water

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovelier things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. When music sounds, all that I was I am Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; And from Time's woods break into distant song The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

Where are your combing seas, your blue water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your waterspouts, and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?

In the time that I have been acquainted with this region I have become increasingly aware of it as a testament of water, the origin and guide of its contours and gradients and of all the lives - the plants and small creatures, and the culture - that evolved here. That was always here to be seen, of course, and the recognition has forced itself, in one form or other, upon people in every part of the world who have been directly involved with the growing of living things. The gardener who ignores it is soon left with no garden.

Once during Prohibition I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had nothing to live on but food and water.

Follow the wisdom provided by nature. Everything in moderation - sunlight, water, nutrients. Too much of a good thing will topple your structure. You can't harvest what you don't sow. So plant your desires, gently nurture them, and they will be rewarded with abundance.

The large shiny black forehead of the first whale was no more than two yards from us when it sank beneath the surface of the water, then we saw the huge blue-black bulk glide quietly under the raft right beneath our feet. It lay there for some time, dark and motionless, and we held our breath as we looked down on the gigantic curved back of a mammal a good deal longer than the raft.

A tearing wind last night. A flurry of red clouds, hard, a water colour mass of purple and black, soft as a water ice, then hard slices of intense green stone, blue stone and a ripple of crimson light.

To enjoy freedom . . . we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose.

I am remembering water that glows in the dawn, the motion tumbled in earth, life hidden in mounds.