze
Conveys the wealth of subject seas,
And tributary climes.
Adventurous courage guides the helm
From every port of every realm:
Through gales that rage, and waves that whelm,
Unnumbered vessels ride:
Till all their various ensigns fly,
Beneath Britannia’s milder sky,
Where roves, oh Thames! the patriot’s eye
O’er thy refulgent tide.
The treasures of the earth are thine:
For thee Golcondian diamonds shine:
For thee, amid the dreary mine,
The patient sufferers toil:
Thy sailors roam, a dauntless host,
From northern seas to India’s coast,
And bear the richest stores they boast
To bless their native soil.

O’er states and empires, near and far,
While rolls the fiery surge of war,
Thy country’s wealth and power increase,
Thy vales and cities smile in peace:
And still, before thy gentle gales,
The laden bark of commerce sails;
And down thy flood, in youthful pride,
Those mighty vessels sternly glide,
Destined, amid the tempest’s rattle,
To hurl the thunder-bolt of battle,
To guard, in danger’s hottest hour,
Britannia’s old prescriptive power,
And through winds, floods, and fire, maintain
Her native empire of the main.

The mystic nymph, whose ken sublime
Reads the dark tales of eldest time,
Scarce, through the mist of years, descries
Augusta’s infant glory rise.
A race, from all the world estranged,
Wild as the uncultured plains they ranged,
Here raised of yore their dwellings rude,
Beside the forest-solitude.
For then, as old traditions tell,
Where science now and splendor dwell,
Along the stream’s wild margin spread
A lofty forest’s mazes dread.
None dared, with step profane, impress
Those labyrinths of loneliness,
Where dismal trees, of giant-size,
Entwined their tortuous boughs on high,
Nor hailed the cheerful morn’s uprise,
Nor glowed beneath the evening sky.
The dire religion of the scene
The rustic’s trembling mind alarmed
For oft, the parting boughs between,
‘Twas said, a dreadful form was seen,
Of horrid eye, and threatening mien,
With lightning-brand and thunder armed.
Not there, in sunshine-chequered shade,
The sylvan nymphs and genii strayed;
But horror reigned, and darkness drear,
And silence, and mysterious fear:
And superstitious rites were done,
Those haunted glens and dells among,
That never felt the genial sun,
Nor heard the wild bird’s vernal song:
To gods malign the incense-pyre
Was kindled with unearthly fire,
And human blood had oft bedewed
Their ghastly altars, dark and rude.
There feebly fell, at noon-tide bright,
A dim, discolored, dismal light,
Such as a lamp’s pale glimmerings shed
Amid the mansions of the dead.
The Druid’s self, who dared to lead
The rites barbaric gods decreed,
Beneath the gloom half-trembling stood;
As if he almost feared to mark,
In all his awful terrors dark,
The mighty monarch of the wood.

The Roman came: the blast of war
Re-echoed wide o’er hill and dell:
Beneath the storm, that blazed afar,
The noblest chiefs of Albion fell.
The Druids shunned its rage awhile
In sylvan Mona’s haunted isle,
Till on their groves of ancient oak
The hostile fires of ruin broke,
And circles rude of shapeless stone,
With lichens grey and moss o’ergrown,
Alone remained to point the scene,
Where erst Andraste’s rites had been.
When to the dust their pride was driven
When waste and bare their haunts appeared;
No more the oracles of heaven,
By gods beloved, by men revered,
No refuge left but death or flight,
They rushed, unbidden, to the tomb,
Or veiled their heads in caves of night,
And forests of congenial gloom.

There stalked, in murky darkness wide,
Revenge, despair, and outraged pride:
Funereal songs, and ghastly cries,
Rose to their dire divinities.
Oft, in their feverish dreams, again
Their groves and temples graced the plain;
And stern Andraste’s fiery form
Called from its caves the slumbering storm,
And whelmed, with thunder-rolling hand,
The flying Roman’s impious band.

