Old Father Thames

[Intro]
The serpent in the bosom of London
The Thames, the serpent in the bosom of London
[?]

[Verse 1]
The Thames, the serpent in the bosom of London begins in one or more boggy fields in Gloucestershire and ends in Southend at the crowstone: an obelisk set in the sands to mark the boundry of the port of London Authority. Less imposing and considerably younger than Cleopatra's needle near the Waterloo Bridge, it still bears an uncanny sеnse of history as the tide goеs out, revealing it like a spire from Atlantis or the corpse city of R'lyeh

[Chorus]
The serpent in the bosom of London
The Thames, the serpent in the bosom of London
The Thames, the serpent in the bosom of London
The Thames, the serpent in the bosom of London

[Verse 2]
In 1820 Fredrick Marryat captained HMS Rosario for the purpose of bringing the news back to Britain of Napoleon's death-in-exile on St. Helena. A respected sailor and author, he later wrote about Thomas Saunders, a fictional and archetypal mudlark and his life on the Thames, from digging up coins and scraps on the river's foreshore to becoming a pilot navigating trading vessels through the labyrinthine docks and mudflats. Marryat was running against tide though. The Victorian artist were more fascinated in a river that brought death rather than life. The medieval "Winchester Geese" continued to haunt the river. G. F. Watts painted "Found Drowned", John Everett Millais painted "Bridge of Sighs" sharing it's title with Thomas Hood's poem. All were artistic reactions to the working girls, brought low by disease, pregnancy or despondency, who were found floating dead in the river downstream from the Old Dock Bridge

[Outro]
The Thames, the serpent in the bosom of London