The Vale of the White Horse is the valley of the Ock, a stream which joins the Thames from the west at Abingdon.

Here is the first stanza of a poem written in 1951 by Phyllis Dawson Clark celebrating the Ock, and called:

The Mill Stream

Down from the chalky range of Berkshire hills
Stamped with the cave-man’s god, a lean white horse;
Through rustling cornfields, by a dozen mills
Whose wheels are long since rusty, and across
A thistle wast where winter storms have laid
To rest the hollow trunks, where brittle rot
Harbours the comfrey seedlings that have strayed;
Where centuries of blue forget-me-not
Have sighed away their days unseen, alone,
And sprays of blushing dog-rose bend to kiss
Their own reflection in a pool that’s known
A thousand summers just as sweet as this, —
By the wild rhubarb leaves and giant dock,
Under the willow arches flows the winding Ock.