“Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!”

—  Walter Scott

Canto III, stanza 16 (Coronach, stanza 3).
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou art gone, and foreve…" by Walter Scott?
Walter Scott photo
Walter Scott 151
Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet 1771–1832

Related quotes

William James photo

“The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Science... has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. She catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates. Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes... she appears to cancel herself. The books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque, representing, as they did, a God who conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events.

George Linley photo

“Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream,
And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream.”

George Linley (1798–1865) British writer

Thou art gone, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Marcus Aurelius photo

“Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”

VII, 59
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Thomas the Apostle photo

“Thou art like a philosopher of the heart.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

13, Matthew’s words to Yeshua
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

Enoch Powell photo

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Alluding to Virgil's report of the Sybil's prophesy, from the Aeneid, Book 6, line 87: "Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno." This is one of the concluding lines that gave the speech its common title.
The 'Rivers of Blood' speech

John Muir photo

“In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"From Fort Independence to Yosemite", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 6 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated September 1875, published 15 September 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 113
1870s

Eleanor Farjeon photo

“My harp and I a-wandering
Went over Snowdon Mountain,
From Anglesey to Swansea Bay
It sang like any fountain.”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

The Welsh Harp
More Nursery Rhymes of London Town (1917)

William Wordsworth photo
Robert Burns photo
John Muir photo

Related topics