WRIT IN WATER 



time. Overwhelmed by the baffling miracles 

 of water, Job exclaimed in rhapsody: 



"He bindeth up the waters in his thick 

 clouds; and the cloud is not rent under 

 them." "He cutteth out rivers among the 

 rocks." "He hath compassed the waters 

 with bounds, until the day and night come 

 to an end"; while of the sea, catching its 

 very pitch, he wrote, "Hitherto shalt thou 

 come, but no further: and here shall thy 

 proud waves be stayed." These and many 

 more passages like them show clearly 

 enough that Job did not look upon water, 

 in any of its forms, merely as a material 

 necessity; the cloud interested him more 

 than the fact that its contents might greatly 

 affect his crops. Like all poets, he felt the 

 poetic spell of water, as David also felt and 

 reflected it in his Psalms. 



Whether it plays a role itself, or serves 

 as a highly dramatic background for charac- 

 ters of flesh and blood, water is almost as 

 indispensable to literature as to life. What 

 were the mythologies of Greece and Rome, 



or its great epics, without the sounding sea, 



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