clay quotes

I dread this like the dentist, rather more so: To me Art's subject is the human clay, And landscape but a background to a torso; All Ce z anne's apples I would give away For one small Goya or a Daumier.

-W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
  'Letter to Byron', pt.3, stanza 20, collected in Poems, Essays, Dramatic Writings1927^1939 (1977).

   Purpose apart, perched like an umpire, dozes, Dreams golden balls whirring through indigo. Clay blurs the whitewash but day still encloses The albinos, bonded in their flick and flow. Playing in musicked gravity, the pair Score liquid Euclids in foolscaps of air.

- Margaret Avison
  Winter Sun,'Tennis'.

Honouring itself the clay rears up To praise its pottering purposes, But, oh, much sorrow shall it sup Before fulfilment is.

- George Granville Barker
  'Goodman  Jacksin and the  Angel'.

I waited patiently for the L, and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDPsalms 40:1^2.

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it,What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?

-Bible (Old Testament)
Isaiah 45:9.

Thou,O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his bellyand his thighs of brass.His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stonewas cut out without hands, whichsmotetheimage upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Daniel 2:31^34.

Nay but,O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it,Why hastthou made methus? Hathnotthepotter powerover the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

-Bible (NewTestament)
Romans 9:20^1.

Time'swheelsrunsbackor stops: Potterand clayendure.

- Robert Browning
  Dramatis Personae,'Rabbi ben Ezra', stanza 27.

In time the Rockies may crumble Gibraltar may tumble They're only made of clay, But our love is here to stay.

- Ira originally Israel Gershowitz Gershwin
  'Love Is Here to Stay', sung by KennyBaker in The Goldwyn Follies (music by George Gershwin).

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

- A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
  A Shropshire Lad, no.4.

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.

- Bernard Malamud
  Dubin's Lives.

Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

-Wilfred Owen
  'Futility', collected in Poems (published1920).

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
  'Epipsychidion', l.160^1.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

-W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
  'The Lake Isle of Innisfree', stanzas1^2. Collected in The Rose (1893).