Anne Wilson

Stockton

To Stockton next, whose fair neat streets proclaim

Clocina there does not presume to reign.

By thee enrich’d, fair Teisa, merchants here

Like princes, all magnificent appear;

With Pallas’ spirit, shipwrights are inspir’d,

Of her noble art they have acquir’d.

Smooth Teisa gently glides away from hence

To Portrack, ships of burden now advance

To take the loading that the keels have brought;

Around we see the little barges float;

Some busy, take away their foreign store,

Others, of our own produce, are bringing more.

From Anne Wilson’s 1600-line poem Teisa: A Descriptive Poem of the River Teese, Its Towns and Antiquities  published in 1778