Stream

“ For the stream, in lieu of any street, passing between the houses, and affording perpetual change, and twinkling, and reflections moreover by its sleepy murmur soothing all the dwellers there, this and the snugness of the position, walled with rock and spread with herbage, made it look, in the quiet moonlight, like a little paradise. ”

“ Is it not enough to watch the trees almost dipping their branches in the stream, to find excitement in the hovering of a fly over its surface, in the splash of a fish, or even in the tiny swirls of the stream itself? ”

“ The natural consequence is a stream of the most broken and impetuous character, a stream whose rushing, roaring, and foaming drowns all sounds contiguous to it; rapid after rapid of seemingly tempest-tossed and crested billows, of whirlpools and eddies, of backwaters and heavings into surface currents, and never a still pool to be found anywhere. ”

“ The stream, at a vast height above him, is seen leaping from ledge to ledge,—sometimes lost, sometimes sparkling in sunshine, till it courses impetuously beneath the rock on which he is seated, and is lost in the deep unbroken obscurity of the forest. ”

“ One bird, a thrush, embroidered the silence with cheery notes, making the solitude familiar and sweet, while the solemn monotone of the stream sifting through the woods seemed like the very voice of God, humanized, terrestrialized, and entering one’s heart as to a home prepared for it. Go where we will, all the world over, we seem to have been there before.
The stream was bridged at short intervals with picturesque, moss-embossed logs, and the trees on its banks, leaning over from side to side, made high embowering arches. ”

“ Other blocks are only waiting for the last moment of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins the trees and the verdant lawn below. All round is the sound of water, the beat of the waves on the shore, the onward flowing of the river, the rush of the torrent, the splash of the waterfall, or the bubbling of some little stream; everywhere the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you. ”

“ The backwaters of life, like the backwaters of streams, have an enormous fascination for me, for both are extraordinarily pleasing to the eye and restful to the mind. The great stream of progress hurries by them, while they revolve gently under shelter in sedate eddies, and sometimes sticks and straws from the stream get flung aside into them, and at once they join that slow, unhurrying circle. ”

“ Or a brook, which is a tiny trout stream, babbles on through the meadows and pastures, and has its attractions too. A stream is always the chief artery of the land, as in it are found the life-giving elements. All the birds, all the plants, flock to its banks, and its wooded sides are hushed by the subdued hum of insects. There are tall green brackens—brackens unfurling their fronds to the light, and full of the atoms of beautiful summer. ”

“ At our feet a stream was struggling with the multitude of rude rocks, which Nature, in one of her primeval convulsions, had flung here and there in masses into its current; sometimes uniting into irregular ledges, over which the water swept with impetuosity;—sometimes standing insulated in the stream, and increasing the energies of the river by their resistance;—sometimes breaking forward from the bank, and giving a bolder effect to its romantic outline. ”

“ I, being a foolish non-swimmer, and moreover somewhat ungregarious, have discovered a bathing paradise for myself some way further up the stream, where the interlacing boughs of cool blue-grey hybiscus foliage form an immense arbour—a dressing-room of leafy shade, through which the gurgling waters flow gently, with rippling, liquid, most musical tones—the voice of hidden streams. ”

“ The river-banks one would call tame if seen from shore are altogether new when you open up the vista from the middle of the stream. The picture that is rolled sideways to the common traveller now pours out from before you, ever enlarging from a centre, and in the gentle sway of the stream the landscape seems to swell on this side and on that with new things ever advancing to meet you in succession. ”

“ Long days are spent in the closest intimacy with its ever-changing surface and the ever-changing melodies it plays. Miles of water, much of it buried in woody dingles from every eye but the fisherman’s, its only visitor, are traversed by him on the bank edge, or in the stream itself, over and over again, till every eddy and pool, every rock and pendent bough, becomes printed in the mind, and hung, so to speak, in its picture gallery. ”

“ And round about their rugged feet Deep ferny dells are hidden In shadowed depths, whence dust and heat Are banished and forbidden. The stream that, crooning to itself, Comes down a tireless rover, Flows calmly to the rocky shelf, And there leaps bravely over. ”

“ But the stream when it has gained an impetus takes the shape of its bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not foaming, nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard ”

“ You saw the stream, at all times, rapid, and now, swollen vastly beyond its ordinary proportions, rushing with ten-fold force, and hurrying, in its channel, with hoarse sounds, the ice-cakes, which, in the emulous race, grated against, and, sometimes, mutually destroyed one another, to drive some under the icy barrier, thence to glide away to the ocean, and to toss others high above the foaming torrent on the collected masses, more gradually to find their way to the same bourne. ”

“ A tiny stream, a pixy’s river, slips from beneath a bowlder in a wood long known, and leads through thicket, glade, and clearing to a terrifying land, desolated by ancient fires and strewn with blackened stones and charred boughs. The place itself is athirst, and the dreamer kneels to drink. The tiny stream is dark, like a deep water, and bitter cold as if it flowed through ice. A staff thrust down cannot sound its depths. ”

“ This stream may be likened unto the river by whose banks Petrarch loved to wander; inasmuch as it springs full grown from the foot of a great bare precipice. All around is tumbled rock. So, among the heaped and broken rocks of disappointed hopes and baffled attempts, this full, strong, and clear stream leaped forth triumphant. ”

“ Two or three hundred yards has been the limit of the view ahead, as the stream swerves gracefully from the slightest rise of land, and flows now east, now north, now east, now south again. So long a stretch of navigable water is not common on the Delectable River, and we make the most of it, moving leisurely, and prisoning the everchanging picture with the imperfect camera of the eyes. ”

