Prospect from "The Prospect of Whitby"
 

      "The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of
an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded
together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the
barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of
canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the
low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above
Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom,
brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth. . . "
                                           from Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness