"There's indeed something stirring about the relationship of London poets, and London writers, to the Thames. We may think of Chaucer himself, of More, of Milton, of Pope, all haunting the same riverside streets - all living at various epochs within a hundred yards or so of each other, and all living in later life by the water. There is the artist Turner, too, the great Londoner and observer of the river; we can trace Turner quoting Pope on the Thames, Pope quoting Milton, and Milton quoting Chaucer. There is a continuity, inspired and maintained by the river itself.
And in that hallowed London company we can also glimpse the form of william Blake, for whom the Thames was the river of eternity. He lived beside it at Lambeth, where at Hercules Buildings he could see over the marshes to the water. He crossed the newly built Waterloo Bridge every time he wanted to enter the city, and particularly marked the presence of the Albion Mills on that bridge's approach. They became the 'blackened mills' of his poetry. he died by the river, too, in Fountain Court off the Strand. Visitors to his lodging there remarked upon the river gleaming at the end of the alley. Blake himself described it as 'like a bar of gold'. A twentieth century poet, George Barker, was made aware of Blake's presence on the river. In Calamityterror (1937) he records a vision of
The figure of William Blake, bright and huge
Hung over the Thames at Sonning. "
From 'Thames - Sacred River' by Peter Ackroyd