It chanced, amid that forest’s shade,
That frowned where now Augusta towers,
A Roman youth bewildered strayed,
While swiftly fell the evening hours.
Around his glance inquiring ran:
No trace was there of living man:
Forms indistinct before him flew:
The darkening horror darker grew:
Till night, in death-like stillness felt,
Around those dreary mazes dwelt.
Sudden, a blaze of lurid blue,
That flashed the matted foliage through,
Illumed, as with Tartarean day,
The knotted trunks and branches grey.
Sensations, wild and undefined,
Rushed on the Roman warrior’s mind:
But deeper wonder filled his soul,
When on the dead still air around,
Like symphony from magic ground,
Mysterious music stole:
Such strains as flow, when spirits keep,
Around the tombs where wizards sleep,
Beneath the cypress foliage deep,
The rites of dark solemnity;
And hands unearthly wildly sweep
The chords of elfin melody.
The strains were sad: their changeful swell,
And plaintive cadence, seemed to tell
Of blighted joys, of hopes o’erthrown,
Of mental peace for ever flown,
Of dearest friends, by death laid low,
And tears, and unavailing woe.
Yet something of a sterner thrill
With those sad strains consorted ill,
As if revenge had dared intrude
On hopeless sorrow’s darkest mood.

Guided by those sulphureous rays,
The Roman pierced the forest maze;
Till, through the opening woodland reign,
Appeared an oak-encircled plain,
Where giant boughs expanded high
Their storm-repelling canopy,
And, central in the sacred round,
Andraste’s moss-grown altar frowned.
The mystic flame of lurid blue
There shed a dubious, mournful light,
And half-revealed to human view
The secret majesty of night.
An ancient man, in dark attire,
Stood by the solitary fire:
The varying flame his form displayed,
Half-tinged with light, half-veiled in shade.
His grey hair, gemmed with midnight dew,
Streamed down his robes of sable hue:
His cheeks were sunk: his beard was white:
But his large eyes were fiery-bright,
And seemed through flitting shades to range,
With wild expression, stern and strange.
There, where no wind was heard to sigh,
Nor wandering streamlet murmured by,
While every voice of nature slept,
The harp’s symphonious strings he swept:
Such thrilling tones might scarcely be
The touch of mortal minstrelsy;
Now rolling loud, and deep, and dread,
As if the sound would wake the dead,
Now soft, as if, with tender close,
To bid the parted soul repose.

The Roman youth with wonder gazed
On those dark eyes to heaven upraised,
Where struggling passions wildly shone,
With fearful lustre, not their own.
Awhile irresolute he stood:
At length he left the sheltering wood,
And moved towards the central flame:
But, ere his lips the speech could frame,
— “And who art thou ? “ —the Druid cried,
While flashed his burning eye-balls wide,—
“Whose steps unhallowed boldly press
This sacred grove’s profound recess ?
Ha!  by my injured country’s doom!
I know the hated arms of Rome.
Through this dark forest’s pathless way
Andraste’s self thy steps has led,
To perish on her altars grey,
A grateful offering to the dead.
Oh goddess stern! one victim more
To thee his vital blood shall pour,
And shades of heroes, hovering nigh,
Shall joy to see a Roman die!
With that dread plant that none may name,
I feed the insatiate fire of fate:
Roman! with this tremendous flame
Thy head to hell I consecrate!” —
And, snatching swift a blazing brand,
He dashed it in the Roman’s face,
And seized him with a giant’s hand,
And dragged him to the altar’s base,
Though worn by time and adverse fate,
Yet strength unnaturally great
He gathered then from deadly hate
And superstitious zeal:
A dire religion’s stern behest
Alone his phrensied soul possessed;
Already o’er his victim’s breast
Hung the descending steel.

The scene, the form, the act, combined,
A moment on the Roman’s mind
An enervating influence poured:
But to himself again restored,
Upspringing light, he grasped his foe,
And checked the meditated blow,
And on the Druid’s breast repelled
The steel his own wild fury held.
The vital stream flowed fast away,
And stained Andraste’s altars grey.

More ghastly pale his features dire
Gleamed in that blue funereal fire:
The death-mists from his brow distilled:
But still his eyes strange lustre filled,
That seemed to pierce the secret springs
Of unimaginable things.
No longer, with malignant glare,
Revenge unsated glistened there,
And deadly rage, and stern despair:
All trace of evil passions fled,
He seemed to commune with the dead,
And draw from them, without alloy,
The raptures of prophetic joy.
A sudden breeze his temples fanned:
His harp, untouched by human hand,
Sent forth a sound, a thrilling sound,
That rang through all the mystic round
The incense-flame rose broad and bright,
In one wide stream of meteor-light.
He knew what power illumed the blaze,
What spirit swept the strings along:
Full on the youth his kindling gaze
He fixed, and poured his soul in song.

