“The Pulse, the Mother, Music and Water”
My soul is an enchanted boat.
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.
– Shelley
The pulse, the mother, music and water. Let's see if we can draw all these together. When we think of the word pulse, words invoking fluidity come to us like blood, flow, and waves. One of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definitions of pulse is "the rhythmical recurrence of... undulations." It gives this illustrative quotation: "like the pulse of the flowing sea."