flood

Gigantic daughter of the West, We drink to thee across the flood, We know thee most, we love thee best, For art thou not of British blood?

—Tennyson

Like some full-breasted swan That, fluting a wild carol ere her death, Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood With swarthy webs.

—Tennyson

Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind; Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind.

—1st Baron

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark.

—Bible (NewTestament)

A branch of one of your antediluvian families, fellows that the flood could not wash away.

—Congreve,William

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.

—Tennyson

The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

—Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not myTime, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

—Skirving, Adam

'People can't die, along the coast,'said Mr Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh inönot properly born, till flood. He's a going out with the tide.'

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide, There hang his head, and view the lazy tide In its hot slimy channel slowly glide; Where the small eels that left the deeper way For the warm shore, within the shallows play; Where gaping mussels, left upon the mud, Slope their slow passage to the fallen flood.

—Crabbe, George

   By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard around the world.

—Emerson, RalphWaldo

I feel pretty glum and devote myself to reviewing. There is Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I try very hard indeed to understand that book but fail completely. It is almost impossible to decipher, and when one or two lines of understanding emerge like telegraph poles above a flood, theyareat once countered byother polesgoing in the opposite direction.

—Nicolson, Sir Harold

You see how when rivers are swollen in winter those trees that yield to the flood retain their branches, but those that offer resistance perish, trunk and all.

—Sophocles

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness Lady were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges'side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood.

—Marvell, Andrew