Roman! life’s declining tide
From my bosom ebbs apace:
Vengeance have the gods denied
For the ruin of my race.
Triumph not: in night compressed,
Yet the northern tempests rest,
Doomed to burst, in fatal hour,
On the pride of Roman power.

Sweetly beams the morning ray:
Proudly falls the noon-tide glow:
See! beneath the closing day,
Storm-clouds darken, whirlwinds blow!
Sun-beams gild the tranquil shore:
Hark! the midnight breakers roar!
O’er the deep, by tempests torn,
Shrieks of shipwrecked souls are borne!

Queen of earth, imperial Rome
Rules, in boundless way confessed,
From the day-star’s orient dome
To the limits of the west.
Proudest work of mortal hands,
The Eternal City stands:
Bound in her all-circling sphere,
Monarchs kneel, and nations fear.

Hark! the stream of ages raves:
Gifted eyes its course behold:
Down its all-absorbing waves
Mightiest chiefs and kings are rolled.
Every work of human pride,
Sapped by that eternal tide,
Shall the raging current sweep
Tow’rds oblivion’s boundless deep.

Confident in wide control,
Rome beholds that torrent flow,
Heedless how the waters roll,
Wasting, mining, as they go.
That sure torrent saps at length
Walls of adamantine strength:
Down its eddies wild shall pass
Domes of marble, towers of brass.

As the sailor’s fragile bark,
Beaten by the adverse breeze,
Sinks afar, and leaves no mark
Of its passage o’er the seas;
So shall Rome’s colossal sway
In the lapse of time decay,
Leaving of her ancient fame
But the memorv of a name.

Vainly raged the storms of Gaul
Round dread Jove’s Tarpeian dome:
See in flames the fabric fall!
‘Tis the funeral pyre of Rome!
Red-armed vengeance rushes forth
In the whirlwinds of the north:
From her hand the sceptre riven
To transalpine realms is given.

Darkness veils the stream of time,
As the wrecks of Rome dissolve:
Years of anarchy and crime
In barbaric night revolve.
From the rage of feudal strife
Peace and freedom spring to life,
Where the morning sun-beams smile
On the sea-god’s favorite isle.

Hail! all hail! my native land!
Long thy course of glory keep:
Long thy sovereign sails expand
O’er the subjugated deep!
When of Rome’s unbounded reign
Dust and shade alone remain,
Thou thy head divine shalt raise,
Through interminable days.

Death-mists hover:  voices rise:
I obey the summons dread:
On the stone my life-blood dyes
Sinks to rest my weary head.
Far from scenes of night and woe,
To eternal groves I go,
Where for me my brethren wait
By Andraste’s palace-gate.

THE GENIUS OF THE THAMES
PART II

Quidquid sol oriens, quidquid et occidens
Novit; cæru1eis oceanus fretis
Quidquid vel veniens vel fugiens lavat,
Ætas Pegaseo conripiet gradu.
SENECA

THE GENIUS OF THE THAMES

PART II

OH Genius of that sacred urn,
Adored by all the Naiad train!
Once more my wandering steps return
To trace the precincts of thy reign:
Once more, amid my native plain,
I roam thy devious course along,
And in the oaken shade again
Awake to thee the votive song.
Dear stream! while far from thee I strayed,
The woods, that crown my natal glade,
Have mourned on all the winds of heaven
Their yellow faded foliage driven;
And winter, with tempestuous roar,
Descending on thy wasted shore,
Has seen thy turbid current flow
A deluge of dissolving snow.

But now, in spring’s more soft control,
Thy troubled waves subside,
And through a narrower channel roll
A brighter, gentler tide.
Emerging now in light serene,
The meadows spread their robes of green,
The weeping willow droops to lave
Its leafy tresses in the wave;
The poplar and the towering pine
Their hospitable shade combine;
And, flying like the flying day,
The silent river rolls away.

