“Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
  My great example, as it is my theme! 
  Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
  Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.”

The poem closes with another river-picture, which some will admire:—­

  “When a calm river, raised with sudden rains
  Or snows dissolved, o’erflows the adjoining plains,
  The husbandmen, with high-raised banks, secure
  Their greedy hopes, and this he can endure;
  But, if with bays and dams they strive to force
  His channel to a new or narrow course,
  No longer then—­within his banks he dwells,
  First to a torrent, then a deluge swells,
  Stronger and fiercer by restraint he roars,
  And knows no bound, but makes his power his shores.”

Again, he says of Thames:—­

  “Thames, the most loved of all the ocean’s sons
  By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
  Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
  Like mortal life to meet eternity. 
  Though with those streams he no resemblance hold
  Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold. 
  His genuine and less guilty wealth t’explore,
  Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.”

Yet, though fond of, and great in, describing rivers, he is not, after all, the “river-god” of poetry.  Professor Wilson speaks with a far deeper voice:—­

  “Down falls the drawbridge with a thund’ring shock,
  And, in an instant, ere the eye can know,
  Binds the stern castle to the opposing rock,
  And hangs in calmness o’er the flood below;
  A raging flood, that, born among the hills,
  Flows dancing on through many a nameless glen,
  Till, join’d by all his tributary rills
  From lake and tarn, from marsh and from fen,
  He leaves his empire with a kingly glee,
  And fiercely bids retire the billows of the sea!”

Different poets are made to write on different rivers as well as on different mountains.  Denham paints well the calm majestic Thames; Wilson, the rapid Spey; Scott, the immemorial and historic Forth; Burns, the wild lonely Lugar and the Doon; and Thomas Aird (see his exquisitely beautiful “River"), the pastoral Cluden.  But the poet of the St. Lawrence, with Niagara flinging itself over its crag like a mad ocean—­of the Ganges or the Orellana—­has yet to be born, or at least has yet to bring forth his conceptions of such a stupendous object in poetry.

In “Cooper’s Hill” we find well, if not fully exhibited, what were Denham’s leading qualities—­not high imagination or a fertile fancy, although in neither of these was he conspicuously deficient, but manly strength of thought and clearness of language.  There are in him no quaintnesses, no crotchets, no conceits, and no involutions or affectations—­all is transparent, masculine, and energetic.  It is in these respects that he became a model to Dryden and Pope, and may even still be read with advantage for at least his style, which is