River Severn

The River Severn (Welsh: Afon Hafren), at 220 miles (354 km) long, is the longest river in Great Britain.

High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
Islanded in Severn stream;
The bridges from the steepled crest
Cross the water east and west.
—A. E. Housman

There is a gentle nymph ... that with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream. —John Milton

Quotes

• Revolted Mortimer!
  He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,
  But by the chance of war; to prove that true
  Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,
  Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took
  When on the gentle Severn's sedgy bank,
  In single opposition, hand to hand,
  He did confound the best part of an hour
  In changing hardiment with great Glendower:
  Three times they breathed and three times did they drink,
  Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood;
  Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
  Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
  And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,
  Bloodstained with these valiant combatants.
  Never did base and rotten policy
  Colour her working with such deadly wounds;
  Nor could the noble Mortimer
  Receive so many, and all willingly:
  Then let not him be slander'd with revolt.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, I, iii

• There is a gentle nymph not far from hence,
  That with moist curb sways the smooth Severn stream.
  Sabrina is her name, a virgin pure;
  Whilom she was the daughter of Locrine,
  That had the sceptre from his father Brute.
  She, guiltless damsel, flying the mad pursuit
  Of her enragèd step-dame Guendolen,
  Commended her fair innocence to the flood,
  That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course.
  The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played,
  Held up their pearlèd wrists and took her in,
  Bearing her straight to aged Nereus’ hall;
  Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head,
  And gave her to his daughters to imbathe
  In nectared lavers, strewed with asphodel:
  And through the porch and inlet of each sense
  Dropped in ambrosial oils, till she revived,
  And underwent a quick immortal change,
  Made goddess of the river.
  • John Milton, from Comus (1634)

• The Danube to the Severn gave
    The darken’d heart that beat no more;
    They laid him by the pleasant shore,
  And in the hearing of the wave.
  There twice a day the Severn fills;
    The salt sea-water passes by,
    And hushes half the babbling Wye,
  And makes a silence in the hills.
  The Wye is hush’d nor moved along,
    And hush’d my deepest grief of all,
    When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,
  I brim with sorrow drowning song.
  The tide flows down, the wave again
    Is vocal in its wooded walls;
    My deeper anguish also falls,
  And I can speak a little then.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), XIX

• From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
    The shires have seen it plain,
  From north and south the sign returns
    And beacons burn again.
  * * * * *
  It dawns in Asia, tombstones show
    And Shropshire names are read;
  And the Nile spills his overflow
    Beside the Severn's dead.
  • A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896), I

• High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
  Islanded in Severn stream;
  The bridges from the steepled crest
  Cross the water east and west.
  • A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad (1896), XXVIII

• The men that live in West England
    They see the Severn strong,
  A-rolling on rough water brown
    Light aspen leaves along.
  They have the secret of the Rocks,
    And the oldest kind of song.
  • Hilaire Belloc, "The South Country" (c. 1901), st. 4