Not here, in dreadful grandeur piled,
The mountain’s pathless masses rise,
Where wandering fancy’s lonely child
Might meet the spirit of the skies:
Not here, from misty summits hoar,
Where shattered firs are rooted strong,
With headlong force and thundering roar
The bursting torrent foams along:
Sublime the charms such scenes contain:
For nature on her mountain reign
Delights the treasures to dispense
Of all her wild magnificence:
But thou art sweet, my native stream!
Thy waves in liquid lustre play,
And glitter in the morning beam,
And chime to rest the closing day:
While the vast mountain’s dizzy steep
The whirlwind’s eddying rage assails,
The gentlest zephyrs softly sweep
The verdure of thy sheltered vales:
While o’er the wild and whitening seas
The unbridled north triumphant roars,
Thy stream scarce ripples in the breeze,
That bends the willow on thy shores:
And thus, while war o’er Europe flings
Destruction from his crimson wings,
While Danube’s wasted banks around
The steps of mingling foes resound,
Thy pure waves wash a stainless soil,
To crown a patriot people’s toil.

Yet on these shores, in elder days,
Arose the battle’s maddening blaze:
Even here, where now so softly swells
The music of the village-bells,
The painted savage rolled to war
The terrors of the scythed car,
And wide around, with fire and sword,
The devastating Roman poured:
Here shouted o’er the battle-plain
The Pict, the Saxon, and the Dane:
And many a long succeeding year
Saw the fierce Norman’s proud career,
The deadly hate of feudal foes,
The stain that dyed the pallid rose,
And all the sanguinary spoil
Of foreign and intestine broil.

But now, through banks from strife remote,
Thy crystal waters wind along,
Responsive to the wild bird’s note,
Or lonely boatman’s careless song.
Oh ne’er may thy sweet echoes swell
Again with war’s demoniac yell!
Oh! ne’er again may civil strife
Here aim the steel at kindred life!
Ne’er may those deeds of night and crime,
That stain the rolls of feudal time,
Again pollute these meads and groves,
Where science dwells, and beauty roves!
And should some foreign tyrant’s band
Descend to waste the beauteous land,
Thy swelling current, eddying red,
Shall roll away the impious dead.

Let fancy lead, from Trewsbury Mead,
With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep,
Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep,
To where the wide-expanding Nore
Beholds thee, with tumultuous roar,
Conclude thy devious race,
And rush, with Medway’s confluent wave,
To seek, where mightier billows rave,
Thy giant-sire’s embrace.

Where Kemble’s wood-embosomed spire
Adorns the solitary glade,
And ancient trees, in green attire,
Diffuse a deep and pleasant shade,
Thy bounteous urn, light-murmuring, flings
The treasures of its infant springs,
And fast, beneath its native hill,
Impels the silver-sparkling rill,
With flag-flowers fringed and whispering reeds,
Along the many-colored meads.
Thames! when, beside thy secret source
Remembrance points the mighty course
Thy defluent waters keep;
Advancing, with perpetual flow,
Through banks still widening as they go,
To mingle with the deep;
Emblemed in thee, my thoughts survey
Unruffled childhood’s peaceful hours,
And blooming youth’s delightful way
Through sunny fields and roseate bowers;
And thus the scenes of life expand
Till death draws forth, with steady hand,
Our names from his capacious urn;
And dooms alike the base and good,
To pass that all-absorbing flood,
O’er which is no return.

Whence is the ample stream of time?
Can fancy’s mightiest spell display,
Where first began its flow sublime,
Or where its onward waves shall stray?
What gifted hand shall pierce the clouds
Oblivion’s fatal magic rears,
And lift the sable veil, that shrouds
The current of the distant years ?
The sage with doubt the past surveys,
Through mists which memory half dispels:
And on the course of future days
Impenetrable darkness dwells.
The present rolls in light: awhile
We hail its evanescent smile,
Rejoicing as it flies:
Ephemera on the summer-stream,
Heedless of the descending beam,
And distant lowering skies.
False joys, with fading flowerets crowned,
And hope, too late delusive found,
And fancy’s meteor-ray,
And all the passions, light and vain,
That fill ambition’s fatal train,
Attend our downward way.
Some struggle on, by tempests driven:
To some a gentler course is given:
All down the self-same stream are rolled:
Their day is passed—their tale is told.

Youth	flies, as bloom forsakes the grove,
When icy winter blows:
And transient are the smiles of love,
As dew-drops on the rose.
Nor may we call those things our own,
Which, ere the new-born day be flown,
By chance, or fraud, or lawless might,
Or sterner death’s supreme award,
Will change their momentary lord,
And own another’s right.
As oceans now o’er quicksands roar,
Where fields and hamlets smiled of yore;
As now the purple heather blows,
Where once impervious forests rose;
So perish from the burthened ground
The monuments of human toil:
Where cities shone, where castles frowned,
The careless ploughman turns the soil.

