WRIT IN WATER 



terms, and the poetical haloes of the mythical 

 inhabitants of the deep. Without water, we 

 should not have Triton and his "bright- 

 haired daughters," the Nereids, sirens, mer- 

 maids, and sprites that wind in and out of 

 the measures of the poets, leaving behind 

 them eery echoes of river and sea. 



Nor should we have the exquisite lines 

 from Keats, written under a similar inspira- 

 tion: 



"The loveliest moon that ever silver'd o'er 

 A shell for Neptune's goblet." 



Though the land of the poets is pre-emi- 

 nently "a land of brooks of water, of foun- 

 tains and depths," one also finds in the table- 

 lands of prose many a refreshing spring and 

 river. "Time is but the stream I go a-fish- 

 ing in," said Thoreau, and if one examines 

 the output of the best prose-writers of any 

 century, one finds that it is often by the 

 rhetorical use of water that they redeem 

 their work from literary aridity. 



Finally, the good offices of water do not 

 cease with the benefits which it confers on 



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