What is water parting?

Famous quotes containing the words water and/or parting:

    The clock runs down
    timeless and still.
    The days and nights turn hours to years
    and water in a gutter marks the circle of another world
    hating, resentful, and afraid
    stagnant, and green, and full of slimy things.
    Margaret Abigail Walker (b. 1915)

    The path was a vague parting in the grass
    That led us to a weathered windowsill.
    We pressed our faces to the pane. “You see,” he said,
    “Everything’s as she left it when she died....”
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)