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| John Constable Flatford Lock - A Path by a River ca. 1810-12 oil on canvas, mounted on board Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| Jean-Louis Forain The Fisherman 1884 oil on canvas Southampton City Art Gallery |
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| Walter Bayes Launching the Boat ca. 1930 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland |
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| Edgar Herbert Thomas Sundown - The Glamorgan Canal ca. 1913 oil on panel National Museum Cardiff, Wales |
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| Alfred Sisley Bend in the River Loing 1896 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Claude Monet Autumn Effect at Argenteuil 1873 oil on canvas Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot The Pond ca. 1865 oil on canvas National Museum Cardiff, Wales |
A Muse of Water
We who must act as handmaidens
To our own goddess, turn too fast,
Trip on our hems, to glimpse the muse
Gliding below her lake or sea,
Are left, long-staring after her,
Narcissists by necessity;
Or water-carriers of our young
Till waters burst, and white streams flow
Artesian, from the lifted breast:
Cupbearers then, to tiny gods,
Imperious table-pounders, who
Are final arbiters of thirst.
Fasten the blouse, and mount the steps
From kitchen taps to Royal Barge,
Assume the trident, don the crown,
Command the Water Music now
That men bestow on Virgin Queens;
Or goddessing above the waist,
Appear as swan on Thames or Charles
Where iridescent foam conceals
The paddle-stroke beneath the glide:
Immortal feathers preened in poems!
Not our true, intimate nature, stained
By labor, and the casual tide.
Masters of civilization, you
Who moved to riverbank from cave,
Putting up tents, and deities,
Though every rivulet wander through
The final, unpolluted glades
To cinder-bank and culvert-lip,
And all the pretty chatterers
Still round the pebbles as they pass
Lightly over their watercourse,
And even the calm rivers flow,
We have, while springs and skies renew,
Dry wells, dead seas, and lingering drouth.
Water itself is not enough.
Harness her turbulence to work
For man: fill his reflecting pools.
Drained for his cofferdams, or stored
In reservoirs for his personal use:
Turn switches! Let the fountains play!
And yet these buccaneers still kneel
Trembling at the water's verge:
"Cool River-Goddess, sweet ravine,
Spirit of pool and shade, inspire!"
So he needs poultice for his flesh.
So he needs water for his fire.
We rose in mists and died in clouds
Or sank below the trammeled soil
To silent conduits underground,
Joining the blindfish, and the mole,
A gleam of silver in the shale:
Lost murmur! Subterranean moan!
So flows in dark caves, dries away,
What would have brimmed from bank to bank,
Kissing the fields you turned to stone,
Under the boughs your axes broke.
And you blame streams for thinning out,
plundered by man's insatiate want?
Rejoice when a faint music rises
Out of a brackish clump of weeds,
Out of the marsh at ocean-side,
Out of the oil-stained river's gleam,
By the long causeways and gray piers
Your civilizing lusts have made.
Discover the deserted beach
Where ghosts of curlews safely wade:
Here the warm shallows lave your feet
Like tawny hair of magdalens.
Here, if you care, and lie full-length,
Is water deep enough to drown.
– Carolyn Kizer (1959)
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| Anonymous Flemish Artist Road through a Wood with a Lake 17th century oil on panel Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| Henri-Joseph Harpignies The Winding River 1892 oil on canvas Manchester Art Gallery |
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| Paul Nash Oxenbridge Pond 1927-28 oil on canvas Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, West Midlands |
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| Paul Cézanne Étang des Soeurs Osny near Pontoise ca. 1875 oil on canvas Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Edward Wolfe Willows at Charleston ca. 1918 oil on board Charleston House, Lewes, Sussex |
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| Georges Seurat Boat by the Bank, Asnières ca. 1883 oil on canvas Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Jean-Victor Bertin Landscape with Classical Figures before 1842 oil on canvas National Trust, Hatchlands, Surrey |
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| Gustave Courbet Banks of a Stream 1873 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |