Thames quotes

The Knight in the triumph of his heart made several 6 reflections on thegreatness of the British Nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of Popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that theThames was thenoblest river in Europe; that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the Seven Wonders of the World; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

-Joseph Addison
  In The Spectator, no.383, 20 May.

Crossing the striplingThames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 32 As the slow punt swings round.

- Matthew Arnold
  Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.74^6.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparklingThames: Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife Fly hence, our contact fear!

- Matthew Arnold
  Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.201^6.

The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley downs, The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames. 33

- Matthew Arnold
  New Poems,'Thyrsis', l.14^15. The poem is an elegy for his friend  Arthur Hugh Clough, who drowned in1861.

I wander through each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

-William Blake
  Songs of Experience,'London'.

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. See Marvell 556:62.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  The Waste Land, pt.3,'The Fire Sermon'.

The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of theThames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pupils might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctityand truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

- Edward Gibbon
^88  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.52.

Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames That so did take Eliza, and our James!

- Ben Jonson
  'To the Memory of My Beloved,  the  Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us', prefatorydedicationto the first folio of Shakespeare's plays.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

- Edmund Spenser
  Prothalamion, l.1.

It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs Chevenix's shop, and it is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows with filigree hedges†barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer move under my window† Thank God! theThames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry.

- Horace, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole
  Of Strawberry Hill, the first'Gothic'cottage, a showplace in its day. Letter to Henry Seymour Conway, 8 Jun. InW S Lewis (ed) Selected Letters of HoraceWalpole (1973). Mrs Chevenix kept a well-known toy-shop.

I call him Jordan and it will do. He has no other name before or after.What was there to call him, fished as he was from the stinkingThames? A child can't be called Thames, no and not Nile either, for all his likeness to Moses.But I wanted to give hima river name, a name not bound to anything, just as the waters aren't bound to anything.

-Jeanette Winterson
  Sexing the Cherry.