heart filled with a sweet trouble, perplext by Running 

 a strange ache. It would be the Ouse at its Waters, 

 loveliest, on a rare day, in an hour of the 

 hours, flowing in midsummer -air fragrant 

 with meadow-hay and wild-roses. It would 

 be an Ouse more beautiful still : it would be 

 subtly present in 'the quiet waters' of the 

 Psalmist, wherever the painter limned that 

 delicate unrest, wherever the poet sang of the 

 Stream's Secret. It would be, for him, the 

 archetype of the flowing stream : the river. 



And so, each will have his preference, if it 

 be only one of temperament rather than of 

 sentiment. The deep, broad, swirling river 

 has its incalculable fascination. Its mysterious 

 volume, so great a flood from perhaps so in- 

 significant a source, from mayhap some shallow 

 pool among stagnant marsh-lands with nothing 

 of stir or motion but the hovering dragon-fly, 

 the wheeling and wailing lapwing, and the 

 slow, voiceless passage of wayfaring cloud : 

 its devious way, like an interminable procession 

 or the continuous winding column of an army 

 seen from a great height : its arrivals and 

 departures at quiet towns and noisy and de- 

 filing cities : its destiny, its ultimate blending 

 with the devouring tide and the overrunning 

 wave ... all this has become the common- 

 place of the poet and the romancist. Thames 



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