Samuel Taylor Coleridge composed those lines to characterize the plight of his poem's unfortunate hero, who was stranded aboard a ship in the middle of a stormy sea. Current weather patterns in the Eastern United States have left many people feeling the same way, especially in land-locked areas. Coleridge's biographer James McGoldrick writes that the poet was inspired to write these lines by several incidents in his life, including the drowning death of his infant son and the loss of his wife. However, the story behind their inclusion in Poems (1807), one of Coleridge's first collections, has more to do with money than love. According to McGoldrick, the publishers of that book were willing to pay only six pounds for the poem; its title comes from the fact that Coleridge wanted more for it. People have been saying "water, water everywhere" for centuries. The phrase appears in the Bible and in many other writings as early as 1380. It may have originated as a proverb or folk saying and could have been based on real experiences. The exact meaning of the phrase is hard to pinpoint. Some scholars believe it describes how rapidly rivers flow during floods while others see it as evidence of desperation caused by lack of water. Some writers have used the phrase as a metaphor for life itself, suggesting that everyone needs water to survive.