The Dead

Rivers have always been associated with the dead in cultures all across the world. In Western culture, the most famous example of this is the River Styx from Greek mythology: The Styx is a boundary, separating the world of the living from Hades, or the domain of the dead. In the poem, the dead “com[ing] down to the river to drink” (Line 1) could thus be trying to draw closer to the living to catch a glimpse of those they have left behind. In Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods swear on the Styx as a binding agreement. This gives the act of drinking from the river new resonance; in doing so, the dead are making a promise to the living or to themselves, though the exact nature of this promise is left to the reader’s interpretation.

A range of other world mythological systems and religions have also explored the relationship between the dead and bodies of water. In Egyptian folklore, the river Nile was considered a place of both beginnings and endings: It was associated with creation as well as the journey the dead took to the afterlife.