The holm as low-lying riverside land — periodically flooded, rich with alluvial soil, lush with coarse grass and willows — appears in the topography of English river valleys as a particular kind of marginal abundance; A poet might write "the holm lay between the river's winter mood and its summer self, the land that belonged to both seasons equally, claiming neither dry certainty nor wet surrender"; Place names ending in "-holm" across northern and midland England preserve the Norse settlers' recognition of this landscape type — the low island or water meadow that the Viking farmers identified and named as distinct from higher ground; In poems about flooding and the seasonal rhythms of river landscapes, the holm represents the territory most intimately connected to the river's fluctuations, the land that experiences the water's moods most directly; Tennyson's Lincolnshire landscapes include holms — the flat, water-affected ground of the Fens and river valleys where he grew up — and these specific landscape memories shape his pastoral imagery; The holm as island in a river — the land surrounded by water, accessible or isolated according to the river's level — gives it associations of temporary sovereignty, the small raised ground that remains above flood as the surrounding lowland disappears.