How many a chief, whose kindling mind
Convulsed this earthly scene,
Has sunk, forgotten by mankind,
As though he ne’er had been!
Even so the chiefs of modern days,
On whom admiring nations gaze,
Shall sink, by common fate oppressed:
Their name, their place remembered not
Not one grey stone to point the spot
Of their eternal rest.

Flow proudly, Thames! the emblem bright
And witness of succeeding years!
Flow on, in freedom’s sacred light,
Nor stained with blood, nor swelled with tears.
Sweet is thy course, and clear, and still,
By Ewan’s old neglected mill:
Green shores thy narrow stream confine,
Where blooms the modest eglantine,
And hawthorn-boughs o’ershadowing spread,
To canopy thy infant bed.
Now peaceful hamlets wandering through,
And fields in beauty ever new,
Where Lechlade sees thy current strong
First waft the unlaboring bark along;
Thy copious waters hold their way
Tow’rds Radcote’s arches, old and grey,
Where triumphed erst the rebel host,
When hapless Richard’s hopes were lost,
And Oxford sought, with humbled pride,
Existence from thy guardian tide.

The wild-flower waves, in lonely bloom,
On Godstow’s desolated wall:
There thin shades flit through twilight gloom,
And murmured accents feebly fall.
The aged hazel nurtures there
Its hollow fruit, so seeming fair,
And lightly throws its humble shade,
Where Rosamonda’s form is laid.
The rose of earth, the sweetest flower
That ever graced a monarch’s breast,
In vernal beauty’s loveliest hour,
Beneath that sod was laid to rest.
In vain, the bower of love around,
The Dædalëan path was wound:
Alas! that jealous hate should find
The clue for love alone designed!

The venomed bowl,—the mandate dire,—
The menaced steel’s uplifted glare,—
The tear, that quenched the blue eye’s fire, —
The humble, ineffectual prayer:—
All these shall live, recorded long
In tragic and romantic song,
And long a moral charm impart,
To melt and purify the heart.
A nation’s gem, a monarch’s pride,
In youth, in loveliness, she died:
The morning sun’s ascending ray
Saw none so fair, so blest, so gay:
Ere evening came, her funeral knell
Was tolled by Godstow’s convent bell.

The marble tomb, the illumined shrine.
Their unavailing splendor gave:
Where slept in earth the maid divine,
The votive silk was seen to wave.
To her, as to a martyred saint,
His vows the weeping pilgrim poured
The drooping traveller, sad and faint,
Knelt there, and found his strength restored
To that fair shrine, in solemn hour,
Fond youths and blushing maidens came,
And gathered from its mystic power
A brighter, purer, holier flame:
The lightest heart with awe could feel
The charm her hovering spirit shed:
But superstition’s impious zeal
Distilled its venom on the dead!

The illumined shrine has passed away:
The sculptured stone in dust is laid:
But when the midnight breezes play
Amid the barren hazel’s shade,
The lone enthusiast, lingering near,
The youth whom slighted passion grieves,
Through fancy’s magic spell may hear
A spirit in the whispering leaves;
And dimly see, while mortals sleep,
Sad forms of cloistered maidens move,
The transient dreams of life to weep,
The fading flowers of youth and love!

Now, rising o’er the level plain,
Mid academic groves enshrined,
The Gothic tower, the Grecian fane,
Ascend, in solemn state combined.
Science, beneath those classic spires,
Illumes her watch-lamp’s orient fires,
And pours its everlasting rays
On archives of primeval days.
To her capacious view unfurled,
The mental and material world
Their secrets deep display:
She measures nature’s ample plan,
To hold the light of truth to man,
And guide his erring way.