“ Like such a great river as that he knew so well and frequented all his days, his life flowed steadily and strongly, the brimming stream augmenting always, deepening and widening, the heavier current moving, at the end, more slowly but not through slackening of power, until, at the last turn, the majestic estuary opens and broadens, as, with no hurry of fretting waves, no straining through silted sandbanks, undiminished, the mighty mass of waters mingles with the sea. ”

“ And deep under the earth, hurrying toward the subterranean stream, were other streams, small and great, but all deep, hurrying to and from that great mother-stream underneath, just as the small and great overground streams hurry to and from their mother Mississippi. It was almost more than the little convent girl could take in: at least such was the expression of her eyes; for they opened as all eyes have to open at pilot stories. ”

“ Here at our feet is another river, a little brook flowing in clear stream over the roadside sand, born of the last snow-drift and living till the sun drinks it up. And beside it are half a dozen happy boys, paddling with their bare feet, making mud dams, scraping new channels and short cuts for the stream. ”

“ Every man who has ever got the love of the stream in his blood feels often this longing.
"It comes to me each year with the first breath of spring. There is something in the sweetness of the air, the growing things, the 'robin in the greening grass' that voices it. Duties that have before held in their performance something of pleasure become irksome, and practical thoughts of the day's work are replaced by dreamy pictures of a tent by the side of a mountain stream—close enough to hear the water's singing in the night. ”

“ Emerging after a short hour's march out of the forest, we welcome the sight of a murmuring translucent stream, swiftly flowing towards the north-west, which we regard with the pleasure which only men who have for a long time sickened themselves with that potable liquid of the foulest kind, found in salinas, mbugas, pools, and puddle holes, can realize. ”

“ The stream is, however, much the same—its placid waters are still beautiful as mirrors—its shores are still romantic—its groves are still enchanting—and so may they ever remain, undisturbed, untouched by the dilapidating hand of man! ”

“ It is pleasanter to think of not unsuccessful days by lowland or highland streams, when the sun was veiled, the sky pearly grey, the water, as the people say, in grand order. There is the artistic excitement of choosing the hook, gaudy for a heavy water, neat and modest for a clearer stream. There is the feverish moment of adjusting rod and line, while you mark a fish “rising to himself.” You begin to cast well above him, and come gradually down, till the fly lights on the place where he is lying. ”

“ There is a good depth of water in all the streams, and yet the weed and slime of summer and autumn have not begun to appear; nor will the overarching boughs from the trees hinder progress as they do when clad in their summer bravery. I love the river in the early spring, and if I do but follow the course of the stream I cannot miss my way, as I might well do upon the road in the great forest tracks. ”

“ The forest-born stream is the useful and beautiful one. It has a steady flow of clear water, and fishermen cheerfully come to its green, mossy banks. The buildings along its course are safe from floods, and are steadily served with the power of its reliable flow; its channel is free from mud and full of water; it allows the busy boats of commerce freely to come and go; in countless ways it serves the activities of man. It never causes damage, and always enriches and gladdens the valley through which it flows on to the sea. ”

“ For the tutelar goddess of Sens, benignant genius presiding over the city, is a stream, or rather parent of many streams, that water the streets of their own free will, supplying thirsty beasts with copious draughts in torrid weather, and keeping up a perpetual air of rusticity and coolness. ”

“ We did not stop to sleep, but travelled on all through the day, going as fast as we could along the rocky edges of the stream, which was now almost wide enough to be a river, when suddenly we heard strange noises ahead of us, and we knew what the noises were, and that they meant man again. Men were coming towards us along the bank of the stream, so we had to leave it and hurry into the woods. ”

“ Often the crossing of the stream was nervous work, for the boulders which lay in it were worn smooth as glass, and the fine mist which rose from the falling waters froze to the rocks, making them very slippery. ”

“ In a little hollow of the stream, below the waterfalls, where the falling water has churned out a basin for itself, we sometimes see a trout, silvery bellied, and dark of back, with spots along his sides. But the place where we go to look for fish and other water folk is farther down the stream, below the wood and moorland. ”

“ One, apparently in a spirit of daring, would set out to cross our path—leaving his little cove, he would glide with the utmost rapidity over the river in front of us, leaving a silver line on the smooth surface of the stream, and after we had passed, glide back, bobbing up and down upon the waves in our wake. ”

“ A breeze came wandering from the sky,
Light as the whispers of a dream;
He put the o'erhanging grasses by,
And softly stooped to kiss the stream,
The pretty stream, the flattered stream,
The shy, yet unreluctant stream. ”

“ It is surprising, too, what long stretches of some of our most beautiful rivers and streams can be seen to real advantage as passing acquaintances from a train window. I have lived long enough to have cursed in my heart, like many others, the making of a line up many a well-known and familiar stream, cherished for its sequestered beauties. ”

“ A stream may acquire the name of a river, in the channel of which, at some seasons of extreme drought, no water flows. For a great portion of the year parts of a stream may flow in great abundance, in which, during a very dry season, we may find only standing pools. It would be against all usage to say that the general source of the river was at that point in its channel from which the water always flows. ”

“ The stream whose water spreads over its low banks is without depth and current and power. But confine the waters between high, narrow banks, the bed of the stream is deepened, and its mighty current supports animal life and turns the wheels of mill and factory. ”

“ Birds make hiding-places for themselves in these oak and hazel bushes by the stream. Following it up, we find it receives, at a tiny ford, the tribute of another stream from the north-west, and comes down between the adjacent hills (well wooded to the summit) from meadows of short-cropped grass, and to these from the open moorland, where it takes its rise. Every conceivable variety of beauty of sound and sight in streamlet life is found as we follow the course of this Town Beck. We owe much of Wordsworth's intimate acquaintance with streamlet beauty to it. ”