Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink

Cultural  

1. Lines from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The speaker, a sailor on a becalmed ship, is surrounded by salt water that he cannot drink.

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By extension, these lines are used to describe a situation in which someone is in the midst of plenty but cannot partake of it.

Example Sentences

In contrast, Tilda Swinton quietly went to a studio in the Scottish Highlands, near the beach where she walks her dogs, and delivered the most famous lines from the poem – “Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink” – with a crystalline calm that pulls at the poem’s despair.

From The Guardian

Options for classes this year included offerings such as “Tales from the Genome: What Will Your Future Bring?” and “Water, Water, Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink,” which is Duckworth’s class.

From Washington Times

Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.

From National Geographic

“Searching the administrative record’s reams of pages for some explanation as to why the navy’s activities were authorized by the National Marine Fisheries Service,” she wrote, “this court feels like the sailor in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner who, trapped for days on a ship becalmed in the middle of the ocean, laments, ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink’.”

From The Guardian

“Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink”

From Washington Times