River Mole - Literature

Literature

In The Faerie Queene (first published in 1590) Edmund Spenser wrote of the river:

And Mole, that like a nousling mole doth make

His way still under ground till Thamis he overtake.

In Poly-Olbion (first published in 1612) the poet Michael Drayton described the journey taken by the River Thames to the sea:

As still his goodly traine yet every houre increast,

And from the Surrian shores cleer Wey came down to meet

His Greatnes, whom the Tames so gratiously doth greet

That with the Fearne-crown'd Flood he Minion-like doth play:

Yet is not this the Brook, entiseth him to stay.

But as they thus, in pompe, came sporting on the shole,

Gainst Hampton-Court he meets the soft and gentle Mole.

Whose eyes so pierc't his breast, that seeming to foreslowe

The way which he so long intended was to go,

With trifling up and down, he wandreth here and there;

And that he in her sight, transparent might appeare,

Applyes himselfe to Fords, and setteth his delight,

On that which might make him gratious in her sight.

But Tames would hardly on: oft turning back to show,

For his much loved Mole how loth he was to go.

The mother of the Mole, old Holmsdale, likewise beares

Th'affection of her childe, as ill as they do theirs:

But Mole respects her words, as vaine and idle dreames,

Compar'd with that high joy, to be belov'd of Tames:

And head-long holds her course, his company to win.

Mole digs her selfe a path, by working day and night

(According to her name, to shew her nature right)

And underneath the Earth, for three miles space doth creep:

Till gotten out of sight, quite from her mothers keep,

Her foreintended course the wanton Nymph doth run;

As longing to imbrace old Tame and Isis son...

He writes in the appendix to Song XVII

This Mole runnes into the earth, about a mile from Darking in Surrey, and after some two miles sees the light againe, which to be certaine hath been affirmed by Inhabitants thereabout reporting triall made of it.

John Milton (c. 1562–1647) described the river as

sullen Mole that runneth underneath

In a similar vein, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) wrote in his poem Windsor Forest (first published 1713)

And sullen Mole that hides his diving flood

Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823) writes the following lines about the Mole Valley in his 1806 poem Wild Flowers.

Sweet Health, I seek thee! Hither bring

Thy balm that softens human ills;

Come on the long drawn clouds that fling

Their shadows o'er the Surry-Hills.

Yon green-topt hills, and far away

Where late as now I freedom stole,

And spent one dear delicious day

On thy wild banks romantic Mole.

Ay there's the scene! Beyond the sweep

Of London's congregated cloud,

The dark-brow'd wood, the headlong steep,

And valley paths without a crowd!

Here Thames I watch thy flowing tides,

Thy thousand sails am proud to see;

But where the Mole all silent glides

Dwells Peace - and Peace is wealth to me.

Extract from The River Mole or Emlyn Stream by Mary Uniacke (writing under her maiden name Mary Drinkwater-Bethune), which was published in 1839.

Who may count back that forgotten time

When first the waters forced an outlet here:

When the foundations of these stedfast hills

Were shaken, and the long imprisoned stream

Flowed through the yawning chasm? That awful day

Yet leaves its trace. The waters find their way,

Now laughing in the sun - now swallowed up

In caverns pervious to their course alone,

They leave their channel dry, and hide awhile

Their silent flow; like bitter tears, unshed

From the dim eye, before a careless world

Unheeding of our grief; but swelling still

In the full heart, which leaves unsoothed, unseen,

And broods o'er ruined hopes, and days gone by.