Oh sun-crowned science! child of heaven!
To wandering man by angels given!
Still, nymph divine! on mortal sight
Diffuse thy intellectual light,
Till all the nations own thy sway,
And drink with joy the streams of day!
Yet lovest thou, maid! alone to rove
In cloister dim, or polished grove,
Where academic domes are seen
Emerging grey through foliage green ?
Oh! hast thou not thy hermit seat,
Embosomed deep in mountains vast,
Where some fair valley’s still retreat
Repels the north’s impetuous blast ?
The falling stream there murmurs by:
The tufted pine waves broad and high:
And musing silence sits beneath,
Where scarce a zephyr bends the heath,
And hears the breezes, loud and strong,
Resound the topmost boughs among.
There peace her vestal lamp displays,
Undimmed by mad ambition’s blaze,
And shuns, in the sequestered glen,
The storms that shake the haunts of men,
Where mean intrigue, and sordid gain,
And phrensied war’s ensanguined reign,
And narrow cares and wrathful strife,
Dry up the sweetest springs of life.

Oh! might my steps, that darkly roam,
Attain at last thy mountain home,
And rest, from earthly trammels free,
With peace, and liberty, and thee!
Around while faction’s tempests sweep,
Like whirlwinds o’er the wintry deep,
And, down the headlong vortex torn,
The vain, misjudging crowd is borne;
‘Twere sweet to mark, re-echoing far,
The rage of the eternal war,
That dimly heard, at distance swelling,
Endears, but not disturbs, thy dwelling.

But sweeter yet, oh trebly sweet!
Were those blest paths of calm retreat,
Might mutual love’s endearing smile
The lonely hours of life beguile!
Love, whose celestial breath exhales
Fresh fragrance on the vernal gales:
Whose starry torch and kindling eye
Add lustre to the summer sky:
Whose voice of music cheers the day,
When autumn’s wasting breezes sway;
Whose magic flame the bosom warms,
When freezing winter wakes in storms!

Not in the glittering halls of pride,
Where spleen and sullen pomp reside,
Around though Paphian odors breathe,
And fashion twines her fading wreath,
Young fancy wakes her native grace,
Nor love elects his dwelling-place.
But in the lone, romantic dell,
Where the rural virtues dwell,
Where the sylvan genii roam,
Mutual love may find a home.
Hope, with raptured eye, is there,
Weaving wreaths of pictured air:
Smiling fancy there is found,
Tripping light on fairy ground,
Listening oft, in pine-walks dim,
To the wood-nymph’s evening hymn.

But whither roams the devious song,
While Thames, unheeded, flows along,
And, sinking o’er the level mead,
The classic domes and spires recede ?
The dashing oar the wave divides:
The light bark down the current glides:
The furrowed stream, that round it curls,
In many a murmuring eddy whirls.
Succeeding each as each retires,
Wood-mantled hills, and tufted spires,
Groves, villas, islets, cultured plains,
Towers, cities, palaces, and fanes,
As holds the stream its swift career,
Arise, and pass, and disappear.

O’er Nuneham Courtnay’s flowery glades
Soft breezes wave their fragrant wings,
And still, amid the haunted shades,
The tragic harp of Mason rings.
Yon votive urn, yon drooping flowers,
Disclose the minstrel’s favorite bowers,
Where first he tuned, in sylvan peace,
To British themes the lyre of Greece.
Delight shall check the expanded sail
In woody Marlow’s winding vale:
And fond regret for scenes so fair
With backward gaze shall linger there,
Till rise romantic Hedsor’s hills,
And Cliefdens’s groves, and springs, and rills,
Where hapless Villars, doomed to prove
The ills that wait on lawless love,
In festal mirth, and choral song,
Impelled the summer-hours along,
Nor marked, where scowled expectant by
Despair, and shame, and poverty.

The Norman king’s embattled towers
Look proudly o’er the subject plain,
Where, deep in Windsor’s regal bowers,
The sylvan muses hold their reign.
From groves of oak, whose branches hoar
Have heard primeval tempests roar,
Beneath the moon’s pale ray they pass
Along the shore’s unbending grass,
And songs of gratulation raise,
To speak a patriot monarch’s praise.

Sweetly, on yon poetic hill,
Strains of unearthly music breathe,
Where Denham’s spirit, hovering still,
Weaves his wild harp’s aërial wreath.
And sweetly, on the mead below,
The fragrant gales of summer blow:
While flowers shall spring, while Thames shall flow,
That mead shall live in memory,
Where valor, on the tented field,
Triumphant raised his patriot shield,
The voice of truth to kings revealed,
And broke the chains of tyranny.

