“Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight above all.”
Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral
Before the battle of Trafalgar [citation needed]
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)
Source: English Music
“Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight above all.”
Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral
Before the battle of Trafalgar [citation needed]
The Battle of Trafalgar (1805)
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: I grow old … I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
Source: Pierre or the Ambiguities
“I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire.”
Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse
Source: To the Lighthouse
John Millington Synge (1871–1909) Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore
The Aran Islands (1907)
Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune
The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert
“5744. Wine hath drowned more Men than the Sea.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: Bacchus hath drown'd more Men than Neptune.
Context: 830. Bacchus hath drown'd more Men than Neptune.
“Old Mathews drank to drown sorrow, which is the strongest swimmer in the world.”
Henry Lawson (1867–1922) Australian writer and poet
The Ridiculous Family, from Triangles of Life and Other Stories (1913)