“Back above ground, like robotic versions of the mosques and minarets that grace the shores of Istanbul's Bosphorus, Houston’s petroscape of domed white tanks and silver fractioning towers spreads along the banks of its Ship Channel.”

“This City now doth like a garment wearThe beauty of the morning; silent, bare,Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lieOpen unto the fields and to the sky;All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”

“The grey-rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

“She turned back to inspect a bank of greens: olive, jade, leaf, kiwi, lime, a silver-green like the back of birch leaves, a bright pistachio.”

“But the ship swept on, and the dusk hushed the hum of the day, and the first stars above blinked answers to the early fireflies on the banks as that jungle fell far behind, leaving only its fragrance as a memory that it had been.”

“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”