The stream expands: the meadows fly:
The stately swan sails proudly by:
Full, clear, and bright, with devious flow,
The rapid waters murmuring go.
Now open Twitnam’s classic shores,
Where yet the moral muse deplores
Her Pope’s unrivalled lay:
Unmoved by wealth, unawed by state,
He held to scorn the little great,
And taught life’s better way.
Though tasteless folly’s impious hand
Has wrecked the scenes his genius planned;—
Though low his fairy grot is laid,
And lost his willow’s pensive shade;—
Yet shall the ever-murmuring stream,
That lapt his soul in fancy’s dream,
Its vales with verdure cease to crown,
Ere fade one ray of his renown.

Fair groves, and villas glittering bright,
Arise on Richmond’s beauteous height;
Where yet fond echo warbles o’er
The heaven-taught songs she learned of yore.
From mortals veiled, mid waving reeds,
The airy lyre of Thomson sighs,
And whispers to the hills and meads:
In yonder grave a Druid lies!
The seasons there, in fixed return,
Around their minstrel’s holy urn
Perennial chaplets twine:
Oh I never shall their changes greet,
Immortal bard! a song more sweet,
A soul more pure than thine!
Oh Thames in conscious glory glide
By those fair piles that crown thy tide,
Where, worn with toil, from tumult far,
The veteran hero rests from war.
Here, marked by many a well-fought field,
On high the soldier hangs his shield;
The seaman there has furled his sail,
Long rent by many an adverse gale.
Remembered perils, braved and past,—
The raging fight, the whelming blast,
The hidden rock, the stormy shore,
The mountain-breaker’s deepening roar,—
Recalled by fancy’s spell divine,
Endear their evening’s calm decline,
And teach their children, listening near,
To emulate their sires’ career.

But swiftly urge the gliding bark,
By yon stern walls and chambers dark,
Where guilt and woe, in night concealed,
Unthought, unwitnessed, unrevealed,
Through lengthened ages scowling stood,
Mid shrieks of death, and tears of blood.
No heart may think, no tongue declare,
The fearful mysteries hidden there:
Justice averts her trembling eye,
And mercy weeps, and hastens by.

Long has the tempest’s rage been spent
On yon unshaken battlement,
Memorial proud of days sublime,
Whose splendor mocks the power of time.
There, when the distant war-storm roared,
While patriot thousands round her poured,
The British heroine grasped her sword,
To trace the paths of victory
But in the rage of naval fight,
The island-genius reared his might,
And stamped, in characters of light.
His own immortal destiny.

Ascending dark, on uplands brown,
The ivied walls of Hadleigh frown:
High on the lonely mouldering tower
Forms of departed ages lower.
But deeper, broader, louder, glide
The waves of the descending tide;
And soon, where winds unfettered roar,
Where Medway seeks the opening Nore
Where breakers lash the dark-red steep,
The barks of Britain stem the deep.

Oh king of streams! when, wandering slow,
I trace thy current’s ceaseless flow,
And mark, with venerating gaze,
Reflected on thy liquid breast,
The monuments of ancient days,
Where sages, bards, and statesmen rest:
Who, waking erst the ethereal mind,
Instructed, charmed, and blessed mankind
The rays of fancy pierce the gloom
That shrouds the precincts of the tomb,
And call again to life and light
The forms long wrapped in central night.
From abbies grey and castles old,
Through mouldering portals backward rolled,
Glide dimly forth, with silent tread,
The shades of the illustrious dead.
Still dear to them their native shore,
The woods and fields they loved of yore;
And still, by farthest realms revered,
Subsists the rock-built tower they reared,
Though lightnings round its summit glow,
And foaming surges burst below.

Thames I have roamed, at evening hours,
Near beauteous Richmond’s courtly bowers,
When, mild and pale, the moon-beams fell
On hill and islet, grove and dell;
And many a skiff, with fleecy sail
Expanded to the western gale,
Traced on thy breast, serenely-bright,
The lengthening line of silver light;
And many an oar, with measured dash
Accordant to the boatman’s song,
Bade thy pellucid surface flash,
And whirl, in glittering rings, along;
While from the broad and dripping blade
The clear drops fell, in sparkling showers,
Bright as the crystal gems, displayed
In Amphitrite’s coral bowers.
There beauty wooed the breeze of night,
Beneath the silken canopy,
And touched, with flying fingers light,
The thrilling chords of melody.
It seemed, that music’s inmost soul
Was breathed upon the wandering airs,
Charming to rest, with sweet control,
All human passions, pains, and cares.
Enthusiast voices joined the sound,
And poured such soothing strains around
That well might ardent fancy deem,
The sylphs had led their viewless band,
To warble o’er the lovely stream
The sweetest songs of fairyland.
Now, breathing wild, with raptured swell,
They floated o’er the silent tide;
Now, soft and low, the accents fell,
And, seeming mystic tales to tell,
In heavenly murmurs died.

