across the face of the waters

From Norms and Nobility: a Treatise on Education by David Hicks (35):

Righting this imbalance necessitates a classical understanding of the nature of language, which acknowledges its mystery and weds the word to the mind through the imagination, not exclusively to the external object through the senses. …A love of words and an understanding of language are the creative movement of the spirit across the face of the waters.