Her father loved me; oft invited me;

Still question'd me the story of my life,

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattl'd farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument.

"Darest thou, Cassius, now

Leap in with me into this angry flood,

And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,

Accoutred as I was, I plunged in

And bade him follow.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act i. Sc. 2.

A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing;

Our helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.

Martin Luther (1483-1546): Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (trans. by Frederic H. Hedge).

Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;

Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,

Frozen by distance.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Address to Kilchurn Castle.

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—Nevermore!

Edgar A Poe (1811-1849): The Raven.

There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act iv. Sc. 3.