Written on Water

About

An eclectic list of words pertaining to and describing water.

"...I am the faithful husband of the rain,

I love the water of wells and springs

and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise

of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.

My sweetness is to wake in the night

after days of dry heat, hearing the rain."

--Wendell Berry, Water

“James Simonds and his companion, White, organized a tremendous enterprise with the result that an aboideau was built, and other dykes were made, and the great marshes of Tantramar were redeemed from the water.” - Katharine Hale, Canadian Cities of Romance, 1928.

That which is now a horse, even with a thought

The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,

As water in water. -Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, xii. 9.

"How the Waters closed above Him

We shall never know --

How He stretched His Anguish to us

That -- is covered too --

Spreads the Pond Her Base of Lilies

Bold above the Boy

Whose unclaimed Hat and Jacket

Sum the History --

--Emily Dickinson, How the Waters Closed Above Him

"They hide in the brook when I seek to draw nearer,

Laughing amain when I feign to depart;

Often I hear them, now faint and now clearer—

Innocent bold or so sweetly discreet.

Are they Nymphs of the Stream at their playing

Or but the brook I mistook for a voice?

Little care I; for, despite harsh Time’s flaying,

Brook voice or Nymph voice still makes me rejoice."

--Ellis Parker Butler, The Water Nymphs

...sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains. --Carl Sandburg, from the poem Prairie Waters by Night

This Grave

Contains all that was mortal of a young English poet

Who on his death bed in the bitterness of his heart

At the malicious power of his enemies

Desired these words to be engraven on his tomb stone

"Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." --John Keats' epitaph, Protestant Cemetery, Rome: