"Literary Links" - London's Pavement Poets

"Literary Links" is a series of posts celebrating Britain's wonderful links with great authors, dramatists and poets.

If you walk along the South Bank of the River Thames, remember to keep checking the pavement for some poetical paving slabs.  They are in a bad state of repair and their days may be numbered, so enjoy this poetical interlude while you can! 

 One of them is by Henry Luttell (1765-1851), an eloquent and engaging English politician and wit, who described the famous London fogs:

Fast at the dawn of lingering day

It rises of an ashy grey;

Then deepening with a sordid stain

Of yellow like a lion’s mane

From a London Fog 1822  Letters to Julia

The poet William Collins (1721-1759) had written a poem called “ Ode on the death of  Mr. Thomson” (1700-1748) who was also a poet.  This poem, in turn, inspired William Wordsworth (1770-1850)  to write: 

Glide gently.  Thus for ever glide

O Thames!  That other bards may seeAs lovely visions by thy sideAs now fair river! come to me.O, glide fair stream!  For ever so,Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.Remembrance of CollinsComposed upon the Thames near Richmond in 1789

The designer and poet William Morris (1834-1896) wrote:

Forget six counties overhung with smokeForget the snorting steam and piston stroke,Forget the spreading of the hideous town;Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,And dream of London, small, and white, and clean,The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.            From Earthly Paradise

The other paving slabs to hunt for are one by playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), another by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) with his description of a sweaty river Thames and, the most modern, a comic piece by Spike Milligan. 

This is an excerpt from the tour  London River Walk - SouthBank  which explores the path along the south of the River Thames.   The full tour is found on www.obelisktours.co.uk