The Waste Land

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something her carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

T.S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’ (1922)

Trainspotting

Renton (Ewan MacGregor) dives down through ‘the worst toilet in Scotland’ to seek out mislaid drugs at the bottom of the ’sea’, in a fantasy sequence from the film Trainspotting.

Trainspotting (1996), d. Danny Boyle

Lamia

… Whether to faint Elysium, or where
Down through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair
Wind into Thetis’ bower by many a pearly stair …

John Keats, ‘Lamia’ (1820), from Part I

Richard III

Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As’t were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems.

William Shakespeare, ‘Richard III’, Act I Scene iv.

Lines spoken by the Duke of Clarence, who is subsequently drowned by his murderers in a butt of malmsey wine.