river

The air moves like a river and carries the clouds with it; just as running water carries all the things that float upon it.

—Leonardo daVinci

   In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Give to me the life I love, Let the lave go by me, Give the jolly heaven above And the byway nigh me. Bed in the bush with the stars to see, Bread I dip in the riverö There's the life for a man like me, There's the life for ever.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

You can't argue with a river, it isgoing to flow.You can dam it up†put it to useful purposes†deflect it, but you can't argue with it.

—Acheson, Dean Gooderham

'In about half a mile you cross the river by an Irish bridgeö' 'Whatever is that?' 'It'sjust a bridge, but built under thewater instead ofover it.' 'Extremely sensible.'

—Stewart,John Innes Mackintosh

The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.

—Bible (Old Testament)

On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And through the field the road runs by To many-towered Camelot.

—Tennyson

   Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, and for ever!

—Scott, Sir Walter

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.Fogonthe Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships† And hard byTemple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, atthevery heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things, bya law divine, In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old father Nile without any doubt rises in the Victoria Nyanza, and as I had foretold, that lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief.

—Speke,John Hanning

   O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever.

—Tennyson

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid metake love easy, asthe leavesgrow on thetree; But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand, And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand. She bid metake life easy, as thegrassgrows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

The riverbed, dried-up, half full of leaves. Us, listening to a river in the trees.

—Heaney, SeamusJustin

But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight.

—Arnold, Matthew

Time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weightyand solid.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

Time has three dimensions and one positive pitch or direction. It is therefore not so much like any river or any sea as like the Sea of Galilee, which has the Jordan running through it and giving a current to the whole.

—Hopkins, SirAnthony

Ol'Man River.

—Hammerstein, Oscar, II

On a tree bya river a little tom-tit Sang 'Willow, titwillow, titwillow!'

—Gilbert, Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck)

He turned the old one-stringed instrument into a many- chorded lyre† W.G. discovered batting; he turned its many narrow straight channels into one great winding river.

—Ranjitsinhji, Prince

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.In themidst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

—Bible (NewTestament)

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown godösullen, untamed and intractable,

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

Earth hath not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will; Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

—Wordsworth,William

The river is within us, the sea is all about us.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

I'll love you dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven starsgo squawking Like geese about the sky.

—Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoeö Sailed on a river of crystal light, Into a sea of dew.

—Field, Eugene

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain'or 'train'do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance.It is nothing jointed; it flows. A'river'or a 'stream'are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

—James,William

But the river remains unchanged, sad, refusing rehabilitation.

—Kirkup,James

The widening river's slow presence, The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud, Gathers to the surprise of a large town: Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water, And residents from raw estates.

—Larkin, Philip Arthur

As I look ahead, I am filled with much foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see'the RiverTiber foaming with much blood'.

—Powell, (John) Enoch

Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to towered Camelot.

—Tennyson

He that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cottar, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.

—Scott, Sir Walter

O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies'dreaming sod, Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

—Crane, (Harold) Hart

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment whiteöthen melts for ever.

—Burns, Robert

The Knight in the triumph of his heart made several 6 reflections on thegreatness of the British Nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of Popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that theThames was thenoblest river in Europe; that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the Seven Wonders of the World; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

—Addison,Joseph

Moulmein is situated up the mouth of a river which ought to flow through South America.

—Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard

Where the pools are bright and deep, Where the grey trout lies asleep, Up the river and o'er the lea, That's the way for Billy and me.

—Hogg,James

I call him Jordan and it will do. He has no other name before or after.What was there to call him, fished as he was from the stinkingThames? A child can't be called Thames, no and not Nile either, for all his likeness to Moses.But I wanted to give hima river name, a name not bound to anything, just as the waters aren't bound to anything.

—Winterson,Jeanette

O the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters Of the River Lee.

—Mahony, Francis Sylvester pseudonym Father Prout

What use the green river, the gold place, if time and death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest from taking underground the green all-willowed and white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?

—Frame,Janet Paterson also known as Jean PatersonFrame

   Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

—Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich

Beyond the gap where the river plunges into the narrow gorge, unseen öand the imagination soars, as a voice beckons, a thundrous voice, endless öas sleep: the voice that has ineluctably called themö that unmoving roar!

—Williams,William Carlos

I will make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me Of green days in forests and blue days at sea. I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

   U.S.A. is the slice of a continent.U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in bya Western Union boy on a black-board, a publiclibrary full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled in the margins in pencil.U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills.U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts.U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery.U.S.A. is the letters at theend of anaddresswhenyouareaway from home.But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people

—Dos Passos,John Roderigo