21.05.2007, 13:00
To the Thames at Westminster, in Recollection of the Banks of the Same River at Caversham, near Reading
With no cold admiration do I gaze
Upon thy pomp of waters, matchless stream!
But home-sick fancy kindles with the beam
That on thy lucid bosom coyly plays;
And glides delighted through thy crystal ways
Till on her eye those wave-fed poplars gleam,
Beneath whose shade her first etherial maze
She fashioned; where she traced in clearest dream
Thy mirrored curse of wood-enshrined repose
Besprend with island haunts of spirits bright;
And widening on – till, at the vision’s close,
Great London, only then a name of might
for childish thought to build on, proudly rose
A rock-throned city clad in heavenly light.
With no cold admiration do I gaze
Upon thy pomp of waters, matchless stream!
But home-sick fancy kindles with the beam
That on thy lucid bosom coyly plays;
And glides delighted through thy crystal ways
Till on her eye those wave-fed poplars gleam,
Beneath whose shade her first etherial maze
She fashioned; where she traced in clearest dream
Thy mirrored curse of wood-enshrined repose
Besprend with island haunts of spirits bright;
And widening on – till, at the vision’s close,
Great London, only then a name of might
for childish thought to build on, proudly rose
A rock-throned city clad in heavenly light.