not. Still I thought my old thoughts.

I was much in London, and, engagements completed, I wandered about in the
same way as in the woods of former days. From the
stone bridges I looked down on the river; the gritty dust, the
straws that lie on the bridges, flew up and whirled round with
every gust from the flowing tide; gritty dust that settles in
the nostrils and on the lips, the very residuum of all that is
repulsive in the greatest city of the world. The noise of the
traffic and the constant pressure from the crowds passing,
their incessant and disjointed talk, could not distract me. One moment at
least I had, a moment when I thought of the push of the great sea forcing
the water to flow under the feet of these crowds, the distant sea strong and
splendid; when I saw the sunlight gleam on the tidal wavelets; when I felt
the wind, and was conscious of the earth, the sea, the sun, the air, the
immense forces working on, while the city hummed by the river. Nature was
deepened by the crowds and foot-worn stones. If the tide had ebbed, and the
masts of the vessels were tilted as the hulls rested on the shelving mud,
still even the blackened mud did not prevent me seeing the water as water
flowing to the sea. The sea had drawn down, and the wavelets washing the
strand here as they hastened were running the faster to it. Eastwards from
London Bridge the river raced to the ocean.

The bright morning sun of summer heated the eastern parapet of
London Bridge; I stayed in the recess to acknowledge it. The
smooth water was a broad sheen of light, the built-up river
flowed calm and silent by a thousand doors, rippling only where
the stream chafed against a chain. Red pennants drooped, gilded
vanes gleamed on polished masts, black-pitched hulls glistened
like a black rook's feathers in sunlight; the clear air cut out