Yet that sweet scene of pensive joy
Gave mournful recollections birth,
And called to fancy’s wild employ
The certain destinies of earth.
I seemed to hear, in wakening thought,
While those wild minstrel accents rung,
Whate’er historic truth had taught,
Or philosophic bards had sung.
Methought a voice, severe and strange,
Whispered of fate, and time, and change,
And bade my wandering mind recall,
How nations rise, and fade, and fall.

Thus fair, of old, Euphrates rolled,
By Babylon’s imperial site:
The lute’s soft swell, with magic spell,
Breathed rapture on the listening night:
Love-whispering youths and maidens fair
In festal pomp assembled there,
Where to the stream’s responsive moan
The desert-gale now sighs alone.

Still changeless, through the fertile plain,
Araxes, loud-resounding, flows,
Where gorgeous despots fixed their reign,
And Chil-minar’s proud domes arose.
High on his gem-emblazoned throne
Sate kneeling Persia’s earthly god:
Fair slaves and satraps round him shone,
And nations trembled at his nod:
The mighty voice of Asia’s fate
Went forth from every golden gate.
Now pensive steps the wrecks explore,
That skirt the solitary shore:
The time-worn column mouldering falls,
And tempests rock the roofless walls.

Perchance, when many a distant year,
Urged by the hand of fate, has flown,
Where moonbeams rest on ruins drear,
The musing sage may rove alone;
And many an awful thought sublime
May fill his soul, when memory shews,
That there, in days of elder time,
The world’s metropolis arose;
Where now, by mouldering walls, he sees
The silent Thames unheeded flow,
And only hears the river-breeze,
Through reeds and willows whispering low.

Where are the states of ancient fame ?
Athens, and Sparta’s victor- name,
And all that propped, in war and peace,
The arms, and nobler arts, of Greece ?
All-grasping Rome, that proudly hurled
Her mandates o’er the prostrate world,
Long heard mankind her chains deplore,
And fell, as Carthage fell before.

Is this the crown, the final meed,
To man’s sublimest toils decreed ?
Must all, from glory’s radiant height,
Descend alike the paths of night ?
Must she, whose voice of power resounds
On utmost ocean’s loneliest bounds,
In darkness meet the whelming doom
That crushed the sovereign strength of Rome,
And o’er the proudest states of old
The storms of desolation rolled ?

Time, the foe of man’s dominion,
Wheels around in ceaseless flight,
Scattering from his hoary pinion
Shades of everlasting night.
Still, beneath his frown appalling,
Man and all his works decay
Still, before him, swiftly-falling,
Kings and kingdoms pass away.

Cannot the hand of patriot zeal,
The heart that seeks the public weal,
The comprehensive mind,
Retard awhile the storms of fate,
That, swift or slow, or soon or late,
Shall hurl to ruin every state,
And leave no trace behind ?

Oh Britain! oh my native land!
To science, art, and freedom dear!
Whose sails o’er farthest seas expand,
And brave the tempest’s dread career!
When comes that hour, as come it must,
That sinks thy glory in the dust,
May no degenerate Briton live,
Beneath a stranger’s chain to toil,
And to a haughty conqueror give
The produce of thy sacred soil!
Oh! dwells there one, on all thy plains,
If British blood distend his veins,
Who would not burn thy fame to save,
Or perish in his country’s grave ?

Ah! sure, if skill and courage true
Can check destruction’s headlong way,
Still shall thy power its course pursue,
Nor sink, but with the world’s decay.
Long as the cliff that girds thine isle
The bursting surf of ocean stems,
Shall commerce, wealth, and plenty smile
Along the silver-eddying Thames:
Still shall thine empire’s fabric stand,
Admired and feared from land to land,
Through every circling age renewed,
Unchanged, unshaken, unsubdued;
As rocks resist the wildest breeze,
That sweeps thy tributary seas.