Rivers have always been associated with the dead in cultures all across the world. In Western culture, the most famous example of this is the River Styx from Greek mythology: The Styx is a boundary, separating the world of the living from Hades, or the domain of the dead. In the poem, the dead “com[ing] down to the river to drink” (Line 1) could thus be trying to draw closer to the living to catch a glimpse of those they have left behind. In Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods swear on the Styx as a binding agreement. This gives the act of drinking from the river new resonance; in doing so, the dead are making a promise to the living or to themselves, though the exact nature of this promise is left to the reader’s interpretation.

A range of other world mythological systems and religions have also explored the relationship between the dead and bodies of water. In Egyptian folklore, the river Nile was considered a place of both beginnings and endings: It was associated with creation as well as the journey the dead took to the afterlife.