Poetry ‘nitpicking’

Dear Editor:

RE: Water ‘solution’, April 8.

I thank Sytske Drijber for the thoughtful letter on water conservation.

However, in the very best traditions of academic nitpicking, I must point out that the correct quotation from “the old poem in our school reader” (actually Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner) is:

“Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.”

Coleridge continues with some wonderful imagery, for example:

“Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs, Upon the slimy sea.”

Great stuff!

David Brewer,Puslinch