The Thread of Gold by A.C. Benson

I sate to-day, in a pleasant hour, at a place called _The Seven Springs_, high up in a green valley of the _Cotswold_ hills. Close beside the road, seven clear rills ripple out into a small pool, and the air is musical with the sound of running water. Above me, in a little thicket, a full-fed thrush sent out one long-drawn cadence after another, in the joy of his heart, while the lengthening shadows of bush and tree crept softly over the pale sward of the old pasture-lands, in the westering light of the calm afternoon.

These springs are the highest head-waters of the _Thames_, and that fact is stated in a somewhat stilted Latin hexameter carved on a stone of the wall beside the pool. The so-called _Thames-head_ is in a meadow down below _Cirencester_, where a deliberate engine pumps up, from a hidden well, thousands of gallons a day of the purest water, which begins the service of man at once by helping to swell the scanty flow of the _Thames_ and _Severn Canal_. But _The Seven Springs_ are the highest hill-fount of Father _Thames_ for all that, streaming as they do from the eastward ridge of the great oolite crest of the downs that overhang _Cheltenham_. As soon as those rills are big enough to form a stream, the gathering of waters is known as the _Churn_, which, speeding down by _Rendcomb_ with its ancient oaks, and _Cerney_, in a green elbow of the valley, join the _Thames_ at _Cricklade_.