A sensitive commentary by Seamus Heaney on a poem by Sylvia Plath, ‘Mussel Hunter at Rock Harbor’.  He describes:

… the drama of survival, the attainment of a dry, hard-won ledge beyond the welter and slippage of Lethean temptations.

May we all find our own secure, dry ledge beyond any fearful welter and slippage.   

‘Lethean’ refers to Lethe, the river of forgetfulness and one of the five rivers of Hades.  The poem can be found here. 

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 223