Time And The River

In Poul Anderson's The Day Of Their Return, Kathryn McCormac's nephew travels down the River Flone on the planet Aeneas with an Ythrian companion whereas, in the same author's The Game Of Empire, Dominic Flandry's daughter travels down the Highroad River on the planet Daedalus with a Wodenite companion. Thus, time and generations pass but families and inter-species interactions continue.

One long sentence lists Ivar's experiences on the Flone:

onboard gaiety and ceremony;

little towns with green stretches between;

wisdom of fellow travelers;

friendliness;

the river itself -

"...always the river, mighty as time, days and nights, days and nights, feeling like a longer stretch than they had been, like a foretaste of eternity: these had healed him." 12, (p. 169)

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, time is compared to a river. Here, the river is compared to time.

Foretaste of eternity? Well, many people do believe in consciousness of endless duration after death. The concept gets into the language. When I was at school, a fellow pupil wrote an account of a beauty spot and ended that it was "...a foretaste of heaven!" Even then, I thought, "How trite!" Does he think that heaven is a permanent beauty spot?

My understanding of eternity is expressed by William Blake. See the attached image.