Spring was moving in the air above and in the ground below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirirt of divine discontent and longing.
And almost at once Mole is saying 'Bother!' and 'Oh blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and he's up out of his dark and lonely world and into a universe of friendship and beauty...
...and the river.
Never in his life had he seen such a thing before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling...All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, chatter and bubble.
Isn't The Wind in the Willows about what every book should be about? What every work of art should be about, for that matter: showing us that we live in a world of miracles.
Word To Use Today: the word river comes to us from French, and before that from the Latin word rīpa, though rīpa means the bank of a river rather than the river itself.
River is one of those interesting words which don't have a to-do-with form (though riverish would be lovely).
All we have is fluvial or potamic, which are both ridiculous.
riverine, adj. associated with or characterized by a river; a riverine estuary as opposed to a tidal one. A bit technical perhaps, but that's what comes of associating with mapmakers and geographers.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Ric
Great to hear from you, Ric. And you're quite right, of course. Riverine did float into my consciousness when I was writing this, but as my Collins Dictionary specifically lists the related adjectives for river as fluvial and potamic I decided I'd imagined it.
ReplyDeleteAnd then riverine is there, after all, four entries down from river.
Doh!