'Nor yet, my Delia, to the main Runs the sweet tide without a stain, Unsullied as it seems; The nymphs of many a sable flood Deform with streaks of oozy mud The bosom of the Thames.' Happily, this is about the only word of depreciation which the poets have permitted themselves. Wordsworth, standing on Westminster Bridge in 1803, notes that 'the river glideth at its own sweet will,' and if his olfactory nerves were at all distressed he has not said so in verse. Of later singers, none has been more enthusiastic about the Thames than Eliza Cook, who has told us that, though it bears no azure wave and rejoices in no leaping cascades, yet she ever loved to dwell where she heard its gushing swell--in which expression, we may be sure, there is no allusion to the British 'dude.' Another lady--Mrs. Isa Craig Knox--has supplied a very pretty description of the Thames in its more idyllic phases, pointing out how 'It glimmers Through the stems of the beeches; Through the screen of the willows it shimmers In long-winding reaches; Flowing so softly that scarcely It seems to be flowing; But the reeds of the low little island Are bent to its going; And soft as the breath of a sleeper Its heaving and sighing, In the coves where the fleets of the lilies At anchor are lying.' Finally, there is that austere teacher, Mr. Aubrey de Vere, who, addressing the Thames, exhorts it to go on soothing, 'With murmur low and ceaseless cheer, The Imperial City's agitated ear,' but beseeches it also to add a warning voice, telling her, to whom the pomp of gold is dear, of 'Tyre that fell, of Fortune's perfidy.' Other poetic celebrations--such as those of Mr. Ernest Myers, Mr. Ashby-Sterry, and 'C. C. R.'--might be recorded; but the above will suffice to show how prominent a place the Thames has always held in the heart and mind of those poets who have come within the sphere of its influence. Even if it were never made the subject of a future song, it would still figure largely and conspicuously in the British _corpus poetarum_. ENGLISH EPIGRAPHS.