And thorny spires aflame with starlike vanes.

Our silver Thames all yet unspoil'd and clear;
The many-buttress'd bridge that stems the tide;
Black-timber'd wharves; arcaded walls, that rear
Long, golden-crested roofs of civic pride:--
While flaunting galliots by the gardens glide,
And on Spring's frolic air the May-song swells,
Mix'd with the music of a thousand bells.

Beyond the bridge a mazy forest swims,
Great spars and sails and flame-tongued flags on high,
Wedged round the quay, a-throng with ruddy limbs
And faces bronzed beneath another sky:
And 'mid the press sits one with aspect shy
And downcast eyes of watching, and, the while,
The deep observance of an inward smile.

In hooded mantle gray he smiled and sate,
With ink-horn at his knees and scroll and pen.
And took the toll and register'd the freight,
'Mid noise of clattering cranes and strife of men:
And all that moved and spoke was in his ken,
With lines and hues like Nature's own design'd
Deep in the magic mirror of his mind.

Thence oft, returning homeward, on the book,--
His of Certaldo, or the bard whose lays
Were lost to love in Scythia,--he would look
Till his fix'd eyes the dancing letters daze: